The Specials And Margaret Thatcher’s England

Last December my wife and I watched the Meryl Streep movie about Margaret Thatcher. It was a wonderful movie and Meryl Streep did an amazing job portraying Margaret Thatcher. I learned a lot about Thatcher’s life that I didn’t know before, and I admire Thatcher’s toughness and persistence in breaking through the male chauvinism of that era. Though I like Thatcher as a person, I never really liked her politics. From what I remember of that time, Great Britain was a mess, and I remember Thatcher’s policies being especially tough on the working class of that time. A response to the rage of many of the young who felt helpless in the face of the diminished economic prospects of the time was the punk and the ska musical movements. One of the great bands of that time were the ska band the Specials.

The music of the Specials can be best understood in the context of the economic crisis of England in the 1970s and 1980s. According to Wikipedia

When the Conservative Party led by Margaret Thatcher won the general election of May 1979 and swept James Callaghan’s Labour Party from power, the country had just witnessed the Winter of Discontent in which numerous public sector workers had staged strikes. Inflation was about 10% and some 1,500,000 people were unemployed; compared to some 1,000,000 in 1974, 580,000 in 1970 and just over 300,000 in 1964. Margaret Thatcher set about to control inflation with monetarist policies and change trade union laws in an attempt to reduce the strikes which had blighted Britain for so many years.

Mrs Thatcher’s battle against inflation resulted in the closure of many inefficient factories, shipyards and coalpits – mostly during her first four-year term in power. This helped bring inflation below 10% by the turn of 1982 (having peaked at 22% in 1980) and by spring 1983 it had fallen to a 15-year low of 4%. Strikes were also at their lowest level since the early 1950s.

However, it also resulted in unemployment reaching 3,000,000 by January 1982 – a level not seen for some 50 years. This accounted for some 12.5% of the workforce. Northern Ireland was the hardest hit region, with unemployment standing at nearly 20%. It exceeded 15% in much of Scotland and northern England, only falling below 10% in the south east. Even the 2,000,000 figure first seen towards the end of 1980 had not been reached in over 40 years.

By April 1983, Britain – once known globally as the “workshop of the world” due to its strong manufacturing base – became a net importer of goods for the first time ever, largely due to the loss of heavy industry under Thatcher. Areas of Tyneside, Yorkshire, Merseyside, South Wales, the West of Scotland and the West Midlands were particularly hard hit by the loss of industry and subsequent sharp rise in unemployment. The national average by January 1982 was around 12.5%, but in some of these regions it was approaching 20% and would remain similarly high for a number of years afterwards.

The mass unemployment and social discontent resulting from the recession were widely seen as major factors in widespread rioting across Britain during 1981 in parts of towns and cities including Toxteth in Liverpool and a number of districts of London. Four years later, in 1985, when the economy had been out of recession for three years but unemployment remained high, there was another wave of rioting across Britain, again with several parts of London being affected among others. High unemployment and social discontent were once again seen as factors in the rioting.

The Specials formed in the midst of this economic crisis and to address the racism that was found in many of the angry youths of England. Formed in Coventry, England, in 1977, the Specials were an integrated group of black and white musicians that consisted of songwriter/keyboardist Jerry Dammers, vocalist Terry Hall, guitarist and vocalist Lynval Golding , drummer Silverton Hutchinson, and over the years their membership would change. They formed at the same time as the Rock Against Racism campaign was going on to counter the growing racism of white nationalist groups among the young British youths. According to an article by Sarfraz Manzoor in the Observer

Thirty years on and it is not difficult to identify the legacy of Rock Against Racism. That influence was both political and musical. ‘It built a circuit of gigs and concerts on which a lot of bands cut their teeth,’ explains Ian Goodyer. ‘And these small gigs relied on the people in the grassroots getting involved.’ Such people include Paul Furness, whose RAR club in Leeds staged the only Rock Against Racism concert featuring Joy Division. The strategy of encouraging black and white bands to jam together paved the way for the ska revival, 2-Tone and multi-racial bands such as the Beat (who, according to Red Saunders, first met in Victoria Park) and the Specials.

‘We started out at the same time as RAR,’ Specials founder Jerry Dammers tells me, ‘so it was all part of the same thing and for me it was no good being anti-racist if you didn’t involve black people, so what the Specials tried to do was create something that was more integrated.’

At the core of much of their music is some sort of political message. Their song Doesn’t Make It Alright, for instance, criticizes the violent attacks on immigrants from the West Indies and Pakistan that were occurring at the time. Too Much Too Young criticizes teen pregnancies and promotes contraception and birth control. Racist Friend advises the listener to try to change the views of friends and family members who have racist views and to drop those friends if they refuse. Ghost Town commented on the unemployment and urban decay that was fueling a lot of the riots in England during the early 1980s. Free Nelson Mandela was a plea to free the imprisoned Nelson Mandela during some of the worst days of oppression of South Africa’s apartheid system.

I didn’t know any of this when I was young. I just liked the music. I was this nerdy kid who loved the Beatles and the Monkees, but I also liked the New Wave and ska music that many of my friends were listening to. I was lucky to have friends who were cooler than I was who were willing to lend me their cassettes and let me drop by their homes to watch the latest videos on MTV. I especially remember a girl in one of my math classes during high school. She had a punk haircut and work punk clothes, and she had a folder where she wrote all of the punk and New Wave bands that she liked. This girl was very smart and very nice to me. I sat in back of her, and she’d frequently talk to me, recommending albums to listen to and telling me about bands that I would have otherwise never heard of. After that class, I never saw her again, but I remember the music that she talked about. The Specials were one of the bands she especially liked.

Musicians throughout history have played a big role in commenting on society. The civil rights activists sang protest songs to lift their spirits during their protest marches. Folk singers like Woodie Guthrie sang about the plight of the unemployed and the homeless during the depths of the Great Depression. Rappers like Public Enemy told of the despair of the youths trapped in the inner cities during the 1980s and 1990s. The Specials are a part of that tradition, and many of the social issues that they dealt with in Margaret Thatcher’s England are still issues today.

A youtube video of the Specials performing “A Message To You Rudy”

A youtube video of the Specials performing “Too Much Too Young”

A youtube video of the Specials performing “It Doesn’t Make It Alright”

A music video of the Specials’ song “Ghost Town”

A music video of the Specials song “Racist Friend”

A music video of the Specials song “Free Nelson Mandela”

Music and the Social Conscience

Whenever we think of socially conscious music, the folk music of the 1960s instantly comes to mind for many people. Along with Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary participated in many civil rights martches and anti-war events. Recently, Mary Travers died after battling leukemia for 3 years. They sang the Pete Seeger song “If I Had A Hammer” at the March on Washington in 1963 and they popularized many of Bob Dylans songs. Here is a performance of the trio singing the Dylan song “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright”.

My school years were during the 1980s and though it doesn’t have the same reputation as being a political time as the 1960s, I remember a lot of political movements during that time. It was the time of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and there was a lot of opposition to their policies of military buildup and cutbacks on government social programs. The AIDs epidemic was killing many of the gay population. People were working to fight apartheid in South Africa and fighting to stop aid to the Contras in El Salvador. Average Americans in the rustbelt and in farming communities were suffering from declining economies. I remember many people being involved to try to fight for just causes.

The punk, new wave, ska and reggae music during that time had many political messages. I used to borrow friends’ tapes and when I listened to musicians like the Specials and the Clash, the lyrics protested against Margaret Thatcher and the struggles of British working class people. In my math class, I sat next to a really nice girl who dressed in punk outfits and talked to me about the different bands and their messages of subversion and protest. One of the most memorable political songs of that time was “Free Nelson Mandela” by the British ska group, the Specials. The Specials were formed specifically to fight racism, and its members integrated black and white musicians. The anti-apartheid cause fight nicely with their political stances and the song became popular with activists in South Africa.

Two really great musicians who wrote songs for working class people were Bruce Springsteen and John Cougar Mellencamp. I came about admiring Bruce Springsteen rather late, not listening to anything by him until his “Born in the U.S.A.” album. I really liked John Mellencamp’s “Scarecrow” album and it’s still one of my favorite albums to listen to. When I listened to both albums, I noticed that Springsteen and Mellencamp are singing about slightly different subjects: Springsteen seems to be singing about blue collar workers while Mellencamp seems to be singing about rural farm communities. Both groups of people suffered heavily during the Reagan years, as the economy seemed to be moving away from the products that these two communities relied upon for their economic livelihoods. Both Springsteen and Mellencamp are still active in social causes, as Springsteen is currently helping out with World Hunger Year to help fight hunger and Mellencamp regularly participates in FarmAid.

Many of the best social conscious music were coming from musicians with a decidedly folk tinge. In 1988 Tracy Chapman released the album “Tracy Chapman” with songs about unemployment lines and poverty and she toured that year in the Amnesty International Human Rights tour. The Indigo Girls came out of Atlanta, Georgia, and have fought for gay rights, the rights of Native Americans, for the environment and to abolish the death penalty. They are continuing the folk tradition of political activism that was forged by Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and Woody Guthrie.

I have never really been a fan of rap music, but I’ve learned that rap music has had some of the most trenchant political commentary in music in the past 20 years. In the late 1980s and the early 1990s, rap had its most political phase, as it commented on the poverty of the African American poor and the tribulations of people trapped in the inner cities. One of the most influential rap groups was Public Enemy, whose albums “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back” and “Fear of a Black Planet” had strong social stances. Public Enemy and the more political rap groups influenced later activists and artists like Boondocks cartoonist Aaron McGruder. In an interview with R.C. Harvey for the September 2003 Comics Journal, McGruder noted:

“My political perspectives as a young adult was shaped by hip hop’s political era, which was 1987 to 1992, roughly when I was in junior high and high school. We had Public Enemy, KRS-One, X-Clan, Brand Nubian and all of those very overtly political groups… It was actually Black Nationalism; it was radical socialism. There was no black leadership supplying these political ideals to the next generation, and what few people there were, a lot of us- discovered that through hip hop.”

After the mid 1990s, I no longer kept in touch with what is popular in music. So sometimes I feel like an old fogie because I don’t know what the latest group or top ten song. So my wife and my nieces and nephew sometimes let me listen to their CDs and I find out the newest songs. I think there is probably great music being made by socially conscious musicians today. I end this blog with a quote from Howard Zinn’s book “Conversations on History and Politics”. Zinn wrote:

“It was people in the arts who perhaps had the greatest emotional effect on me. Singers such as Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and Paul Robeson. Writers like Upton Sinclair and Jack London. I was reading the newspapers and Karl Marx. I was reading all sorts of subversive matter. But there was something special about the effect of what artists did.

And by artists I mean not only singers and musicians but poets, novelists, people in the theater. It always seemed to me that there was a special power that artists had when they commented, either in their own work or outside their work, on what was going on in the world. There was a kind of force that they brought into the discussion that mere rose could not match. Part of it had to do with a passion and an emotion which comes with poetry, which comes with music, that comes with drama, which is rarely equaled in prose, even if it is beautiful prose. I was struck by that at an early age.”