Margaret Thatcher: the villain of political pop

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Margaret Thatcher: the villain of political pop
Punk had sharpened its claws, and by the time Margaret Thatcher took power a generation of musicians was ready to pounce


(Guardian UK) Protest songs thrive on combat. Complicated policy details may cause the songwriter's pen to freeze but larger-than-life politicians who polarise opinion enable the ink to flow. It is striking that, despite all the frustration and ferment of the punk era, nobody wrote a memorable song about Jim Callaghan. But to musicians on the left Margaret Thatcher was an irresistible super-villain who threw all the conflicts of the time into sharp relief. Penny Rimbaud of anarcho-punk radicals Crass once told me: "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!"

Never before had a British prime minister so explicitly identified certain sectors of society as enemies — trade unionists, socialists, liberals — and so diligently set out to crush them. Thatcher's infamous description of Arthur Scargill's miners as "the enemy within" (the Argentinian dictator General Galtieri being the enemy without) spoke volumes about her need for foes and this Manichean outlook cut both ways, as did the strength of her personality. The single word "Thatcher", said with appropriate contempt, handily encapsulated everything the 1980s left opposed.

Even before Thatcher entered Number 10 she was being personally singled out. "Maggi Tatcha on di go wid a racist show," intoned Linton Kwesi Johnson in 1978's It Dread Inna Inglan. Joe Strummer originally wanted to illustrate the Clash's The Cost of Living EP, released on election day 1979, with a collage including Thatcher's face and a swastika. Just a year into office and the Beat were singing Stand Down Margaret ("please," they added politely).

The reason is that bands that hated Thatcherism didn't need time to warm up. Steeled and educated by punk, they were already battle-ready. As Tracey Thorn writes in her memoir Bedsit Disco Queen, "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." Contrary to the clip-show version of the 1980s, all yuppies, Princess Di haircuts and Duran Duran, it was the heyday of political pop, and the leftwing counterculture in general. They already had the values and now they had the villain. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2013/apr/08/margaret-thatcher-pop-rock-music