Moving London emphasizes the importance of the brand, e,g, the London Transport Roundal and how people are meant to feel safe and happy in the arms of LT when being transported about the capital. An interesting documentary from 1983.
I am amazed that while watching this video recently I saw my wife coming up an escalator in the tube. she passed away 30 years ago, so it was so nice to see her even though only for a few seconds. We had been together about a year when this video was taken. Unbelievable and joyful.
Thank goodness it has gone, else we would be stuck in some kind of weird theme park. Look how other cities have changed and for the better. No longer do people have to commute to work and be apart from their families, London is not just for work - but homes too occupy many central areas in new apartments. Who would have thought so much would be done to discourage the car and welcome in more options for those than just having transport by car.
No, it really wasn't. Maybe in the centre area but definitely not in parts of East London, parts of South East London, and parts of North London not sure about north west or south west London.
Yet here on the South Coast loads of people had moved here from London in the late 70s / early 80s. Humans seem to have rose coloured spectacles about the past. My Nan always said that "the War was the best years of her life" er no Nanny you were bombed out and lived in a tin hut until 1952 and GD said you moaned constantly about it but she swore blind it was great.
Born in 1956 ,,, 1st job in 1973 in a central London estate agent ,,, I remember loving the summer ,, getting into work early , watching the town wake up & come alive ,, 67 years old now ,, London is now a very different place in many ways ,, sadly Londoners are now unrecognisable to how it was !!
London has changed so much. I preferred it when I grew up back in North London and went to college, then out to work in Bond St. life seemed so much better than how I found London now whenever I go back for a visit.
Every single shot was staged as a part of this glazed hazed over rose tinted info-doc that totally isnt lighthearted propaganda of a time long gone. This is dxactly what they wanted you to think, but the time was very different
I think the quality of the video makes us feel nostalgic and in another place of mystery 😂if you was actually placed in London at that time you would see it’s not that amazing compared to now
I remember my Dad telling me when he was in the R.A.F in 1944 he took his shoes to be repaired in a London Cobblers but forgot to go back and pick them up, last week I was in London and found the exact shop he had left them,I thought I would ( just for fun) ask if they still had Dads old shoes, man in the shop said," they'll be ready Tuesday ".
Let's all praise the beauty of diversity which has made today's London better than ever. Smarter, friendlier, better educated, more polite, and of course, safer. Said no one ever.
The first time I went to London was somewhere in 1993 when I was 6. I don't remember much. The second time I went there was the summer of 1995 and I remember there was a noticeable difference between then and now. I imagine everything was simpler in 1983.
Back in the day when I was listening to Steve Right on RADIO 1 and dancing around to DURAN, WHAM and Jackson. Culturally the big change has been the Internet but so many other things remain the same or have hardly moved on. Community and living wise, like the rest of the Country, its a mess and slowly being destroyed. Sad. Very very sad. Thanks for posting.
@MusicalElitist1 some of them do..but majority looks like bitches..or some look like guys ... and some guys looks like ladies as well. back then people looked more simple and human . now everyone is clever and unique :D
@@TheZiggiz and I like that people are unique its more interesting and it shows the human in them even more. Back then people bottled up their emotions and didn't express them selves which is unhealthy.
@@orangeflipgram6549 Today, more people than ever are committing suicide, so that shows than far fewer are expressing their emotions now, partly because of the oppression of political correctness with its ‘you can’t say that’ and ‘ you’re sacked because some freak has been offended’.
Getting rid of the trolleybuses was one of the most misguided decisions of the immediate postwar years. The great smog of the early 50s should have been a warning of future traffic pollution. Even though much of the smog was caused by smoke from factories mixed with fog.
For everyone querying the date, it’s 1983 that this film was made and broadcast. It says it quite clearly at 16:40 Obviously some footage was from other times, but it is a 1983 documentary.
Bring back that type of London!!! And you see!!! We didn't have mobile phones or Internet those days Yet things did work very very well and if we enjoy what we have today its because of those years!!! I moved to London back in 1999/2000 and I can see how much this city has changed soo much in the last 20 years and not so much in a better way unfortunately.
Funny thing that. I was well into LT and it's buses as a youngster. We moved North in 72 so to me these 80's shots are of a London changed in just ten years, 'new' red phone boxes, roundels on the bus fleet instead of gold London Transport. So, a new picture of the Capital even though its now so dated (!)
Thanks so much for posting this. Sure, it's easy to carp on about the good old days, but honestly, I was there in the 70s and 80s and London then really did have a character and feel to it that doesn't exist any more. But hey-ho, things change.
Same here. I'm not proud of it in the state it's in now. The majority of people born there aren't either. Incredibly sad, but London will be back one day. Unfortunately, probably not in our time.
@@chrispatterson1019 ... London is still a fantastic and beautiful city, the problem is the people that now reside there are not proud of their city, the problem is not that the city has changed but that the people have changed and have no pride in their city anymore. London hasn't gone anywhere so how can it as you say "be back one day" ... Its here as its always been, and is like any big city for ever changing, its peoples rose coloured glasses that are the problem, as they keep one living in the past, that's fine but you have to realise that nothing stays the same and everything progresses and is renewed, that may not always be for the better, but that really comes down to peoples individual perceptions, London will always be a beautiful city and always has been.
London's population in 1983 was roughly 6 million, by 2021 it will reach close to 10 million. roughly 2 million increase alone happened between 2001-2016, That's a short space for a such a rapid increase of people in a dense area, And people wonder why buses are running late, the tube on some busy stations have to close the gates for crowd control, The system isn't designed to cope with this many people.
A fair amount of the increase has been replacing industrial areas (Colindale, Nine Elms,) and new sites - marshy Barking Riverside , Dagenham and Beckton Area along with the amount of higher tower blocks. Plus all the little shops into 3 storey flats.
Thank you for this video. Bought back memories of when I was a kid. I still remember the smell of bus smoke and hot tyres as a toddler. Every tube line train had its own unique smell. Just a few months ago there was a one day special of all the old buses running in East London, that was amazing. I wonder if they could do that with the trains.
For the trains they have quite a few units on heritage railways and all that, the Epping and Ongar Railway in Essex (I think) has some and the Isle of Wight railways had some but were replaced, all the units were transferred to the Isle of Wight steam railway instead, so there’s some there. Not sure if they’re running or in the museum but you can still go in them.
This video's transitions are top-notch for example at 13:20 I also liked the information of course, as well as the filming. Especially, the timing aspect of this scene at 7:52 And finally, the end credits are very well thought out 16:08 All and all very delightfully well-put-together video!
This can't be true, the BBC keep telling us England, particular London has had a large ethnic community since Tudor times and before, the buss drivers don't look ethnic but it's only 1983 we're told they'd all been ethnic for at least 20 years by this time, how could they have built Britain for us?
Such an informative documentary. My Father also worked on the underground as a guard on the district line, till tubes became driver only. But London now isn't the same as the London l grew up in!!. I like so many others squeezed out and forced to move away!!.....................
I used to go to Hainault quite a bit and then get a bus to Chigwell Row , interesting to see the first train to go on the loop there. Loved the old buses and be able to jump on and off at the back , more fun 👍
Agree! The music doesn't help...it's very dated, even for 1983. And the narration is also very old fashioned even for then. It's like watching a video of 1980's London with a narrator that recorded his words 20 years earlier.
I like the simple things,like how people have newspapers under their arms and no one is looking at their phones constantly. (I know there wasn’t mobile phones then)
For the moment I use a normal non-smart phone. Sometimes it can be anoying, because you can't acces information, but sometimes is fine, because I feel free. Worse of all, some people are looking on the screen while driving or riding the bicycle.
@@serenacameron3359 ...Yes, and I also remember men on the tube in the early 1970s in their suits with flared trousers going off to the office, with umbrella hanging over their arm and newspaper tucked up beneath their arm pits. Also many of them had longer hair than the ladies 😂
@@zeeteavathepipe3184 I don’t have a mobile phone now. They stopped selling pay-as-you-go sim cards, plus I wasn’t using it enough. The last time I was in Edinburgh, there was still a few public telephones around, so I might just leave off buying another “smart” phone.
Massive nostalgia for me, I in the 70's rode the cushions of every in service RT and RM that LT operated including the 4 RM expresses that ran out of a unlisted garage in Penge that were hired out for other duties, also did all the Red Arrows when Merlin's and again when they were Leyland National's and then did all the LT Nationals, MCW's etc in late 70's adding their numbers to what became a telephone book of bus numbers lol Even the LC routes like the 410 I rode often and that was a hoary old ride in the old RT's going down Biggin Hill and the panicked expressions of the driver, more fun going up as driver and following traffic invented new swear words as the wheezy old things used to crawl up that incredibly steep hill hehe I do despair at the abject mess made of today's London, it used to be such a lively, friendly place but today seems to be full of people sneering at them with a penny less and fawning at those with a penny more as me nan would have said and she was a bus driver during the war, got a medal too for saving passengers when her bus got bombed.
A very archaic style for 1983...the retiree narrative character probably reflects what was on the minds of the filmmakers...40 years of educational shorts behind them...big library of footage to compile from.
+spencer hardy I produced this film. As we had to rely on the British Transport Films archive for much of the film it seemd sensible to us e the technique of presnting it through the eyes of a retired employee. The script was written by Norman Prouting hwo had supplied scrpits for BTF sinc ethe early 1960s. Sadly Norman died the very day we recored the voice over with Frank Middlemass.
During a ten year period I worked on a number of films for LT and LUL. Those that were publised include: Brill to Baker Street, Sweet Retun, Getting to Grips.
One of the most interesting films I've ever watched! Thank you whoever put that on. I was completely lost in it , my two passions are history and old transport 🥰
It's a bit unsettling to see the original wooden escalators still in use in 1983. In 1987, a wooden escalator at King's Cross caught fire from a discarded cigarette, killing 31 people. As a result, London Transport began replacing all of the wooden escalators in the entire Underground.
I love that the passenger(s) at 11.10 are politely standing aside to LET PEOPLE OFF THE TRAIN FIRST, as any sensible person would. Nowadays you see idiots standing in the way trying to get on first. unfortunately the intelligence of some people has regressed since the 80s rather than advanced.
The CloneX2 ... Its a simple case of people were far better mannered back in the 1970s and 1980s than they are today, people really were far nicer back then, today people just seem to ignore each other, people were far friendlier back then, society wasn't so me, me, me back then.
I don,t want to be judgemental but: some people of third world origin don,t have western manners.....that's why You see from time to time: stampedes at their religious celebrations, where people are killed by mindless idiots with no manners. I myself have opened doors, and gone out of my way to help mainly women of this ilk.......and have received no thanks for my trouble. And judging by footage of oxford street etc: half of London seems to be full of people of this ilk.
This would be a fantastic resource for our Year 6 classes as part of their London & Brighton geography and history topic! Following the changes to transport over the years; how the city grew; links to historical events; building their own map of the underground lines over time; researching what has changed in London transport since 1983 and comparing then to the present day. and spotting some of the famous landmarks.
In 1983 I was five years old. I remember seeing people smoking 🚬 on the trains. I remember the busy interchange at a station that looked like the central Line with my mum. A man got off and his cigarette burnt my hand. The older underground trains smelt a certain way and the seats were more comfortable. Back then we were paying cash 💰 fares
It's not long ago the old London. I feel the change sped up in mid 90s onwards. As a child I just about remember the old London when visiting around 1992
the camera quality even for 1983 seems like the film was made in 50s or early 60s only that Jubilee line poster and the dot matrix gave me an idea that this is the 80s
Thank God there's Cardiff and the Country side Left because London has been Stripped of its History my family is from Dartford and Kensington ,Made there way to USA in 1860 only a few Remain ,To the British people I Say This Never give up the Fight Never Ever give up the fight ,I have and always Admired your Country
That was London's answer to the RE,s what we had in the west country especially Bristol we had REs in Stroud I think that Luton had them as well ether so it is an eastern town just 25 miles north of London they can really shift
Red Rover tickets, care free days of jumping on and off those wonderful Routemaster buses ... they were the days, when you would get told off by the conductor for hanging out the side of the bus gripping the handle, and then once you got off shouting a mouthful of abuse at them ... wonderful forgotten insults such as Tosser, Wanker, old git, and worse, oh how those conductors must have just loved us kids 🙂
This time machine thing reminds of a story I heard about a man in B and Q .. Man : "Excuse me, do you still have any of those paints that were on special offer ?" Assistant : "I'll go and look." ( Is gone for 15 minutes ). "No, sorry, sold out. We had loads last week." Man : "Well, that's useful information, isn't it ? Do you have a time machine ?" Assistant : "I'll go and look." Man ( Lunges at him ).
I moved to London in 1981, it was fabulous. It was also the year of the first race riots if I recall, so not all harmony. Upon balance I still prefer London then. Routemaster buses, by far better!
