Tag Archives: margaretthatcher

Shifty: the new Adam Curtis BBC doc

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Those wanting to understand the mess in which Britain finds itself may get some answers from ‘Shifty’, Adam Curtis’s new BBC documentary series. It’s also a classic bit of 1980s reportage.

A rather po-faced press release announced the launch of the show on iPlayer (it’s also on YouTube) – Curtis has now been ‘moved on’ from terrestrial TV, and has alluded to the ‘freedom’ that streaming platforms give him.

But the new series certainly delivers, not a surprise given his track record of superb, unsettling docs such as ‘The Century Of The Self’, ‘The Mayfair Set’ and ‘HyperNormalisation’. Using long- forgotten/lost BBC footage mainly shot during the 1980s, ‘Shifty’ traces the death of Britain’s role as a technological superpower, showing how the decimation/privatisation of national industries ushered in an uncertain era when dark, long-dormant secrets bubbled up to the surface, and the tabloid press ran riot.

We see how Thatcherism (read monetarism) was based on a false belief – that money always acted predictably. Meanwhile the privatisation of state industries (a policy invented by the Nazis) handed fortunes to private capitalists, a system which the Tory government knew would lead to industrial ’empires’ and the creation of huge private fortunes. They were essentially buying the support of the financial elites, and this has been convulsive.

Re-editing the work of those brilliant, groundbreaking (uncredited) TV directors and technicians who plied their trade at the dawn of the 1980s, Curtis uncovers the ‘real’ decade. There are many striking juxtapositions; the death of a commercial airline pilot after a crash on the Isle of Sheppey uncovers tales of wartime mental distress.

We see what the Falklands Islands looked like just before the 1982 invasion, a National Front rally in Brixton, the birth of video dating in London, dub sound systems in Birmingham, a pop lookalike competition of 1981 with hilarious Midge Ure. Freemasonry is debated openly on national terrestrial TV.

We see Thatcher during down time, pottering in the kitchen, schmoozing with Jimmy Savile, discussing her wardrobe, teenagers dancing to Bee Gees in Belfast and Hawkwind’s ‘Silver Machine’ in Kent, sex pests calling mental-health helplines, abject poverty in Bradford, the first known personal surveillance camera in North Kent, Sus operations in West London, Princess Di opening the Broadwater Farm Estate just six months before the deadly riots, Dodi Fayed interviewed about his father and producing movies such as ‘Chariots Of Fire’, Stephen Hawking as an undergraduate at Cambridge University.

All in all, ‘Shifty’ is a fascinating look at a mostly forgotten Britain and a great companion piece to Simon Reynolds’ ‘Rip It Up’ book and Steve McQueen’s ‘Small Axe’ films. So The Beeb is still doing a few things right but it’s a shame the series wasn’t given a cursory showing on terrestrial TV.

Women In Revolt (Art And Activism In The UK 1970-1990) @ Tate Britain

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Behind the shiny, fun, tabloid version of the 1980s, there was an undercurrent of protest, upheaval and misogyny.

In the latter camp, how about the following astonishing UK laws still enshrined at the dawn of the decade: men had a right to have sex with their wives without consent. Welfare benefits were paid to married women via their husbands.

A fascinating new exhibition at London’s Tate Britain investigates the woman artists and activists whose work was a reaction to these and other issues. There’s a strong presence for punk, post-punk and industrial musicians: Gina Birch of The Raincoats, Throbbing Gristle’s Cosey Fanni Tutti and Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex. We see fanzines, posters, gig excerpts.

There’s groundbreaking video art – Vivienne Dick’s ‘Two Little Pigeons’ and Birch’s scream are particularly memorable. We see banners, collages, sculptures and newsletters produced by the women who marched from Cardiff to Greenham Common in September 1981, challenging the decision to house 96 nuclear missiles on the site.

There’s a focus on the British Black Arts Movement, a group of artists who gathered in the wake of various uprisings in the early 1980s, from Toxteth to Brixton, and also Four Indian Women Artists, the first UK exhibition organised by and exclusively featuring women of colour.

Margaret Thatcher cut arts funding drastically in the mid-’80s, a decision which ushered in corporate sponsorship and prompted a backlash from many woman artists who began to show their work in local spaces, community centres, libraries, cafes and homes. We see much of this material and learn about its contexts.

And then of course there are the famous sexist advertising billboards, wittily defaced.

The exhibition constantly undermines Thatcher’s comment to Woman’s Own magazine in 1987 that ‘there’s no such thing as society’. And there’s a surprise around every corner. It’s moving, amusing, disturbing and educational in equal measures, and a reminder that protest and assemblage can create change. But the exhibition is also very large and probably takes two visits to really appreciate.

Women In Revolt! runs at the Tate Britain until 7 April 2024. A new podcast interviews some of the key artists.

Story Of A Song: Bucks Fizz’s ‘The Land Of Make Believe’ (1982)

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On first listen, ‘The Land Of Make Believe’ would seem to be a frothy, fairly harmless bit of fun built on one of the oldest chord sequences in the book.

But dig a little deeper and it’s a distinctly odd psych/pop classic and one of the weirdest number ones of the 1980s (hitting the top spot 36 years ago this week).

The main reason for that would seem to be the presence of Pete Sinfield on the songwriting credits. Most famous for providing lyrics for prog behemoths King Crimson and ELP, in his bizarre career he has also – thrillingly – co-written Celine Dion’s ‘Think Twice’ and Five Star’s ‘Rain Or Shine’!

In the book ‘1,000 UK Number Ones’, he recalled being tasked by Fizz producer/co-songwriter Andy Hill to come up with the words for ‘The Land Of Make Believe’:

It is 10 times more difficult to write a three-minute hit song with a veneer of integrity than it is to write anything for King Crimson or ELP. But I half-succeeded on “The Land Of Make Believe”. Beneath its ‘tra-la-laas’ is a virulent anti-Thatcher song. Oh yes it is. Something nasty in your garden, waiting, until it can steal your heart…

Portraying Thatcherism as a kind of creeping ‘Invasion Of the Body Snatchers’-style affliction… Well, maybe it’s just about discernible in the lyrics.

But more likely it’s a neat concept on which to hang a lot of disparate references, from Superman to Captain Kidd (apparently a Scottish sailor who was tried and executed for piracy after returning from a voyage to the Indian Ocean) and fairy tales of all kinds.

But I always think of that creepy scene in ‘Salem’s Lot’ when I hear those lines about ‘shadows tapping at your window/Ghostly voices whisper will you come and play’…

The fade-out features a cod nursery rhyme – also penned by Sinfield – which was narrated by Abby Kimber, future Minipop and 11-year-old daughter of Bill Kimber, an executive at RCA Records. Listening as a nine-year-old burgeoning pop fan in early 1982, it used to give me the creeps, and can still send a chill down my spine.

The video was filmed at White City swimming baths in West London. It references ‘The Wizard Of Oz’, ‘Cinderella’ and ‘The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe’ and foregrounds some fairly blatant swimwear shots of singer Jay Aston, whose unhappy tenure in Bucks Fizz was outlined in Simon Garfield’s excellent book ‘Expensive Habits’.

Aston also apparently chose the outfits for the video, the female costumes coming from Kahn & Bell on the King’s Road and the male costumes from Boy. Aston later remarked that her and Cheryl Baker’s costumes ‘were ten years ahead of Madonna, with the cone boobs…’

‘The Land Of Make Believe’ subsequently became Bucks Fizz’s biggest-selling single in the UK, outselling even their famous 1981 Eurovision winner ‘Making Your Mind Up’. Not bad for a song that apparently no-one in the group particularly liked.

Don’t have nightmares…