From Suez to the Falklands - Part 4

"The British love of Queens does not seem to be based merely on the historical commonplace that 'Britain is never so properous as when a Queen is on the Throne': it reflects, rather, a stubborn conviction that this is a Mother Country, not a Father Land - a peculiarity that the Classical Greeks also noted about Crete - and that the King's prime function is to be the Queen's consort. Such national apprehensions or convictions or obsessions are the ultimate source of all religion, myth and poetry, and cannot be eradicated either by conquest or education."

- Robert Graves, "The White Goddess"

The long hot summer of 1976 was notable for two particular events, the first being yet another currency crisis, with a dip in the value of Sterling and an incipient budget shortfall precipitating the Labour Govenrment, now under the unsteady stewardship of James Callaghan, to ask the International Monetary Fund for a loan. Although in itself a relatively prudent measure, this was perceived by the public and press as a further national humiliation, as the United Kingdom plied the global financial circit for alms. The parade of fumbling that had characterised the leadership of a series of almost identikit leaders in Heath, Wilson and now Callaghan had led to a general impression of a confederacy of grey men, all equally lacking in vision, ability and nous. The second noteworthy occurrence of that summer was the stealthy but irrepressible emergence of the latest model on Hebrew trickster Malcolm McLaren's Golem production line, the Sex Pistols. This extraordinary group specialised in a kind of incendiary vapidity, its singer and lyricist Johnny Rotten (née Lydon) having an uncanny ability to find exactly the right national taboo to point and shriek at, without saying anything profound or useful in consequence. However, this very incoherence was the source of their brief but efflorescent power, as it ensured that their grievances could barely be comprehended, let alone reconciled or resolved. Whatever the Sex Pistols may or may not have wanted, it was non-negotiable. Equally impossible to assuage was their music, which was the most conventional riff rock possible, but so insistently single minded that it adventitiously sounded explosive.

As the year progressed, the band gradually built up accolytes and notoriety by word of mouth, and racked up their first television appearances, while their debut single, "Anarchy In The UK" grazed the Top 40 at the end of the year. This record would be the template for their subsequent output, being both shocking and invigorating as long as you didn't look at it too closely, and realise how silly it was. Despite the tremendous effort that went into this recording to shock, the Sex Pistols would burst into the public consciousness accidentally, and in the most quotidian format possible. A cancellation by EMI labelmates Queen led to their invitation onto the Today show, a normally staid teatime television programme hosted by Bill Grundy, who was the kind of mildly dissolute but avuncular host that was typical of the era. Apparently inebriated, and obviously not briefed on his substitute guests, his attempted inteview with the band and their cohorts quickly degenerated into puerile name calling, which appalled the show's more delicate viewers, as well as the wilting violets of the tabloid press. The result would be sensational, with the band being catapulted into a maelstrom of media controversy that wouldn't fully abate until years after they had split up. In truth, the scenario was one that most younger viewers would have recognised instantly; that of the out-of-depth supply teacher employing increasingly desperate bonhomie as they lost control of the class.

The controversy around "Anarchy" and Grundy would be eclipsed in the spring of 1977 by the release of their second single, "God Save The Queen", which their latest record company, Virgin, decided to release on the eve of the Silver Jubilee that marked the monarch's 25th year on the throne. The release would be accompanied by a characteristic McLaren stunt, when a boat was chartered on the Jubilee weekend to cruise down the Thames so that the band could play the song in front of the Houses of Parliament. This intiative was duly intercepted by the police, producing another avalanche of publicity. Nonetheless, in impugning the current Queen, the Sex Pistols had, advertently or inadvertently, identified the epicentre of Britain's post-war malaise, and that was the failure of the monarch herself, Elizabeth II. As Robert Graves had noted, the Queens who had preceeded Elizabeth Windsor had been extraordinarily powerful matriarchs who had inspired their subjects to exploration and expansion. In particular Elizabeth I, Anne and Victoria had been icons, the former and latter even being instantly recognisable to this very day. Elizabeth II, however, was a mousy, modest figure who dressed like a suburban housewife and who had presided over an era of retreat and retrenchment. As a result, the current Queen was a present absence, the void at the heart of the British establishment. The Pistols' "God Save The Queen" is usually misunderstood as a modernist excoriation of a deluded Ruritanian idyll, of the refusal of a nation to recognise its true station in the modern world. In fact, it is a personal attack on the vacant occupant of the throne, and on the notion that such a vast celebration could be accorded to such a non-entity.

There is an unthinking prejudiuce held among atheist, secular humanists that the monarchy is an outdated remnant from a bygone era, an inconvenient anachronism that has somehow, temporarily, escaped the inevitable fate of being swept away by progress. Nothing could be further from the truth of course; monarchism is one of the most durable human institutions, and the world will be full of monarchs long after our scrappy, decaying liberal democracy has been forgotten. There can also be no doubt that despite their separation from the levers of government, the current British monarch holds enormous moral, spiritual and political power. If Elizabeth II had voiced any public doubts about the intervention at Suez, say, how could the government of the day have done anything except stay their hand? Elizabeth's reign was marked by excessive political caution, as it was her belief that the monarchy rested on such fragile foundations that it could not afford to embroil itself in the slightest political controversy. She was so fixated on the long term survival of both herself and her family, that absolutely no political policy or social trend, no matter how disastrous, could draw from her the slightest public comment, let alone disapproval. If the Government had mandated the compulsory eating of babies, Elizabeth Windsor would not have piped up. All her subjects could expect was a few bromides once a year at Christmas. She had even failed the most basic prerequisite of being Queen, which was the capacity to look formidable, to inspire fear and devotion by her very appearance.

The result was that John Lydon would now accuse her of being an imposter ("Our figurehead/is not what she seems") whose timidity had turned her family and nation into a voyeuristic tourist attraction ("'cause tourists are money"). However, Lydon was not the only person who had noticed the gaping void that Elizabeth II had opened up with her diffidence. The new leader of the Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher, had become increasingly regal as she consolidated her position as leader of the opposition. She had begun to style her hair in an extravagant bouffant that emulated, and indeed mocked, the style of Elizabeth herself. Thatcher's voice had also become increasingly lofty and regal; she no longer spoke but declaimed, as though like a true monarch she was receiving her instructions directly from God. It was clear that if Elizabeth Windsor could not be an imposing Queen, then Margaret Thatcher would be. This granted the Conservative leader access to an almost bottomless reserve of power, because the archetype of the female monarch not only encompassed Elizabeth II's none-more-illustrious predecessors, but also the very deepest national archetypes of Britain, notably the chariot-riding warrior queen Boadicea, and the very protector of the nation herself, Britannia. What Thatcher's political opponents failed to realise was that when they attempted to refute her, or point out the harmfulness of her policies, they were not debating with a mere person; they were confronting a 2000 year old archetype. In turn, this meant that she was to all intents and purposes unbeatable.

And so, when Margaret Thatcher inevitably came to power in the spring of 1979 after a Shakespearean Winter of Discontent, the British public had not elected a Prime Minister, but annointed a Warrior Queen: icy, formidable, decisive, divisive, and destructive. If "God Save The Queen" had been the symbolic execution of the monarch, then the election of Thatcher was a symbolic rebirth. And in the elevation of Thatcher, the movement inspired by the Sex Pistols had played no small part. In many ways Punk had been conceived by Malcolm McLaren, and accomplices such as Bernie Rhodes, as the consummation of the counter-culture, as "one last heave" to unseat the old order and produce the conditions for a new society to flourish. However, in trashing the monarchy and amplifying the sense of decay, they had merely paved the way for a new and unprecedented revolution that would be unleashed by Margaret Thatcher and her advisors, for she was not like the hapless Butskellite leaders of old. As such Punk, far from being the voice of the street, and the clarion call of liberation that its proselytisers liked to depict it as, was merely the birth pangs of Neoliberalism. Punk was ultimately a total social, cultural and political disaster, and its protagonists would witness the full scale of the resulting devastation in the decade ahead.