Thatcher’s Children
Long-term project exploring the inter-generational nature of poverty and economic hardship as experienced by three generations of one family in the north of England. First started in 1992 (b&w images) and continued 2016 - 2020.
Thatcher’s Children was published by GOST Books in 2023 - available here.
Media & Exhibitions
Thatcher’s Children book - available here.
Thatcher’s Children was born out of a series first made in 1992 with two parents and six children living in a hostel for homeless families in Blackpool, England. The project was made in response to a speech by Peter Lilley, then secretary of state for social security, in which he announced his determination to ‘close down the something-for-nothing society’ and parodied a song from ‘The Mikado’: “I've got a little list / Of benefit offenders who I'll soon be rooting out / And who never would be missed.”
Since 2016, Easton has reconnected with the families of those six children and the resulting work examines not just the nature of poverty now, but the inter-generational nature of social deprivation and how it is connected to the failures of successive governments’ social policies.