New Waver’s Weblog

One of the subjects I’m currently formulating for my thesis edits has to do with Thatcher and the Conservative ideas about the public/private split that she seemed to embody. Obviously this applies to business and the economy, which is the most apparent example. Her distaste for public and state-run services and her belief in the positive forces of the privatization and the free market are legendary (except, of course, for the NHS, which she largely left alone more for electoral reasons than ideological ones).

In an earlier post on this blog I mentioned my bemusement at the fact that such a staunch conservative would vote in favor of decriminalizing homosexuality and legalizing abortion, two actions I’m fairly certain that almost no American Conservative would make. To be fair, Thatcher was one of the few UK Conservatives who voted this way— including, I learned much to my surprise, Enoch Powell—but as I said in that post, for someone who represents the quintessential Conservative to many, those seem like very liberal moves to make.

However, I’m changing my view on that statement slightly. That’s not to say that these decisions on her part weren’t fairly liberal, just that it’s hardly as out of character for a conservative politician as I had first thought. The source for this seemingly-strange divide comes from the aforementioned public/private split that seems to make up a great deal of UK Conservative political thought. Namely, those two votes she cast dealt with intensely private issues, issues of personal sexuality and reproduction. Thatcher was strongly against the government interfering in people’s private affairs, saying that the government did not belong in people’s bedrooms. This is directly in line with the type of rugged individualism she endorsed throughout her political career. Whatever her personal feelings on these issues, she fundamentally disagreed with the government trying to regulate them. In this sense her decisions were perfectly in keeping with Conservative political beliefs.

On the other hand, she voted in favor of Clause 28, which outlawed the public discussion of homosexuality by local councils, particularly in schools. Again, whatever her personal feelings on the issue (she did, in fact, call the Clause ‘unnecessary’) she voted in accordance with Conservative thought. Namely, that sexual preference was a private concern and therefore should be kept private; any attempt to move the discussion to the public sphere had to be halted. Clause 28 was intended to protect the ‘decency’ and sensibilities of the general public, to keep them from being offended. ‘Do as you like in your own home,’ Thatcher’s government said ‘but keep it there.’ This desire to maintain public respectability at all costs was a hallmark of her time in office, and in many ways comes from Thatcher’s own lower-middle-class and Conservative background.

Right, you say, but what does this have to do with new wave? Well, unlike punk, whose political statements were largely aimed at public concerns, new wave artists often committed potentially highly subversive acts by voicing the intensely private, by giving voice to taboo issues and personal turmoils, by putting their personal lives on public display. Issues of sexuality and gender in particular were explored in almost unprecedented ways by new wave— not because it had never been done before, but because it had never been done by so many in such a mainstream context. New wave’s politics were not necessarily of the public even though they were for the public. By giving voice to the intensely intimate struggles of their lives, new wave artists gave a voice to the intimate struggles of a larger listening public at a time when society dictated that they should remain hidden from view.
PS– The title of this post comes from Gang of Four’s ‘Contract’ from their 1979 album Entertainment!. Though most people consider them to be post punk and not new wave, I often find the distinction is blurred. They certainly embody more than almost anyone else of that period the type of public/private schizophrenia that was being played out in pop music and the world at large. I wish I had a video of the song to share, but sadly I couldn’t find one. Time to do your homework!