Steel and socialism give way to sex and shopping in the post-Blunkett era

‘Blunkett Is Blind’ screamed a pertinent piece of graffiti in Sheffield city centre in the 1980s. This wasn’t just a statement of the bleeding obvious, as a London cabbie might say, but a condemnation of David Blunkett’s stewardship as leader of Sheffield City Council for the seven years before he became MP for Sheffield Brightside in 1987. Blunkett’s council became a national joke as it strove to stem the irresistible tide of Thatcherism. The decline of the steel industry, the city’s lifeblood, provided Blunkett and his civic henchmen with a groundswell of genuine support for their battle against capitalism, but they squandered this support in spectacular fashion with policies from the pages of Alice In Wonderland. Three-hour debates on the rights of goldfish and endless motions condemning General Pinochet combined to make the nuclear-free Town Hall a laughing stock, as the red flag fluttered on its roof. What about our roads, our buses, our houses and our schools, residents demanded.