Posted on 04/23/2013 5:35:49 AM PDT by MichCapCon
The 1980s were a heady time for political and cultural junkies. If the 1960s were an era where the distinctions between the two were blurred, the 1980s obliterated them completely.
Perhaps no public figure prior to President George W. Bush was vilified more by pop musicians than Margaret Thatcher. British musician piled on mercilessly from Elvis Costello and Billy Bragg to The Style Council, Genesis and Robert Wyatt.
Let’s hope the Iron Lady rests finally in well-deserved peace. She, most assuredly, suffered more than her fair share of the brickbats hurled by Britain’s youth in her day.
What did this woman do to incur the three-chord wrath and adenoidal snarling of Britain’s youth? There was the British invasion of the Falkland Islands certainly. But there was also the pervasiveness of her economic message, which asserted that government could not and should not be all things to all people.
Messages such as that have a tendency to rankle the kids, especially those who live on the dole at least until their musical abilities bump them into an exorbitant tax bracket. Any student of culture observing the Britain of the 1970s and 1980s could understand that the former empire was choking on its adoption of big-government solutions.
Threatening the status quo that had depleted individual industriousness by reining in spending and striking coal miners was a necessary if unpopular decision. And yet Prime Minister Thatcher did just that without maligning her detractors in Parliament or the music industry.
For example, when told by Tom Hibbert in a 1987 “Smash Hits” interview that Live Aid organizer and erstwhile Boomtown Rat Bob Geldof was rude to her, Thatcher demurred: "Was he rude to me? I met him. He wasn’t rude to me. We did talk. Obviously he came up and talked to me about the things that most interested him. But what fascinated me was this: it was not ‘why doesn’t the government give more?’ but ‘what can I do as a person?’ That was his approach.”
What a wonderful lesson for Sir Bob and everyone else! Thatcher reminded him that it’s better for individuals to select their charitable causes, including drought and starvation in Ethiopia. The Prime Minister continued:
And after all, if government took so much away from young people that they hadn’t anything left to give, that wouldn’t be much of a life. That would be government substituting their judgment for what people want to do with their own money and that’s always been my point. If you want to take everything away from people in taxes, it’s because you don’t trust them. Well, I do, and I think they should have some say. Of course we have to have enough for defence, for law and order, for social services, but it’s people’s earnings and if you left them with nothing with which to give themselves, you’d have a very dull society. And a wrong society. Yes, wrong. Wrong! If government says the money you earn is first mine and I’ll decide only what you should have left, I would say that would be… wrong. Responding to Hibbert’s question about her reaction to the nickname “Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher” for a suggestion she made as Britain’s Education Minister that households purchase their own milk, she responded:
Yes, I remember that, too, and it seemed to me one thing that people could purchase — milk for their own children. The important thing is for the state to do things which the state can do but to leave people with money to do things themselves. Another issue Thatcher understood perhaps even greater than her musical detractors was the importance of freedom for entertainers, their art and commerce in general. She told Hibbert:
If people’s talents are to develop to their fullest ability, they must have the freedom to do that, so good luck to your pop groups. They do very well for us in exports — they do a fantastic job and if some of them want to have yellow hair, punk hair, short hair, long hair, blue jeans, yellow jeans or, these days, my goodness me we’ve got some smart ones. Marvellous! When I go and look at some of the clothes for young people, gosh they are pricey but, really, I think that the sort of informal period has gone. You know, some of the rules are coming back and life is much better when you have rules to live by. I mean, it’s really like playing football, isn’t it? If you didn’t have any rules, you wouldn’t be able to play the game. Of course you’ll have the whistle blown sometimes but freedom requires some set of rules to live by to respect other people’s freedom, so if we’re remembered that way, I think we’ll have done a reasonable job for people the world over. I’ll leave it to others better qualified to discuss the details of Margaret Thatcher’s prodigious efforts to benefit Great Britain, pull down the Iron Curtain, and advance economic freedom at home and abroad. Her tremendous achievements in the aforementioned areas cannot be overstated.
Thatcher and her American counterpart, President Ronald Reagan, were perhaps the greatest proponents for freedom during the latter half of the 20th century.
Perhaps more noteworthy is the ability of Prime Minister Thatcher to defend the freedoms and best interests of the musicians and entertainer philanthropists so eager to disparage her as well as her efforts on their behalf.
I recall Pink Floyd releasing a video that included a WWII vet killing Reagan and Thatcher with Churchill giving a thumbs up to him. Roger Waters is an ass-hat.
Found it -— between minute 17 and 18 of this video. No Reagan - just Thatcher and a military leader.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPPpJCZb-L8
I love 80s punk like Exploited, but always just tried ignore their stupid anti-Maggie screed.
I loved The English Beat, so I forgive them for “Stand Down Margaret.”
Interesting. A good decade for music.
I saw The Exploited a few times in the 80’s - and I thought of them when I heard Maggie Thatcher died.
I’m happy to say that even in my younger days, Wattie seemed to me to be a foul-mouthed yob and a mindless, leftist drunk, but at the time, the concerts were a lot of fun for my friends and me.
Now he writes pathetically poor pseudo-classical pieces scored for string quartets that sound like something produced by a particularly juvenile community college music major who is high on bath salts.
I used to listen to the music slamming Reagan and Thatcher as a teenager in the 80s. What these artists will never understand is that the message a lot of kids got is that Reagan and Thatcher were very important people since they were the subject of the songs. I made my own judgments about their policies but the constant attacks just increased their stature in my mind. Its like Mick Jagger used to say — you can say whatever you want about me on page 2 as long as my face is on the cover of the magazine.
Many British acts of the 80’s owed their success to two things:
MTV (which was desperate for material, and videos had been running on Brit TV for at least a decade prior).
and Lady Thatcher (for her program of granting seed money for startup businesses to try and get people off the dole. The #1 use for those grants was recording studios!)
Rock n Roll has always been about rebellion, I think most just blindly went along, because that was what was expected of them. None of these “artists” wanted to be accused of being “sellouts”. Stupid, but it is what it is.
Even Johnny Rotten, who is certainly no Tory, seemed outraged by these “dance on her grave” protests that were going on.
That’s a good summation. I was lucky enough to see Exploited and GBH in London in 2003. I wear my Exploited hoodie regularly still. As a conservative and music lover we just have to put the bullshit aside sometimes and f—cking party. :)
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