The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - How Greed and the 1980s Reshaped the World

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

Those of a certain vintage might remember Michael Douglas's iconic line from the Oliver Stone film "Wall Street." Douglas who played Gordon Gekko, said "greed is good," and essentially represented the spirit of the 1980s. But it was also a time of resistance, creativity, and hope, according to our next guest. Retiring NDP MP Charlie Angus documents it all in his new book, "Dangerous Memory: Coming of Age in the Decade of Greed."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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a TVO original podcast. Follow and listen wherever you get your podcasts. Those of a certain vintage might remember Michael Douglas's iconic line from the Oliver Stone film, Wall Street. Douglas played Gordon Gekko, said, greed is good, and essentially represented the spirit of the 1980s.

But it was also a time of resistance, creativity, and hope, according to our next guest. Timmons James Bay MP Charlie Angus documents it all in his new book. It's called Dangerous Memory, Coming of Age in the Decade of Greed. And we're pleased that it brings Charlie back to our studio today.

Good to see you again. Well, thanks so much for having me and talking about the book. Let's start with a quote from the book, shall we? Sheldon Osmond, our director, bring up this quote if you would. Whether it's the economy and rising labor unrest or nuclear brinkmanship and a new Cold War,

the 2020s feel like an 80s redux. The obsession with the 80s isn't new. There has long been a superficial fixation on the era. All right, let's start there. Why? It's interesting. I think all of us and people who lived through the 80s, we have this sort of cultural memory of big hair and those earworm songs that we just can't get out

of our heads and the parachute pants. But when you start thinking about it, I mean, this was an era that led to so many of the issues we're facing now. The climate crisis that really came to a head in the 80s, where something could have been done about it. The economic crisis that was launched,

I call it Operation Break, the working class, that literally destroyed the whole path of progress from the Second World War on that led to so much people losing their pensions people living precarious jobs the housing crisis that we're seeing now these were all decisions that were launched in the 80s and of course the power of big data that you know has led to the dystopian disinformation age when we were supposed to be all freed by that

so all these things are happening in the 80s and yet in our cultural memory it's this fun and simple time. I argue it was a much darker time but then having said that it was also a time where people did incredible acts that changed the world. The ending of apartheid, the Berlin Wall fell without a shot being fired. People have to remember how profound it was that people took to the streets to change the world for the better at that time. I do remember though Ronald Reagan had just been elected president and one of the first things he did was to fire all the air traffic controllers who conducted an illegal strike. What do you think that did to working people's aspirations at

the time? The Ronald Reagan firing the air traffic controllers was a signal what had happened initially was the Federal Reserve had decided to massively increase Interest rates so again 80s redux today But I mean they ramped them up to 18 and then 21 percent and it was actually it wasn't just about beating inflation It was it was a stated objective to beat the American working class and to believe, and the American middle class into believing they weren't going to have continually rising values in wages. And then when Reagan fired those air traffic controllers,

it sent a signal across the United States and Canada to start going after the union wages, the benefits, the pensions, the healthcare, all the things that had built the modern middle class came under attack. And that attack has never really ended. They gave him the news though, Charlie. I mean, it was an illegal strike and he warned them, if you conduct this illegal strike, we're going to fire you. And they did and he did.

Well, the thing was, is he gave them 48 hours notice I mean nobody had ever done anything like that I mean we have to go back to the days of robber baron capitalism or something like that was done and And it was about a signal and after that we saw a massive full-on assault on union wages And it happened in Canada, but there was more signs of there was interesting and I write about the resistance in Canada So what you have in the United States at the beginning of 1980s? But there was more signs of, there was interesting, and I write about the resistance in Canada. So what you have in the United States, at the beginning of 1980s, you have about 25%

of the workforce unionized with good pension plans, with vacations. A single parent could send their kids to university. Well, where does that exist now? Now today, the unionized rates in the United States are about 6% That's lower than it was during the age of the robber barons in Canada There was more resistance and I write about people like Bob White and and and how's the former the former head of the Canadian? Not a lot of workers. Yeah, and and the auto workers in Canada were very militant at that time and we push back

But we did lose a lot of jobs. We had the largest job losses since the Depression at the beginning of the 1980s and yet this was a manufactured crisis. This wasn't something like the Depression. This was literally cooked up by the Federal Reserve, by people like Reagan. It was about breaking the working class. On balance, I certainly remember the 80 class. On balance, I mean, I certainly remember the 80s. AIDS, Chernobyl, which was a horrific disaster, nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union,

the threats to nuclear war, certainly the Cold War was at a peak then. But you do say in the book, creativity, hope, community organizing, resistance, that kind of thing. And yet you call it the decade of greed. Why the decade of greed? It's fascinating because that's what the decade has been called.

It's been called, I think, first maybe Time magazine coined it. And the famous Gordon Gekko, greed is good from the Wall Street movie. This is the era when, they said Mulrooney was the era of Jaguars in condos and Reagan unleashing, you know, stripping all the protections that were in place for banking and financial sector. So people suddenly started to make enormous amounts of money while other people started

to fall through the cracks in a significant way. But in terms of the resistance and in terms of the creativity, you know, I write a lot about Toronto in the early 1980s. I mean, this was a dynamic city where rents were cheap. And, you know, if you went to university, you didn't have to worry about debt so much because if you dropped out of a course, well, whatever, you get a summer job and you could pay for it.

So it was this incredible moment of people, like I write about the music scene, the art scenes, because people could afford to take chances. I see a young generation and you know my daughters have had to leave Toronto people who've got good middle-class jobs who can't afford to live here and almost anywhere that that level of economic pressure well where did that begin so I start tracing through the book a lot of these the crisis that we're living today, back to these origin moments, and so many of them are in the 1980s.

I do wonder though, because I'm trying to imagine if one of your daughters had come up to you and said, "'Dad, I'm gonna quit high school, "'I'm gonna join a punk band, "'I'm gonna try and make it as a musician,' "'and basically live hand to mouth for a long time,' "'and I'm wondering what your response to that would have been.

Because that's what you did. Yeah, and I write about us quitting school and going on the road and the lessons that we learned. If my daughter said that to me today, I'd beg her not to. But I don't think she would, because a young generation is worried about their future. They're worried about their pensions. They're worried about whether or not they're going to have a job. They're worried about their pensions. They're worried about whether or not they're gonna have a job. They're

worried about their levels of student debt. They're worried about the planet being in crisis, you know, from the climate fires and what we've been seeing. And it's one of the reasons I wrote the book, because I was talking to some young people once and they said to me, well you don't know what it's like to live in a world that has no future. And I suddenly thought, I remember being 18 and watching the dangerous escalation in the nuclear arms race. I mean, we almost lost the planet a couple of times.

And I write about it. 1983, everyone remembers the Cuban Missile Crisis. They don't remember the fact that a couple of times over the fall of 1983, the world almost blew up. And it didn't. And it didn't. And it didn't because so many people just took to the streets, ordinary people, mothers, young activists.

They didn't know what else to do. And I think that that's a really powerful lesson for today, is that we are facing planetary crisis. And we can't let these things just disintegrate around us because the stakes are so high. Let me follow up on that angle though. I take your point and you make a compelling case that the peace movement of the day and people going into the streets and saying to Ronald Reagan we don't want you to put those missiles in Germany you know

facing the Soviet Union as much as you don't like the Soviet Union. What I didn't see in the book, and I wonder whether you're prepared to acknowledge it, was that a Reagan-esque peace through strength strategy was also part of the mix. It wasn't just Gorbachev's being prepared not to get into an endless arms race that he knew he couldn't win. But peace through strength at the end of the day had a role to play in this as well would you acknowledge that no absolutely not I mean what what made Reagan decide to stop the arms race was he saw TV movie made for TV movie you probably say that I watched it too we

all do I mean the movie came out in the day after the day after it came out actually at a moment so that it's it's an accidental confrontation in Eastern The movie came out in 1980. What was it called? The Day After. The Day After. It came out actually at a moment. So it's an accidental confrontation in Eastern Europe that leads to a nuclear holocaust. That movie was playing as that scene was actually starting to play out in Eastern Europe. Everybody dies in the end of the movie. It's horrific. Yeah.

And it shocked everybody, but that movie was shown to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President, which is amazing. A made-for-TV movie. And I think it really shook Reagan up. And as for Gorbachev, what he said made him go to Reykjavik to begin the peace process was he was so inspired by the young women who went to Greenham Common military base. And I remember back in the 80s, they were being laughed at and ridiculed as these crazy women who formed these massive 30,000 and 70,000 people women gatherings outside the military bases. And Gorbachev said that it was the determination

of those women that made him think there were people on the other side that he could negotiate with. So I think in the end, the peace through strength, that's been the big argument, but it was actually ordinary people. And I do write about in East Germany, like the fascinating role of the punk rock movement that was being beaten and attacked by the Stasi, getting involved with the Lutheran

church protecting the punks in East Germany and then starting to form this resistance to the communist state. There's a lot of hidden histories and that's why dangerous memories that aren't told about those times. So I try and go down some of those rabbit holes to sort of say there were a lot of other really interesting things that we just never got taught. Did you think though that when you were playing the punk music back in the day that you were, that you were somehow contributing to a movement which, taken to its logical extension,

would have a positive impact on the world. I think one of the things that was really powerful about the 80s was you felt like things mattered. And so one big thing was apartheid. And I mean, there was no sitting on the sidelines. And the role of artists and musicians at that time And you know Bob Geldof's come in for a lot of criticism, you know recently over we are the world, but that was a staggering Gathering of people to raise money to respond to the to the horrific Ethiopian crisis

the the apartheid the boycotts had a huge impact. And so we were a young band, you know, we were nobodies. We were nominated for an award in Toronto. This is Le Tronje. Le Tronje, our punk band. And then we found out that the sponsors had ties in South Africa and we didn't go to this awards dinner that probably screwed our career in a big way. But that's the way it seemed. It seemed like you had to take sides in the 80s.

And I think that in an age where we feel cynical and everybody's on doom scrolling, a lot of artists actually stepped up and that did make a difference. How much of a difference? I don't know, but it inspired people to feel that they could make a difference. In your view, what was the most politically influential group of the time?

Well, there was... I think there were so many. I think in the United States, Bruce Springsteen was certainly a voice for, you know, writing about what was happening to the American working class, politically the clash, you know, in England. We played with the Dead Kennedys, but that was a hellhole show. And we almost got killed playing with the Dead Kennedys. But again, a lesson from that was like, we also saw the rise of fascism. And I'm not saying the Dead Kennedys were fascist, but there was a lot of like, what we're seeing now, you know, Proud Boys, a lot of this sort of race anger.

Music was used as a form of resistance to bring people together, to bring people across party lines or across racial lines. And in Toronto, the Rock Against Racism movement played a huge role in de-escalating racial tension at a time when there was a lot of racial tension. And we forget that Toronto in the 80s did have a lot of racial tension at a time when there was a lot of racial tension. And we forget that Toronto in the 80s did have a lot of racial tension. We forget the horrific violence against the gay community that was almost normalized. And I write about AIDS and you know, okay, I was a straight Catholic kid. I didn't know a lot about what was happening then. But those forms of resistance changed things forever. And the first Toronto Pride was an act of resistance

against local cops. And now it's like one of the biggest festivals in North America. So there are incredible stories that we can learn from. But there are also lessons we've got to learn not to repeat. You mentioned the biggest groups of the time, the most influential groups. What about a song?

What was the most influential song slash anthem of the 80s? Well I actually did, I did a my top 40 Charlie Angus Dangerous, remember you can check it out on Spotify, and I picked the number one song. It was 99 Luft Balloons by Nina, which is such a great dance song, but I picked that song because the whole idea of these 99 balloons crossing over into Russia into Russian territory and they see it on the radar screen and it causes this nuclear explosion. That scene was actually playing out when that song was all over the radio. So I said talk about prescient. Everybody's dancing in the clubs to 99 Luftballoons as that scene was actually almost playing out. You have to read the book to 99 Luft Balloons as that scene was actually almost playing out.

You have to read the book to know how it almost played out. But again, it's a fascinating thing about the 80s. So much of the politics, so much of the fears, so much of the uncertainties were in the music. They were in the arts. And it was a reflection of that time. Now they still play Imagine on New Year's Eve in Times Square by John Lennon all these years later, whatever it is. How many years? I guess he wrote that in 1980, something like that.

So here we are almost half a century later, and they're still playing it. Did that make your top 40 list? No, what I did was just starting over was the last song John Lennon did just before he was assassinated. And again, John Lennon did just before he was assassinated. And again John Lennon's assassination I think in a sense kicked the 80s off. Suddenly we were cut adrift.

But one of the things we talked a bit earlier about Chernobyl, things like Chernobyl, the meltdown that happened there, we are seeing the ghosts of the 1980s being played out in the Ukraine war. I mean, Putin, the very first thing he did when he invaded Ukraine was he drove his tank straight to Chernobyl, what was on the road. But I mean, Chernobyl brought the Soviet Union down. The anger over what had happened in that nuclear catastrophe, The role Mikhail Gorbachev was trying to do glass knot in openness, but they couldn't cover up the devastating impacts. And that led to, was a key element of Ukraine becoming independent.

And now we're seeing, like with Putin and the war, and talk of a rising missile crisis now that's happening between the United States and Europe and Ukraine. We're going back into these dark ghosts of the 80s and I think we gotta be paying attention to how dangerous that is. I want to play you 20 seconds of a song that you may remember, had something to say about life in this country back in the day. Sheldon, want to roll this please? broke the treaty when the buffalo failed fence the land for the sepia rail

there's four horses, four horses at the great divide now for those who are listening on podcast and did not see that clip that's Charlie Angus singing out in a field somewhere. In the Capelle Valley in Saskatchewan. There you go. Four Horses is the name of the song. What's that song about?

That song is about how the treaty that was signed out in the Capelle Valley that turned over the land to the Canadian state. And the promise was because the Cree and the Blackfoot knew the buffalo were disappearing. And that they would share the land. And what Canada did was when the buffalo failed, they cut the food off and starved them. And took the land to put the railway through. You know that that's, I know that's what the song's about. And I know you've got that graphic up right off the top.

Alleging that Sir John A. MacDonald purposefully starved the indigenous people of the day. You know there is great scholarly controversy about that allegation. Well, certainly. But many of the people who were involved in that starvation campaign did pretty darn well historically. And I certainly tell people they should

read Clearing the Plains by James Dashuk. It's a powerful book but these are histories we need to confront and I think we are confronting them and I will say again in a positive sense is that these were things we were never taught in school. I mean the punk club that we used to play the edge in Toronto our favorite place was the home of Edgerton Ryerson who's you know had a huge had a huge role in the residential schools, and we didn't know those histories. He also created the first free public school system in the province of Ontario. Yes. And I'm just saying, both sides of the argument?

But I think we never got to the other side of the argument. We never heard the Indigenous story. We never heard about the starvation. We never heard about Poundmaker and the mass hanging of Braves, who had just come to the fort to get food. And they sent the army against them. And there would have been a battle much worse for white soldiers than the little bighorn Poundmaker

did not. Didn't let the soldiers die. We never learned any of those stories. So sometimes songs, and so I wrote that in Four Horses, this is our history, and we need to confront it. That is one of the reasons why we wanted to bring that up, because you having done both, I'm curious as to what you think actually moves people more, a great political speech

or a great political song? That's a really good question. Here's my take on it, is that people know a song's bogus in the first 30 seconds. And that's why songs have to be truthful. And so you know if a song is just blah, but songs can change things. I come from the Irish-Scottish tradition.

Our history was taught to us in songs. We know all about the profidity of the English during the famine because of those songs. And I think speeches can do a great deal as well. But I think when we live in the world of slogans and we live in the world of message box, we don't end up with great speeches. So a great song and a great speech, I think,

has to come from the heart. You remember the Dixie Chicks were famously told, you know, shut up and sing. Is there too much politicking and singing these days? I don't hear enough. If you know where it is, I will find it out. But I think songs, again, it was the power in the 80s. I think songs, there was amazing, crazy, dumb dance

earworms. And I love them all. But there were also amazing songs. You know, songs about the nuclear holocaust that we were fearing, songs about insecurity, songs about the frightening state of the world. They were all there, and some of them just had great dance beats. But we liked those, and they become part of our cultural landscape.

And we need that cultural landscape. So for me, with the book, was to try and look at the 80s through a perspective of a place a place that I knew which was Toronto but how did how did that how did all that come together and how did we lose some of those important things as well and how do we restore it is those are those are fundamental historical but political and also cultural questions. We started with a quote, so let's end with a quote. Here's another one from the book.

Sheldon, if you would bring this up, and I'll read out loud for those listening on podcast. There is a hell of a lot of work to do now, writes Charlie Angus. Some of that work will need to be systemic and political, but there is work that can be done in our communities in building up our own fragile relationships and local ecosystems.

Call it climate mutual aid. Call it punk rock time. And so yes, I am full of both dread and hope. What's the most hopeful lesson you took from the 1980s that could be helpful to us today? I think is that when you look at something as big as the planet blowing up and not knowing how a single person could make change, if enough single persons come together change starts to happen. And that's what I try and write about in the book is that's my hope is that things seem monolithic and they

seem impossible until suddenly they're not. But they only become not impossible if we step up. And so my mutual aid is I think we need to rebuild communities. We need to start reaching out. We got to get off doom scrolling. We live on doom scrolling. We have to rewire our brains to be more open to just going to a public meeting. Does anyone go to public meetings anymore? Well, that's what we used to do, right? Go meet someone, go talk to someone.

We have to start rebuilding community because I think we let too much of that slip. Dangerous memory. Coming of age in the decade of greed is Charlie Angus' latest contribution to the library shelves and presumably some bookshelves in people's homes as well. And we thank you for coming into TVO tonight

and talking about it. Thank you so much.