Margaret Thatcher was known as "Thatcher the milk snatcher", from April 1971 when, in her post in Ted Heath's conservative government (elected in August 1970), as secretary for Education and Science, she put forward a bill to save the government money by taking away free milk in schools for 7-11-year-olds. She argued that ending free milk for all but nursery school kids would free up money to spend on other areas of education like new buildings. At the time, free milk for school kids cost £14 million a year-twice as much as was spent on buying school books. In a full year, the savings on milk would be about £9 million. School dinner prices were raised to 12 new pence in April 1971 also. The bill was passed on 14th June 1971 and the cut was implemented in the summer of 1972, although many Local Education Authorities continued to provide free milk. From 1977, LEAs received a subsidy from the EEC for free milk provision. Free milk in UK schools began in earnest from 1946 under Clement Attlee's post-war Labour government. Free school milk, (a third of a pint in specially made glass bottles), was provided for pupils up to the age of 18, to help stave off malnutrition and rickets. By 1968, Harold Wilson's Labour government restricted free milk to school pupils under 12.
Referring to one of the rounded-up anarchists-a middle aged woman-Viv (Geff Francis) says, "She's not exactly Anarchy in the U.K." Chris (Marshall Lancaster) replies by saying she has been, "arrested at Greenham Common. She's got a mural of Wedgie Benn, knitted." RAF Greenham Common airforce base became the focus of a permanent women's peace camp in 1981 as a protest against the deployment of strategic nuclear weapons, cruise missiles, at the base in England. On the 1st April 1983, approximately 70,000 women protesters formed a 14-mile human chain from Greenham airforce base to the ordinance factory in Burghfield in Aldermaston. In December 1983, another encircling of the base occured, this time with approximately 50,000 women attending. Sections of the fence were cut and many arrests were made. Anthony Wedgewood Benn, born into the aristocracy and usually referred to as Wedgie Benn during the 60s and 70s, was a radical left-wing labour MP, now more usually referred to as Tony Benn. "Anarchy in the U.K." was a single by UK punk band Sex Pistols, released in 1976 by EMI records in the UK, and later in the late 70s and early 80s was distributed as a 12-inch single on Barclay records, a french label via Rough Trade and HMV record stores in the UK.
On her desk, Shaz (Montserrat Lombard) has a Yorkie bar and a Wispa bar, Yorkie bars were first sold in 1976 and advertised as being for men. During the Falklands War, they were included in army provisions with the line, "Not for civvies" and an image of stick woman with a handbag with a red line through it. "Not for girls" was one of the later advertising tags. Wispa bars first appeared nationally in the UK in 1983, after a trial distribution run in north east England in 1981.
Gene (Philip Glenister) says "Siamese twins in Bostik", referring to the glue marketed under the name Bostik, by the Bostik company.
Gene (Philip Glenister) explains that Green Hill army barracks and a good friend of Margaret Thatcher's have been fire-bombed. There is no Green Hill army barracks in London, but there is a town of Green Hill west of Margaret Thatcher's birth place of Grantham in Lincolnshire, which has a territorial army barracks, Bailey Barracks, located on Green Hill Parkway, Sheffield on the A52. The name of Maggie's friend seen on the board in CID is Tim Rothwell. Rothwell is a northern town that in 1379 was one of the first to have a Poll Tax imposed. The conservative government brought in a modern poll tax in 1983 and one of those who went to court to oppose it was Arthur Pendragon who had changed his name by deed poll from John Timothy Rothwell.