22 pictures of Wales in the 1980s

The Eighties was a difficult time for Wales - it marked a decade that saw the heavy industry that the nation depended on replaced by unemployment and urban decay. Margaret Thatcher was in power and it could be argued her decision to close the coal mines is still having an impact today.

But against the backdrop of economic turmoil, there was much to celebrate too. It was, after all, a time when you could get either a Freddo or a litre of petrol for less than 10p.

The decade kicked off with workers at British Steel Corporation going on strike over pay and Plaid Cymru leader Gwynfor Evans announcing his intention to go on hunger strike in protest against the government's failure to honour its promise of a fourth Welsh-language television channel. The government backed down a few weeks before Evans's deadline.

The early eighties saw the first phase of the St David's Shopping Centre in Cardiff open to the public and the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul's Cathedral in London. More than 100,000 people gathered in Pontcanna Fields, Cardiff, to welcome Pope John Paul II on the first-ever papal visit to Wales while in 1982, 32 men from the Welsh Guards were killed when the Sir Galahad burned during the Falklands War.

The UK miners' strike formally ended in 1985 and in 1987. Four people were killed in the Glanrhyd Bridge collapse, when a train fell into the swollen River Tywi as a result of the flooding that affected many parts of Wales.

The late eighties saw the brutal murder of Lynette White in her Cardiff flat and the first ever Hay Festival of literature in Hay-on-Wye.

Wales in the eighties was certainly not a dull place to be.