Despite what the title suggests, the images in Melanie & The Miner’s Strike have both everything and nothing to do with Thatcher’s Britain. Taken in Leeds during the 1980s, the project was brought to life by Melanie, her mates Jane, Rebecca, and Annette and most importantly Melanie’s daughter Victoria, who discovered hundreds of pictures from 1984 in a box and called up IDEA Ltd. All the images were taken in the year Melanie turned eighteen, documenting a group of normal girls growing up in the North of England: nights out in the local pub, getting ready at each other’s houses and 80s perms in all their glory.

While the social context of Thatcher’s Britain and her damning policies raged on in the background, Melanie’s intimate pictures from the same decade highlight the ability to find moments of joy in the face of adversity. Punctuated by quotes and anecdotes from the recurring characters of Melanie’s life, their commentary adds personal details that would have otherwise remained unknown. Below, Victoria tells us the stories behind five of her favourite images from Melanie & The Miner’s Strike. 

“Rebecca getting ready in my mum’s room. I still have that tiara now, but my daughter broke it playing dress up. I had my first drink of Asti in her mum’s bedroom getting ready, with her grandma popping in to chat to us.”

“‘Me night before’ was written on the back of the picture by Melanie, my mum. “Yes, I mean, we always took pictures. I always wore heavy makeup. Getting ready, taken probably by Jane,” she said.” 

“This was Bali Hai, where most of the pictures were taken and where my mum’s 18th birthday was in 1984. Jane, who features heavily in the book and is still my mum’s best friend to this day, is now married to the bouncer who worked downstairs at Tiffany’s. “Tiffany’s was for ‘normal people’, Bali Hai was upstairs, and that’s where we’d go,” says Melanie.” 

“Annette on her 18th. My mum’s best friend from that time is also Jane’s really good friend from school. When Jane had her first child, Christopher, at seventeen, she stopped coming out as much, and that’s when Annette and my mum got super close. Jane said; “I had my first drink with Annette, she took me to that pub at the back of the Little London estate, I was fourteen. I told my mum I was at the cinema.””

“Rebecca in my mum’s room in 1984. Rebecca was the younger sister of my mum’s boyfriend at the time. “I used to go to the under 18s on a Thursday and over 18s with your Mum, Annette, Jackie, Debbie and Karen on Fridays and Saturdays,” said Rebecca. Rebecca is now married to the bouncer of Bali Hai, who used to let her in. They got married 10 years ago.”