The “scandalous” number one that gave Margaret Thatcher sleepless nights
It has never taken much to upset and outrage the Conservative Party, and in between her decimation of the North, battles against striking miners, and evasion of IRA attacks, Margaret Thatcher still somehow found time to be outraged about the state of popular music.
When she appeared on Desert Island Discs back in 1978, Thatcher’s musical choices were about as exciting and cutting-edge as you would expect of a Tory MP; the likes of Beethoven and Felix Mendelssohn did much of the heavy lifting. On the contrary, the music that was dominating Britain’s late-1970s airwaves was far more subversive, the beginning of Thatcher’s reign coinciding with the tail-end of the age of punk revolution.
Unsurprisingly, the PM wasn’t an outspoken fan of buzzsaw guitars, aiming to tear down the establishment. She did, however, find herself the subject of countless great protest anthems and musical rebellions as her premiership progressed, spanning the spectrum from The Specials to Sinead O’Connor. One of the greatest musical revolts Thatcher ever witnessed, however, arrived much earlier in her rule: Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick In The Wall’.
Pink Floyd were already part of British rock’s ‘old guard’ by the late 1970s, having emerged from the psychedelic mist during the previous decade. Unlike many of his contemporaries, though, Roger Waters didn’t see the benefit of mellowing with age, and so 1979’s ‘Another Brick In The Wall’ was injected with a stark sense of protest and rebellion.
Waters’ three-part protest against corporal punishment in schools was enough to spark outrage in stuffy conservative circles as-is, particularly its defiant “We don’t need no education” chorus. Never a band to do things in half measures, though, Pink Floyd recruited a choir of children to sing the track, adding an extra layer of scandal as far as Thatcher’s cabinet was concerned.
Alun Renshaw was the teacher tasked with putting that choir together, from pupils at Islington Green School, and he wasn’t overly surprised by the outrage that ensued. Speaking to The Sydney Morning Herald, he once recalled, “Apparently, I turned slightly ashen when I saw the words. I did think, ‘Oh dear, this could upset a few people.’”
These thoughts were, however, quickly put to rest: “Then I thought, it’s Pink Floyd, the biggest pop group in the world. They want us to sing on their album. Who cares what the words are?”
Thatcher was one person who seemed to care about those words. “Margaret Thatcher hated it,” the teacher claimed, adding that the Inner London Education Authority branded the song as “scandalous”, too.
Regardless of that outrage, though, the British music-buying public certainly seemed to connect with the song, making ‘Another Brick In The Wall Part 2’ a Christmas number one in 1979, much to the chagrin of Mrs Thatcher and her government.
Only a few years later, in 1986, though, the government oversaw the end of corporal punishment in UK state schools, which Waters’ composition undeniably had a hand in bringing attention to. Not only did Pink Floyd give the Prime Minister some sleepless nights, but the band also seemed to have the last laugh.
