Nothing Can Stop Us: Anti-Thatcherism and Anti-Conservatism in Music, 1980 – 1987

Posted in Music, Retrovirus |

By Emily Carney

With all the will in the world
Diving for dear life
When we could be diving for pearls
—Elvis Costello, “Shipbuilding” (performed by Robert Wyatt)

Red Wedge meeting
(L – R, Billy Bragg, Ken Livingstone, Neil Kinnock, Paul Weller)
Photo from Weller World

It almost goes without saying that many in ’80s England were dissatisfied with the rule of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She was depicted as the “Iron Lady” and was the poster girl for the Conservative Party, one who became increasingly bent on waging war (the Falklands War, to be specific). Other political issues plagued the UK at the time, such as high unemployment rates, and despite the often-jocular mood of the film 24 Hour Party People, England is also portrayed as being throttled by unbelievable crises, such as gravediggers striking and garbage piling up in cities. These events symbolized the feeling of many that things had gotten well out of control.

The Falklands conflict, along with increasingly conservative sentiment across both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, signaled the beginning of Socialist-flavored protest music in England. Producer Clive Langer and Elvis Costello penned a song called “Shipbuilding,” which detailed the desperation of a man who had little money and whose son died in a bid to work at a shipyard full of warships because “it’s all we’re skilled in.” This song was recorded by the English vocalist Robert Wyatt in 1982, formerly of the progressive rock band Soft Machine; the crushing sadness of his voice underscored the feelings of alternate apathy and disgust in a government which seemed unconcerned with sending people to their graves to make a statement. (Costello released his own version in 1983.)

Wyatt’s 1982 album, Nothing Can Stop Us, also contains a tune called “Stalin Wasn’t Stallin’”, an American gospel song meant to extol the virtues of Stalin’s resistance towards the Nazis in World War II. Yet his version of “Shipbuilding” remains the gold standard of this spellbinding song. Wyatt, in covering it, meant to remind the United States and the UK that the Soviet Union had once attempted to forge an alliance. Wyatt also covered “At Last I Am Free,” a song by the dance band Chic, which served as a poignant reminder of good times past, but yet rang out like a political proclamation invoking “freedom”; the song is rendered utterly eerie with Wyatt’s multi-tracked, distinctive vocals and keyboards.

Also in 1982, Fad Gadget’s album Under the Flag was released, which contained songs such as “The Sheep Look Up,” and of course the album’s title tracks (“Under the Flag I” and “Under the Flag II”). Frank Tovey (who masterminded the alter ego of Fad Gadget) admitted his album had been written in a two-week period following the inception of the Falklands War. His songs are very close in mood to “Shipbuilding,” and are closer to folk music than the avant-garde synth pop he had previously been associated with.

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