91. 10 Anti-Tory Songs

Tramp The Dirt Down - Elvis Costello
Stand Down Margaret - The Beat
The Lodgers - The Style Council
Thatcher Fucked the Kids - Frank Turner
Waiting for the Great Leap Forward - Billy Bragg
Maggie's Farm - The Specials
Margaret on the Guillotine - Morrissey
Blue-Skinned Beast - Madness
The Grocer's Daughter - TV Personalities
The Day That Thatcher Died - Hefner

Well, it's almost topical. As yet, I haven't heard any anti-coalition songs.
As you can see, most of them are more specifically anti-Thatcher than anti-Tory, and there seems to be a shared idea of revelling in the notion of her death. Also, nearly all these songs are from the 80s - the lack of anti-Tory songs for the last 15 years or so is understandable, and one hopes will soon be redressed.
The Specials, incidentally, adopted Dylan's Maggie's Farm, and the best song here is the Elvis Costello one
Thatcher is still the British left's main bogeyman, and we grew up hearing about her that she "destroyed the unions", "believed there was no such thing as society", "destroyed the north", "ripped apart communities" etc and these were obviously bad things. If, like many people, you had direct experience of your world being inexorably changed by Thatcher's policies, it's easier to make this hatred concrete, but as a public school west london leftie like myself, who was 12 when Thatcher resigned (i do still remember the moment i heard, incidentally, walking down the corridor past the common room, being told by a boy called Max), you can trot out the anti-Thatcher cliches, but i think you can easily end up looking exposed and silly.
My political awakening came via things like the pages of the mid-90s NME, where loads of leftie journalists still traded in fiercely honed anti-Thatcher rhetoric, and shows like Our Friends In The North, but the anger and righteous fury it gave me was vicarious, and looking back, rather phoney, albeit well-intentioned and grounded in the correct instincts.
I've read books about Thatcher and tried to get a balanced picture as well as trying to find fuel for fury, but what I'm left with is still a very unclear picture, almost a ghostly figure at the centre, which surely is the last thing one should ever think about Thatcher, but there we go.
I could never vote Tory, never will, but i don't necessarily see that as something to be proud of, or something that reflects any certainties i have. Nor can i truly say it's "tribal" (I'm not a tribal kind of chap).[I just don't like tories. They're not as nice as lefties. That's just my experience 80 to 90% of the time and always has been. It's simple.] [[Drawn back to this post as I am in April 2013, I abhor this piece of writing, this reduction of my own beliefs and stupidity of these words. Many of the people I love most in the world are a bit, or a lot, right-wing. I suppose it does represent my inherent prejudice, so it's honest, but really. I'm left-wing because I believe in a politics of compassion and fairness and welfare. I am sickened by current Conservative policy, and i'm not sickened by critical reaction to Thatcher on her death, but I think I am sickened by the slightly dim gloating. That's what we're meant to be better than, brethren. I am extremely moved by the song 'Tramp the Dirt Down' and think it is a valid statement, but there is a difference between that 1989 song about realising that you hate someone so much that you can imagine yourself celebrating their death ... and actually celebrating an 87 year old's death. Her death is bad for the left, so should not be celebrated. It is a boon to the right, and has also exposed ugliness in many people of a leftish persuasion. Don't all those folk who always imagined themselves celebrating her death feel a little like Benjamin at the end of The Graduate. Anyway, back to 2010 ...] What ought to be admirable about right-wingery is its honesty, its realism, its ability to do what needs doing in a straight, albeit nasty way. It's not the same kind if idealism that is endlessly corruptible as leftism. And yet we all know that that is the last thing one would actually associate with western conservatives of the last 40 years.
What I do remember also is that Thatcher cried self-pitying tears for herself when she left Dowing Street, and I, along with may others, felt sick, and that Gordon Brown left with warmth and grace, perhaps aware of his fuck-ups and why people wanted him out, but back, now he was out of it, to being a proper human being again.

OK, so bearing all that in mind, I wrote this almost exactly five years ago, as you'll be able to tell from its title. I suppose it has some prescience, though there is a worrying undercurrent to it where i thought i was getting more right-wing and was really troubled by terrorist bombings and my experiences trying to teach in South London, (god, there's even a shadow of Cameron's "broken Britain" in it - horrendous ... incidentally, i think a personal demonisation of Cameron and the Eton clique should be avoided, i don't think Cameron seems per se like a villain and until he acts like one, lambasting him may seem pretty cheap and weak) and thankfully, I haven't gone that way, and i don't think i see Britain pulling itself apart in the precise way i did then, i think the good will pull itself together again and separate from the bad, yes i do. This is Obama's world and Britain will have its Obama - it's not Diane Abbott but i think she's doing rather well at the moment
(by the way, there are some lines in this i really don't understand, i wrote it as stream of consciousness, i thought i'd leave it as it was as it mainly make sense, but the fourth verse, your guess is as good as mine)

A SLIGHTLY RIGHTY REACTION TO THE ELECTION NOBODY CARED ABOUT EXCEPT ME

Bus rides through Camberwell and I know a bit about race -
Car trips to Alnwick and this ain't one England
or Britain or United Kingdom or whatever.
My throat's strained from trying to shout my way out of
all these peculiar worlds, every estranged day.

I get the percentages and I get the picture -
London, this universe unto itself,
Suffocates then uplifts, uproots then cements
every stunted society they tried to disavow
and remind me why we need a strong opposition ...

And in Bamburgh, I wonder if they've a clue
and in St Andrews, I doubt they have a care
about these scarred streets and sickening stories
and I'd spit on your trickle-down effect
and you, you worm, where's your Respect now?

God, i know the numbers and i know the fractions,
I've got them in deep and they won't come out
and the answer's not magic and the chances are small
that there's hope outside value in any restrictions
and sometimes it's hard to make a joke of it all.

And sometimes I feel like I hate diversity
and think the world would be a better place
if everyone was like me, a fair bit like me
and one day I won't be reciting humanist lies
and the dreams of progress will be dust.

So I know the numbers and have seem the map,
the blue, blue map of my selfish future
and no wonder we're in the state we're in
and no wonder this country has close to shattered,
and who'd put it back together again?

It's basically a mad rant, i think using 'and' quite so much recreates the feeling of someone a bit worse for wear down the pub, just having more and more thoughts popping into his head - "and another thing" "and another thing" "and also"