Thatcher's Children

Thatcher’s Children was born out of a series first made in 1992 focusing on 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.’ French newspaper Libération dispatched a journalist to northern England to find out what this society looked like, and Easton was commissioned to take the accompanying photographs. His resulting monochrome images of the overcrowded two-bedroom council flat in Blackpool sparked a reaction by both the public and the press. His images attached human faces and nuanced realities to a group of people casually maligned by politicians and media as an ‘underclass of scroungers.’