The development of risk politics in the UK: Thatcher’s ‘Remarkable’ but forgotten ‘Don’t Die of Ignorance’ AIDS campaign

Abstract

Thirty years on from the dramatic and unprecedented AIDS advertising campaign in the UK organised by the Conservative government of the late 1980s, this article reassesses the experience drawing upon subsequent memoirs and interviews. It does so in the context of an emergence of risk politics in the UK in the 1980s, situated within an historical perspective on the development of risk within modernity. I emphasise the forgotten pragmatic, amoral core of the campaign which challenged the illiberal climate of the times, and how it was possible for a government defined by high moralism to challenge it. I outline the range of pressures that led to the campaign, including the conscious attempt to limit stigmatisation amidst the mood of wartime emergency that prevailed in late 1986/early 1987. Its emergency character meant little direct legacy of harm reduction has endured, but I argue for a wider significance of the campaign as a key moment in the emergence of risk politics in the UK and beyond.