Leeds nostalgia: What made the headlines in March 1988? Reagan, Branson and Robocop

This week in 1988, the headlines were all about overcrowding in prisons (with a strike by prison officers) and saving the NHS. Meanwhile, schools didn't have enough money and council tax bills were going up.
U.S. President Ronald Reagan, left, and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev stand alone during their impromptu walk in Red Square in Moscow, USSR, Tuesday, May 31, 1988.  In the background is St. Basil's Cathedral. Reagan, the cheerful crusader who devoted his presidency to winning the Cold War, trying to scale back government and making people believe it was ``morning again in America,'' died Saturday, June 5, 2004, after a long twilight struggle with Alzheimer's disease. He was 93.  (AP Photo/Ira Schwartz)U.S. President Ronald Reagan, left, and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev stand alone during their impromptu walk in Red Square in Moscow, USSR, Tuesday, May 31, 1988.  In the background is St. Basil's Cathedral. Reagan, the cheerful crusader who devoted his presidency to winning the Cold War, trying to scale back government and making people believe it was ``morning again in America,'' died Saturday, June 5, 2004, after a long twilight struggle with Alzheimer's disease. He was 93.  (AP Photo/Ira Schwartz)
U.S. President Ronald Reagan, left, and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev stand alone during their impromptu walk in Red Square in Moscow, USSR, Tuesday, May 31, 1988. In the background is St. Basil's Cathedral. Reagan, the cheerful crusader who devoted his presidency to winning the Cold War, trying to scale back government and making people believe it was ``morning again in America,'' died Saturday, June 5, 2004, after a long twilight struggle with Alzheimer's disease. He was 93. (AP Photo/Ira Schwartz)

Change the year and the newspapers might well have been published this week, as many of the issues remained the same.

Of course, 1988 was still the decade of denim, shoulder pads and the continued evolution of attitudes toward gay people, who were in the headlines because of the AIDS epidemic.

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It was an era defined by films like Robocop (‘part man, part machine, all cop’), The Last Emperor, Three Men & A Baby, the story of, well, three men and a baby… except that they were fish out of water, although they learned to swim by the end. There was also Dragnet, Fatal Attraction and a film called Nuts, starring Barbra Streisand, Richard Dreyfuss, in a tale about a high class call girl who fights her case in court rather than be declared mentally incompetent.

Ronald Reagan was President of the United States of America and Richard Branson was still a young man.