Anticipating Thatcher’s Death

Abstract

In this chapter, Hadley examines anti-Thatcher songs from the 1980s to the present which anticipated Margaret Thatcher’s death. It analyses Costello’s and Morrissey’s mournful ballads of the 1980s, before considering the more upbeat songs of the new millennium by Hefner, Elton John and Lee Hall and Pete Wylie. Hadley argues that these songs mediate anti-Thatcher sentiment through the person of Thatcher, with her imagined death functioning as a metaphor for her removal from power. Charges that these songs are disrespectful and ineffective political protests are assessed. The chapter closes with the campaign to get “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead!” to number one in the charts following Thatcher’s death, again connecting it to issues of respect and effective political protest.