‘Making Plans for Nigel’: Did XTC predict the collapse of British industry?
Back in 1979, Colin Moulding and XTC penned a defining track of the post-punk era, ‘Making Plans for Nigel’. Telling a tale of parental domination and having your future laid out for you against your own wishes, the song resonated with youth audiences at the time and remains depressingly relevant to this day. However, the song was anachronistic in more ways than one, with its mention of British Steel foreshadowing the privatisation and subsequent collapse of British industry only a handful of years later.
One of the reasons ‘Making Plans for Nigel’ became such a successful anthem was the context in which it was written. In 1979, Britain was in a fairly treacherous state, having recently emerged from a period of discontent, rolling blackouts and the three-day week. The future of the nation was certainly in question, and that was particularly felt among Britain’s youth. One of the predominant catalysts for punk rock was the lack of future options for many kids in Britain; with no job prospects or hope, young people turned to music and rebellion.
Given that XTC and the post-punk age were born largely from the same ethos, the band members themselves were similarly pessimistic about the future. ‘Making Plans for Nigel’, on a surface level, is about the restrictive power of authority figures on young people. Within the song, the titular Nigel is not given a choice, or even asked, about what he wants from his life or future; it is all decided for him by a parental narrator. On a deeper level, however, this parental authority could reflect a wider authority within society.
Only a few months before the single was released via Virgin, the British public had elected Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister during the 1979 general election. Many politically charged artists and commentators were already well aware of Thatcher’s destructive power and the damage that she would deal to the nation’s youth and working-class communities. However, XTC could not have predicted how she would dismantle, privatise, and sell off various pillars of British industry.
Within the lyrics to ‘Making Plans for Nigel’, the authoritative narrator declares, “We’re only making plans for Nigel. He has his future in a British Steel.” Moulding, the songwriter, has since claimed that neither he nor the band put that much thought into the specific company mentioned – “It was an organisation I chose at random,” he later said. Indeed, at the time that the song was written, British Steel was a fairly noble profession to be involved in – particularly in areas like South Wales, Scotland, and South Yorkshire.
The steel industry, however, declined around that time, with plants beginning to close as the 1970s came to an end. British Steel’s downfall was accelerated tenfold by the policies of Thatcher’s government, which led to the privatisation of the organisation in 1987 and the loss of thousands of jobs. Along with the death of Britain’s mining industry and the horrific actions of the government during the 1984-1985 miners’ strike, this left many working-class communities around the country devastated and left Britain’s youth with even fewer job prospects.
Of course, XTC could not have predicted the collapse of British Steel or Thatcher’s ruthless policy of privatisation. Nevertheless, the real-life events which came in the wake of ‘Making Plans for Nigel’ only served to boost the anti-authority message at the heart of the song. In the world of Moulding’s song, not only is Nigel’s future being decided for him, but it is also being decided that he will enter a dying industry that will likely see him destitute in a matter of years.
The unfortunate history which befell British Steel, which ceased to exist in 1999, unintentionally makes ‘Making Plans for Nigel’ one of the most defiant anti-authority songs of all time. While it might not be as aggressive or overtly politically fueled as the rebellion of punk rock, the understated account of parental domination certainly stands the test of time both musically and contextually. XTC might not have predicted the demise of British industry, but the privatisation of the nation’s assets has certainly added a new layer of relevance to their defining track.
