Responding to Margaret Thatcher's Death

L. Hadley

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137428240
• eBook ISBN: 9781137428257
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

Louisa Hadley examines the range of responses to Margaret Thatcher's death in relation to the cultural discourses surrounding Thatcher in the 1980s and since her resignation. The responses examined include the anticipation of Thatcher's death in anti-Thatcher songs, social media responses, obituaries, picture tributes and the ceremonial funeral.

1

Anticipating Thatcher’s Death

Abstract: In this chapter, Hadley examines anti-Thatcher songs from the 1980s to the present which anticipated Margaret Thatcher’s death. It analyses Costello’s and Morrissey’s mournful ballads of the 1980s, before considering the more upbeat songs of the new millennium by Hefner, Elton John and Lee Hall and Pete Wylie. Hadley argues that these songs mediate anti-Thatcher sentiment through the person of Thatcher, with her imagined death functioning as a metaphor for her removal from power. Charges that these songs are disrespectful and ineffective political protests are assessed. The chapter closes with the campaign to get “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead!” to number one in the charts following Thatcher’s death, again connecting it to issues of respect and effective political protest.

Hadley, Louisa. Responding to Margaret Thatcher’s Death. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. DOI: 10.1057/9781137428257.0004.

In the days following Margaret Thatcher’s death, music became one of the most visible expressions of anti-Thatcher sentiment. On social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, many users commented on Thatcher’s death by posting links to prominent anti-Thatcher songs, and users on YouTube and Spotify, as well as bloggers, compiled playlists of such songs. The appearance of Thatcher playlists also extended beyond social media, with The Independent publishing a playlist of songs “referencing, inspired by and railing against Baroness Margaret Thatcher” the day after her death (“Margaret Thatcher playlist”). Despite designating their list as inclusive of a range of responses to Thatcher, The Independent’s playlist was exclusively made up of anti-Thatcher songs, as indeed were the vast majority of the other playlists that were compiled. The number of songs that appeared on these lists, the longest of which runs to 30 songs with two “bonus” tracks, testifies to Thatcher’s position as a divisive politician – both during her time in office and since (True). The appearance of these playlists in the aftermath of Thatcher’s death places the songs they include in an interesting historical position. On the one hand, they are positioned as historical artefacts: remnants of the past which serve to explain the strong reactions that Thatcher’s death had provoked. On the other hand, they become part of the contemporary response to Thatcher’s death and seem to be explicitly evoked as an alternative to the veneration of Thatcher that dominated the mainstream media after her death. These songs, then, raise the issue of respect which, as we shall see throughout this volume, is central in discussions of responses to Margaret Thatcher’s death. Many of these songs are not only critical of Thatcher’s policies but also of Thatcher herself, often in quite hateful ways. The reappearance of these songs in the days following Thatcher’s death was widely criticised as distasteful – as indeed were many of the songs when they were initially released – and was grouped with other celebratory responses to Thatcher’s death which, as we shall see in the final chapter, included street parties and mock funerals.

One of the earliest songs that appears on several of these playlists is The (English) Beat’s “Stand Down Margaret”, which was released in 1980. Addressing issues of racism and inner-city unrest, this song pleads with the recently elected Prime Minister to “Stand down Margaret, stand down please”. As her time in office continued, many more songs appeared condemning specific policy decisions, and these were reflected in the playlists compiled after Thatcher’s death. In particular, many of the lists included songs that were indictments of Thatcher’s involvement in the Falklands conflict, such as Crass’s 1983 song “How Does it Feel (to Be the Mother of a Thousand Dead)?” The title of this song reveals the slippage between the personal and the political that, as we have seen, characterised criticisms of Thatcher during her time in office. This shift from the political to the personal is focused through the issue of Thatcher’s gender; she is positioned as a “mother”, and is condemned on those same grounds. The song claims that because of her “inhumanity” and “impatien[ce]” for war, Thatcher has “devour[ed] that flesh”. This song, like many others from the 1980s, attacks policies through the figure of Margaret Thatcher, implicitly positioning her as an all-powerful, malevolent force. In many instances, these songs seek to inflict revenge on Thatcher in quite brutal and violent ways. One of the most frequent ways in which this revenge fantasy played out was in songs which anticipated Thatcher’s death. This chapter analyses the anticipation of Thatcher’s death in Morrissey’s “Margaret on the Guillotine” (1988), Elvis Costello’s “Tramp the Dirt Down” (1989), Hefner’s “The Day That Thatcher Dies” (2000), “Merry Christmas, Maggie Thatcher” (2005) penned by Elton John and Lee Hall, and Pete Wylie’s “The Day That Margaret Thatcher Dies” (2010). Clearly, these songs respond to different historical moments. Morrissey’s and Costello’s tracks were released during Thatcher’s final term in office and seemed to be prompted by a sense of despair at the longevity of Thatcher’s Prime Ministership. The anticipation of her death in these songs appears to be the only way in which the singers can imagine an alternative to Thatcherism. Despite the undoubtedly distasteful nature of singing about someone’s death, these songs adopt a mournful tone, which contrasts to the celebratory tone of the songs that appeared in the first decade of the twenty-first century, when Thatcher had been out of office for a decade or more. The appearance of Hefner’s, Wylie’s and Elton John’s songs from 2000 until 2010, when the Labour Party was in government, implicitly suggests that the removal of Thatcher from office had done nothing to reverse her impact on British politics and society. Despite these differences in historical context and tone, all these songs raise issues that are central to understanding responses to Thatcher’s death. Through an analysis of these songs, this chapter addresses the movement from the political to the personal, gender politics and the efficacy of songs as political protest. This issue of music as political protest leads to a consideration of the song which became the focus for anti-Thatcher sentiment in the week after her death, “Ding Dong!” from The Wizard of Oz. Exploring the ways in which Thatcher’s death was anticipated within these songs provides a framework for considering the responses that appeared after she died, of which they became a part.

1980s songs

In the introduction to its anti-Thatcher playlist, The Daily Beast notes that “many British musicians of the era [...were] fond of excitedly presaging the Iron Lady’s demise” (“Goodbye to the Iron Lady”). Yet the excitement that the anonymous writer identifies is strangely absent from two of the most important Thatcher death songs of the 1980s. Both Morrissey’s “Margaret on the Guillotine” and Elvis Costello’s “Tramp the Dirt Down” have a tone of sadness and lament. In both songs, a lone male voice sings to the backing of an acoustic guitar and, in the case of Costello’s song, pipes and fiddle, giving them a ballad-like quality. Tonally, then, these songs seem to capture the sense of loss felt by many communities as a result of Thatcher’s policies. The tone of these songs, however, does not entirely mitigate the anger and hatred that is evident in the lyrics. These songs are part of a wider repudiation of Thatcher and her policies on the part of these singers; what marks these songs out, however, is the extent to which this political rejection of Thatcherism is focused through the person of Thatcher.¹ As was often the case, these depictions of Thatcher emphasise her gender, and in quite shockingly misogynistic ways in the case of Costello’s song. Although such misogyny was a feature of much of the Left’s response to Thatcher during her time in office, sensibilities have shifted since then and in the context of 2013, these responses seemed even more abhorrent. Indeed, many on the Left were keen to distance themselves from such responses to Thatcher’s death. The disjunction between the instrumental qualities and the lyrics of Costello’s song was commented on in an interview on the BBC2’s The Late Show in 1989. The interviewer noted the marked contrast between the setting of the song, which she suggests is “probably the most beautiful [...] and the most melodious” of all the songs on the album, and the “intensely ugly” sentiment expressed in the lyrics. It was the lyrics of this song that “caused grave offence” when it was released and made its re-emergence in the wake of Thatcher’s death seem particularly distasteful (Jones). The prominence of these songs in cultural discourse after Thatcher’s death seems to violate the taboo against speaking ill of the dead.

In both of these songs, the dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in Britain is focused on the person of Thatcher. Using synecdoche, these songs make Thatcher stand in for the whole of her government and its policies, and thus position her as an all-powerful, malevolent force. The anticipation of Thatcher’s death, then, is a way for the singers to imagine a future without Thatcherism, providing a glimmer of hope that the removal of Thatcher will allow for a political alternative. Although both songs project a future without Thatcher, however, there is no alternative presented, no sustained consideration of what life will be like after Thatcher. In a sense, then, these songs seem resigned to the idea that change is not forthcoming. The violence and hate that is directed at the person of Thatcher suggests that these songs are more than just a metaphor for imagining Thatcher’s removal from power. This violence is particularly apparent in Morrissey’s song which presents the image of “Margaret on the Guillotine” as a “dream” in its opening lines. Morrissey’s song specifically focuses on the moment of Thatcher’s death, and indeed the singer seems to be hastening it. Initially, the song projects Thatcher’s death into the future, yet the repetition of the question “when will you die” reveals the speaker’s impatience. At the end of the song, however, the moment of death appears to have been reached. The song ends abruptly with the sound cutting off evoking the idea of a guillotine falling. In imagining her death by guillotine, Morrissey associates Thatcher with Marie Antoinette, eliding the fact that Thatcher was an elected representative of a democratic country. By contrast, Costello’s song anticipates Thatcher’s burial, but there seems to be a similar sense of impatience in the lines “I hope I don’t die too soon / I pray the Lord my soul to save”. The lines which give the title to the song suggest a quiet determination on the part of the speaker to ensure that Thatcher is gone by “tramp[ing] the dirt down”. While this could be read as a metaphor for the desire to remove every last trace of Thatcherism in Britain, the personal indictment of Thatcher herself remains ever-present. The final line of the song opens out from an individual response to include the listeners by switching the pronouns from first person singular to third person plural: “They’ll stand there laughing and tramp the dirt down”. This image of a laughing crowd jars with the mournful tone of the song and underscores the fact that this is an attack on an individual. In this sense, then, these songs function as a revenge fantasy, implicitly presenting Thatcher’s death as a punishment for the wounds she was felt to have inflicted.

These attacks are not just focused on Thatcher as a person, but on Thatcher as a woman. As songs performed by male artists addressing a female subject, they are inevitably overlaid with gender politics. Costello and Morrissey were relatively young men at the time, in their late twenties and thirties, who had originally come from areas of the industrial north; in this regard, they are responding to the threat they believed Thatcher posed to male working-class identity as a woman in power. The anxiety that Thatcher’s gender produced is apparent in the ways in which these songs address the person of Margaret Thatcher. Both Morrissey and Costello address the Prime Minister familiarly by her first name, emphasising her gendered identity. In refusing to use any title, these songs seem to display a lack of respect towards Thatcher, but this mode of address can also be seen as an attempt to diminish Thatcher’s power by trivialising her. This process is noticeable in the discourses surrounding many prominent women: whereas public men are generally referred to by their family name, public women are often referred to by either just their Christian name or both their Christian and family names. The anxiety about Thatcher’s gender erupts as full-blown misogyny in Costello’s song. The song opens by referring to a newspaper image of an unidentified woman kissing a baby, highlighting the propagation of Thatcher’s image during the 1980s. By the bridge, however, this woman is identified in the line “When England was the whore of the world / Margaret was her madam”. Costello’s contempt for the person of Thatcher is clearly evident in the overt sexualisation of Margaret Thatcher’s persona. In designating Thatcher as a “madam” Costello’s song seems to associate Thatcher’s position as a woman in power with that of wanton female sexuality – which has historically been feared within a patriarchal system.

Thatcher’s gender also becomes part of the grounds on which she is indicted in these songs. The opening lines of Morrissey’s song juxtapose “the kind people” who imagine Thatcher’s death with “Margaret”. This juxtaposition suggests an implicit condemnation of Thatcher’s lack of compassion, which is further emphasised by the associations with Marie Antoinette. That this lack of compassion is particularly damning in a woman is emphasised by the insistence on Thatcher’s first name. Elvis Costello’s “Tramp the Dirt Down” similarly condemns Thatcher by suggesting that she “fails” as a woman. In an interview on The Late Show, Costello remarked that “She seems like a perfectly reasonable person [...] a middle-aged woman with hair like candy-floss, but she does some of the most monstrous things”. Again, there is an implicit gender criticism as the real problem seems to be the stark contrast between Thatcher’s mild, feminine exterior and her lack of compassion. As we saw in the Introduction, this contrast between the expectations of a woman and Thatcher’s policies and political style was a frequent source of anxiety and had prompted the creation of her most famous persona, the “Iron Lady”. The resurgence of such misogynistic responses to Thatcher in the days following her death were problematic in that they served as a reminder of the kind of spiteful and childish attacks that were all too common during the 1980s and that many in the Labour Party explicitly tried to distance themselves from. Moreover, such overt misogyny undermines the efficacy of Costello’s critique of Thatcher as it can legitimately be dismissed by the mainstream media as vile and distasteful.

Although these songs clearly display anti-Thatcher sentiments, they are not particularly effective protest songs. There is no call to action in these songs and no image of a projected future after Thatcher. Moreover, in neither of these songs is the speaker the agent of Thatcher’s death, suggesting that, as with her policies, the average person is acted upon. In an article on Thatcher’s role as “anti-muse”, Scott argues that Costello’s “Tramp the Dirt Down” is “a hymn to its own ineffectuality”. Costello himself acknowledged the song’s inability to effect political change, remarking in an interview with Allan Jones that “the song is hopeless [...] Because I think it’s a hopeless situation”. However, the futility of the protests in these songs partly results from the focus on the person of Thatcher. The critiques of Thatcherism are overtaken by the personal and gender-based attacks on Thatcher, which seem to misunderstand the wider power structures at play and negate the influence of Thatcher’s all-male cabinet colleagues and advisors. The resurgence of these songs in the days after Thatcher’s death, then, can be read as an expression of misdirected rage that prevents a fuller engagement with the more complex forces that have sustained Thatcher’s legacy and influence beyond her time in power.

Songs of the new millennium

While Morrissey’s and Costello’s songs seem to express a hope that Thatcher’s power and influence would diminish after she resigned as Prime Minister, both she and her policies continued to have a very real effect on British politics and society into the new millennium. The repetitions of and returns to the 1980s in contemporary culture speak to a recognition that Thatcher’s removal from office was not enough to end her hold over the contemporary imagination. Despite her increasing absence from political and public life, musicians continued to anticipate Thatcher’s death. In contrast to the mournful tone of Morrissey’s and Costello’s Thatcher death songs, the songs that appeared in the first decade of the millennium were more exuberant in contemplating Thatcher’s death; they were often upbeat songs with catchy choruses. Hefner’s “The Day That Thatcher Dies,” “Merry Christmas, Maggie Thatcher” by Elton John and Lee Hall, and Pete Wylie’s “The Day That Margaret Thatcher Dies” serve as important exemplars of this type of anticipatory response. As with Morrissey’s and Costello’s songs, the re-emergence of these songs in response to Thatcher’s death was often criticised as distasteful. The celebratory tone of these songs seems particularly disrespectful in the days following Thatcher’s death, when her family and many who knew her were grieving. Moreover, these songs cannot be excused on the grounds that they are historical artefacts since they had initially appeared when Thatcher was already out of office and her public persona had shifted considerably from the image of a strong and indomitable leader. These songs, then, seem to express dissatisfaction at the state of Britain; however, the discontent with the current leaders is displaced on to a leader who had been out of office for over a decade. These songs still implicitly express a hope that the death of Thatcher will reverse the social and political impact of her government’s policies. Yet the parallels between Thatcherism and the policies pursued by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government that were in power when Thatcher died seem to suggest that the removal of Thatcher could not undo the effects of her legacy. It undermines the belief in these songs that Thatcher and Thatcherism are inextricably intertwined, and the hope that in defeating the former, the latter will be destroyed. The reappearance of these songs in the days following Thatcher’s death, then, become ineffective gestures of a misdirected rage that will have no real effects.

As with the songs from the 1980s, these songs mediate their criticism of Thatcher’s policies through the person of Thatcher, and, once again, the mode of address is important. Elton John and Lee Hall’s song “Merry Christmas, Maggie Thatcher” was written for the West End musical version of the film Billy Elliot (2000) which follows a young boy’s dream of becoming a ballet dancer against the backdrop of the miners’ strike. The song addresses Thatcher as “Maggie” which seems overly familiar in its adoption of a diminutive of her Christian name. As with the use of “Margaret” in Morrissey’s and Costello’s song, this term of address seems to trivialise and undermine Thatcher’s position of power. This term connects to the historical context of the play since Maggie was used as a term of opprobrium by the miners who chanted “Maggie, Magg...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  Anticipating Thatchers Death
• 2  Political Responses to Thatchers Death
• 3  Social Media Responses to Thatchers Death
• 4  Obituaries of Margaret Thatcher
• 5  Picturing Thatcher
• 6  A Proper Send-off for Thatcher
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index