Over 2020 and into 2021, I’ve been working on a book about protest music of the 2010s against austerity, and you can read extracts here. Part of this has made me look to the past and the protest music of the 1980s. As this week seems the anniversary of Thatcher’s death, here’s an edited extract:
On April 8th 2013, Baroness Thatcher passed away. Few other 20th century British figures have spearheaded such societal changes as Thatcher, and caused so much harm through destructive policies. Thatcherism's upheaval of the welfare state, demonisation and breaking of working class communities, de-regulation of the markets created a polarised and unrepentant response from musicians. You can find a Spotify plealist here.
Thatcher is overtly the subject of songs by The Beat (‘Stand Down Margaret’), Macka B (‘Get Rid Of Maggie’), Ewan McColl (‘The Grocer’), Morrissey (‘Margaret on the Guillotine’), UB40 (‘Madame Medusa’) and The Exploited (‘Maggie’) to name but a few. Her figure looms across the music of the era, Sinéad O’Connor’s ‘Black Boys on Mopeds’ opens with the line “Margaret Thatcher on TV”, whilst Pink Floyd refer to “Maggie” multiple times throughout their 1983 album The Final Cut.
In 1985, The Men They Couldn’t Hang released ‘Ironmasters’, which reached number 11 in the UK singles charts. Their record label insisted the release remove the line "and oh, that iron bastard, she still gets her way," a knowing reference to Thatcher as the Iron Lady. The Blow Monkeys’ 1987 album was dedicated to Thatcher, titled She Was Only a Grocer's Daughter and featured jibing songs like ‘The Grantham Grizzler’. Though intended as a protest against her, Thatcher was always proud of her middle class origins. During the election, the Blow Monkeys released a blue-eyed soul duet with Curtis Mayfield called ‘(Celebrate) The Day After You’, which was too political for the BBC to play during a general election and was banned. Crass’ 1982 anti-war single ‘How Does It Feel’ asked Thatcher “How does it feel to be the mother of a thousand dead?” Tory MP Timothy Eggar blustered on LBC Radio that the song went “beyond the acceptable bounds of freedom of speech, being the most vicious, scurrilous and obscene record that has ever been produced.” I guess by modern standards, he wanted to ‘cancel’ Crass.
‘Maggie Maggie Maggie / Out Out Out' was a familiar chant throughout the decade, and immortalised in song by The Larks, which was played by John Peel on his roadshows. On the sleeve notes to their 1986 debut album, The Communards dedicated their song ‘Reprise’ to Thatcher. ‘She’ll Have To Go’ by pop chart-toppers Simply Red declares “breaking our backs with slurs / And taking our tax for murdering / The only thing I know / She’ll have to go.” Elvis Costello goes further: on his cutting ‘Tramp The Dirt Down’, he hopes he’ll live on so that “when they finally put you in the ground / I'll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down.”
Various bands, artists and comedians were part of Red Wedge, a collective hosting gigs and events from 1985-1990, primarily to oust the Tories in the 1987 election (pictured above). Author and radio presenter Stuart Maconie says that Thatcher‘s personality was encapsulated in the ideology Thatcherism, like Reagan’s Reaganomics. No one ever called it Nixonomics or Callahanism. So Thatcher “became more than just a person, she became sort of a shorthand for the ruthlessness, callousness, the disregard for working people.” Speaking to website NPR the week of her death, Maconie goes on to to say:
"It wasn't just a political response; it was a kind of gut emotional response. In the north of England, the effects of Thatcherism were quite visible: Factories closed down, mills closed down, mines closed down, and people were put out of work. And of course, you've got to argue, she was an easy person to become a figurehead. She even looked like she should be on the prow of a ship."
Since the rumbling of alternative pop music since the late 1950s, a tribal and scene-based culture had been brewing across the generations. Just look at The Young Ones, where a metalhead, a punk and a hippie squabble. Retrospect films and TV like This Is England show the power of subcultures defining themselves, and being defined by their music. Tracey Thorn of Marine Girls and Everything But The Girl wrote in her memoir: “politicisation seemed to be the norm, and would continue to do so well into the 1980s. Even as musical styles changed, and many of the old punk battles were left behind, for those of my age the ideals of the late 1970s remained a driving force.”
By the 1980s, a cultivation of colourful and vibrant network of punk, synth-pop, dub, post-punk, new wave, Oi!, power pop, goth, metal, psychobilly, ska genres danced alongside fashion styles and cultures like New Romantics, Mod and Ted revivalists, skinheads, casuals, rude boys and the adjacent LGBTQ+ scenes and the Rastafarian religious and cultural movement. With such a packed repertoire of scenes and styles challenging mainstream perceptions, this period of time was rife for an explosion of political music.
Thatcher was eventually defeated when the Poll Tax legislation was met with riots and resistance. Over 40 people collaborated on Punk Aide’s 1989 compilations Axe The Tax, Can’t Pay Won’t Pay and Fuck The Poll Tax. Oi Polloi and Chumbawamba released and toured an EP called Smash the Poll Tax. Crossover thrash punks The Exploited released ‘Don’t Pay the Poll Tax’ in 1990, featuring clips from news reports on the Poll Tax Riots that same year.
Thatcher and her government became the focal intersection for these movements. Whilst bands and their fans come through different routes, they find themselves arriving at the same destination. For example, Madness and The Specials criticise the Tories on ‘Blue Skinned Beast’ and ‘Maggie’s Farm’ respectively, inspired by the upstart rude boy style of Jamacian ska. Meanwhile Scottish band The Corries are part of a legacy of rebellious celtic working class folk music. But whatever the roots of the struggle, these genres, styles and cultural communities all found a common enemy in Thatcher.
Ed Vaizey, Conservative MP between 2005 to 2019, said: “It’s become a cliché, but Thatcher was one of those Marmite figures – you either loved her or you hated her. Even those who hated her had to acknowledge that she was an iconic figure, and as such she became a lightning rod for dissent.”
This unity against Thatcher was a reflection of her own, sweeping antagonism towards British culture. Her biographer John Campbell wrote: “to fuel the aggression that drove her career she had to find new antagonists all the time to be successively demonised, confronted and defeated… She viewed the world through Manichaean spectacles as a battleground of opposed forces - good and evil, freedom and tyranny, us against them.”
And this is exactly the energy that is being invoked right back at Thatcher. These are songs which hold no punches. They are often bitter and brash, cutting straight to the point and using personal insults as a way to attack the broader policies and structures of Thatcherism. Speaking to author and journalist Dorian Lynsky, Crass’ Penny Rimbaud said: "I think Thatcher was an absolute fairy godmother. Christ, you're an anarchist band trying to complain about the workings of capitalist society and you get someone like Thatcher. What a joy!"
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