In 1980 the first meeting of the UK-based Language Testing Forum was held in Lancaster. In 2010, 30 years later, the annual meeting celebrated that first meeting, basing the discussions, as in 1980, on three seminal papers: on the structure of language ability, on communicative language testing, and on testing Languages for Specific Purposes. Following the 1980 meeting, Charles Alderson and Arthur Hughes edited the three papers along with the proceedings of the conference as Issues in Language Testing 1981: ELT Documents: London: the British Council. I was asked to give the keynote address at the 2010 meeting, reflecting on the language testing situation in 1980.