Margaret Thatcher and Mick Jagger: a match made in heaven
“My name is called disturbance,” Mick Jagger once famously claimed – and, to all intents and purposes, he has gone to pains to prove that moniker. Whether through the eras of glam rock or punk or the British blues boom, The Rolling Stones have always represented something a little offbeat and ahead of the curve, cementing them as rock icons for their forward-thinking and the mantra of saying hell to tradition.
But as it turns out, being a man of the people could be nothing more than a flimsy ruse for Jagger, who, despite his forthright proclamations at the front of the blazing battalion of rock and roll, privately holds some very different pretences. Indeed, who’s to say that the impact of punk, as well as of rock and roll at large, truly changed the fabric of the world in the 1970s and onwards, when one of its leaders was not-so-secretly a fan of Margaret Thatcher.
It might come as a shock to some, but the reality is that Jagger’s professed anti-establishment morals weren’t quite as steadfast when you held them up to contention. Picture the scene: it’s the 1980s, Thatcher’s grip on the country was tighter than ever, but rather than causing a scene and railing against her stark Conservative policies, which were bound to anger swathes of his own followers, the rock star simply bowed to the prime minister’s authority.
That last sentence seems like an oxymoron in the context of all the rock and roll lore we’re accustomed to hearing from that era, but it seemed that, despite the public image he wanted to portray, The Rolling Stones’ frontman was cut from a different cloth. The truth only came to light decades later, in 2013, following Thatcher’s death, when Jagger said in an interview: “In the ’80s or early ’90s, I met her a couple of times. I don’t want to talk about what we talked about, especially now that everybody else is blabbing about her.”
Privacy and dignity aside, however, he then perplexingly added: “But I was slightly surprised by all the people that were still so anti her and had all this residual resentment.” This “resentment” he spoke of quite possibly had something to do with the wide-ranging austerity and overhaul of society she imposed on the working classes throughout her tenure, but that was of no mind to Jagger. To him, she clearly seemed like a perfectly affable woman.
It’s worth remembering that Jagger’s own background was not one of total squalid grittiness, much like many of his punk rock contemporaries of the period. His father was a teacher, his mother a hairdresser, and while this seems fairly standard in some respects, it transpired that the latter was an active member of the Conservative Party throughout her lifetime. As such, although Jagger painted a spirit of rock and roll nonchalance, his real family values were much more stringent.
Of course, this is not to say that views can’t evolve or change over time in light of the circumstances they find themselves in. Unless he comes out and declares it himself at any point in the future, there’s no way of knowing how Jagger casts his vote at the ballot box these days. But equally in that sense, the anonymity this provides had offered him a cover for so long until he let slip on his support for Thatcher, that although any rock star could proffer a message of rebellion, you really don’t know the truth behind the scenes.
