1 - Opening Credits
Jun 30, 2026 · 4 min · 3 segments
To Hell with Poverty! documents Jon King’s story from a south London slum and working-class background to international success as core musician, lyricist, writer, and producer in the legendary…
Jun 30, 2026 · 4 min · 3 segments
To Hell with Poverty! documents Jon King’s story from a south London slum and working-class background to international success as core musician, lyricist, writer, and producer in the legendary…
1.5 million people are out of work, doubling to 3 million by 1982.
Inflation soars to 12%.
The UK's interest rate is at an all-time high of 17%.
40% income tax from low earners, 90% for the better off.
Massive industrial conflict during the winter of discontent sees firemen strike and the army called in to cover.
Refuse collectors stop work and uncollected rubbish is piled high in city centres.
Grave diggers down shovels, leading Liverpool Council to store the dead in a speak factory and consider burial at sea to cope with a backlog of corpses.
Striking lorry drivers hold up essential supplies.
Salt, sugar and dairy products are rationed in shops, and animals starve on farms.
Ambulance drivers strike, and the army's drafted in to cover them as well, with only half of NHS hospitals now treating emergencies.
Margaret Thatcher's hard-right regime is set on crushing the unions, especially the mine workers, a struggle that will squander North Sea oil money now gushing in.
The government considers declaring a state of emergency.
A sectarian civil war in Northern Ireland between loyalists and Irish Republicans seized thousands killed across the UK, with bombings, murders and atrocities on both sides.
With innocent Irishmen beaten into confessions for terrorist offences.
British Army and counter-insurgency teams wage both open and secret war against the Irish Republican Army, including assassinations and torture that are condemned by international courts.
The threat of war amps up after the Soviet Union rolls out its next-gen Scud mobile tactical nuclear missiles in Eastern Europe, with a 30-minute flight time from Russia to Britain.
NATO responds by deploying in late 1979 160 Pershing II nuclear cruise missiles based in the United States Air Force's Airstrip 1, aka the UK.
In 1980, UK households receive a booklet, Protect and Survive, with handy tips about how to survive the impending apocalypse.
Is this the end of days? It's the right time to write radical music.
1.5 million people are out of work, doubling to 3 million by 1982.
Inflation soars to 12%.
The UK's interest rate is at an all-time high of 17%.
40% income tax from low earners, 90% for the better off.
Massive industrial conflict during the winter of discontent sees firemen strike and the army called in to cover.
Refuse collectors stop work and uncollected rubbish is piled high in city centres.
Grave diggers down shovels, leading Liverpool Council to store the dead in a speak factory and consider burial at sea to cope with a backlog of corpses.
Striking lorry drivers hold up essential supplies.
Salt, sugar and dairy products are rationed in shops, and animals starve on farms.
Ambulance drivers strike, and the army's drafted in to cover them as well, with only half of NHS hospitals now treating emergencies.
Margaret Thatcher's hard-right regime is set on crushing the unions, especially the mine workers, a struggle that will squander North Sea oil money now gushing in.
The government considers declaring a state of emergency.
A sectarian civil war in Northern Ireland between loyalists and Irish Republicans seized thousands killed across the UK, with bombings, murders and atrocities on both sides.
With innocent Irishmen beaten into confessions for terrorist offences.
British Army and counter-insurgency teams wage both open and secret war against the Irish Republican Army, including assassinations and torture that are condemned by international courts.
The threat of war amps up after the Soviet Union rolls out its next-gen Scud mobile tactical nuclear missiles in Eastern Europe, with a 30-minute flight time from Russia to Britain.
NATO responds by deploying in late 1979 160 Pershing II nuclear cruise missiles based in the United States Air Force's Airstrip 1, aka the UK.
In 1980, UK households receive a booklet, Protect and Survive, with handy tips about how to survive the impending apocalypse.
Is this the end of days? It's the right time to write radical music.
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