In 1992, Craig Easton was commissioned by the French newspaper Libération to take photographs to illustrate a story on the idea of the British “underclass” – what the Tories of the time called “something for nothing” society. Easton spent some time with Mandy and Mick Williams and their family in Blackpool. Mick had lost his job as a removals man and he and his wife and six children had subsisted for years on benefits in a temporary hostel. The pictures of the Williams children became emblematic of the deprivation of post-Thatcherite Britain.
Easton wondered over the years what became of the family. He first tried to track the children down in 2005 and eventually caught up with them a decade later, mostly still living in the north-west. Katrina, pictured here at her wedding reception in 2018, was four when Easton first photographed her with her siblings. When he showed her those newspaper pictures, it was the first time she’d seen any images of herself as a child.
Katrina’s wedding day was a bright moment in a tough life. The family’s story has not changed as much as it might have done. “Katrina and her husband, Kyle, have four kids; they are settled, but life is still very precarious,” Easton says. “The original story was about unemployment. Now it is about zero-hours contracts and cuts and failures in social policy.”
The new pictures of Katrina and her siblings sit alongside the original images in a book, Thatcher’s Children. The photographs are punctuated by shameful quotes from politicians of both sides throughout those 30 years, making divisions between “workers and shirkers”. The original commission from Libération, Easton says, came about because the French could not fathom that idea of an underclass. “The sad thing,” he says, “is that it was accepted here then and it is still accepted here now.”
Thatcher’s Children by Craig Easton is published by Gost. The work is featured in the exhibition Is Anybody Listening? at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool until 26 February, before touring the UK; craigeaston.com
