But the “Alliance” had actually hit menapausal problems early in 1982, before the Falklands War, perhaps because various national issues, but I guess the media’s infatuation with them went slightly off the boil.

Still, this would be perhaps a place one would have expected them to do better in the circumstances then.

That suggests that Islington had very small socioeconomic variances in 1978/9.

Certainly in comparison to boroughs such as Camden, Haringay and Walthan Forest.

Looking further up the thread, I see the Tory votes weren’t bad in the area in 2008, and am cautiously hopeful there may be a decent improvement in this Borough in 2010, but unlikely to be as good as 1979 with all the changes since.

Frederic is correct I think about the Winter of Discontent and the way it was seen to hit London.
That seemed to be very true from the things I’ve been looking up about 1979 in recent months,
and it must have been pretty demoralising for government ministers in central London fighting their way through to their offices amongst the piles of rubbish and ungrit roads.