Listed here are links to the directive questionnaire and to entries in the University of Sussex Special Collections catalogue where users can click on additional links to a PDF of the individual's response to the directive, and to more information about them. There are seven responses to the Summer 1981 directive covering the following topics: Currency, Royal Wedding, Business Premises, Unemployment, Holidays, Food.

Observing the 1980s brings together ‘voices’ from both the Mass Observation Project and the British Library Oral History Collection. This material offers a unique and inspiring insight into the lives and opinions of British people from a range of social classes and regions during the 1980s. Additional context for these materials comes from a collection of ephemera from the same period, consisting of a range of publications dealing with contemporary issues such as the Poll Tax, AIDS and the Falklands Conflict. The materials were selected for their relevance to themes addressed in the undergraduate history course ‘1984: Thatcher’s Britain’ at the University of Sussex. These digitised resources are available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-alike licence . This means that you may download and re-use the resources for non-commercial purposes but you must credit the author and make available any re-purposed versions under the same Creative Commons licence terms. Access to the British Library oral history interviews is via the British Library Sound Archive Oral History Collections.