Morrissey has a new album out, Ringleader of the Tormentors, so it seems like an ideal time to examine the misunderstood but interesting politics of the artist. This article is published in the August edition of revolution magazine.
In these times of mass disaffection for politicians and their wars, it’s surprising that there isn’t more anti-establishment music being produced. Our most successful musicians shun politics as being simply unfashionable. Furthermore, most artists are just plain boring, with nothing to say about our lives. In such a climate, English pop star Morrissey ‘ who also claims to be ‘not political’ ‘ seems almost revolutionary. A study of his political principles ‘ and his new album Ringleader of the Tormentors ‘ shows him to somewhat all over the place, yet never boring.
In terms of politics, Morrissey is best known for his animal rights stances, most famously releasing an album in 1985 with his former band, the Smiths, called Meat is Murder. Even today he still supports militant and violent action on behalf of what he sees as the victims of cruelty, such as foxes, seals, and laboratory animals. But it would be a mistake to pigeonhole Morrissey simply as a middle-class vegetarian softy. Morrissey has always been resolutely working-class, and although obviously now a millionaire with a bourgeois lifestyle, he rejects the usual pop star lifestyle and orientation in favour of a punk ethic. And although he might be seen as part of the elite, he continues his role as the chronicler of the downtrodden and is therefore seen as a true ‘proletarian hero’ to many of his fans
Morrissey’s politics have never been entirely clear or obviously thought out. At times he has expressed the sentiment that he is a socialist, and in one mid-1990s interview he even flippantly claimed to ‘long for communism’. Certainly he is renowned as being fiercely anti-establishment and clearly republican. Part of this probably comes from his background growing up in an Irish immigrant family in the northern English city of Manchester. Throughout the 1980s he supported the IRA, wrote songs such as A Rush and a Push and the Land is Our, applauded IRA bombings such as the ‘unfortunately unsuccessful’ attempt to blow up the British Conservative Government at their annual party conference in Brighton, sung the wishful-thinking anti-Thatcher song Margaret on the Guillotine and released an album called The Queen is Dead.
More recent songs reflect his hatred of the Establishment. His last album, You Are the Quarry ‘which was his biggest selling ever (with or without his former band, the Smiths) ‘ contained brilliant songs such as America is Not the World (‘America your head’s too big, because America, your belly’s too big’) and Mexico which defended that country against its big neighbour (‘I could sense the hate of the lone star state’) and the highlighted the position of the poor in the country (‘It seems if you’re rich and you’re white, you’ll be alright’). More impressive was his biggest selling hit, Irish Blood, English Heart, which contains the lyric ‘I’ve been dreaming of time when the English are sick to death of Labour and Tories, and spit upon the name Oliver Cromwell.’ Such a line is typical of an English artist who is just as staunchly opposed to the Labour Party as he is to the Conservatives. Few interviews occur these days when Morrissey doesn’t vent his anger about Tony Blair ‘ for example, stating that he would return to watching soccer if the players started booting Blair’s head around instead of a football. So at a time when Billy Bragg is still telling people to vote for Labour and plays benefits in the US for the Democrats, it’s good to see some political pop stars wishing a plague on both their houses.
When Ronald Regan recently died, Morrissey announced the news live on stage to fans, adding that it was pity it wasn’t George W Bush’s death. He was subsequently hauled in and interrogated by both the FBI and British Intelligence. Such events have pushed Morrissey to state ‘neither England or America are democratic societies.’
On his new album, Ringleader of the Tormentors, Morrissey presents less overt politics, with the vaguely anti-imperialist I Will See You in Far Off Places, being the only real contender. Summoning up the middle east, the song’s Arabic sounding guitars lead into the key line of the song, when the singer looks forward to meeting again, ‘If your God bestows protection upon you / And if the USA doesn’t bomb you’.
Outspokenness has always been the way of Morrissey. But at the same time he’s been unwillingness to live by political correctness or to explain himself to critics. In the early 1990s his detractors accused him of racism after he released unfortunate songs such as The National Front Disco and Bengali in Platforms and misguidedly appeared on stage brandishing a union jack. It is clear that Morrissey brought such allegations on himself by his trumpeting of English nationalism and his ambiguous flippancy. But since then he has fled the UK, lived in LA for seven years, and now resides in Rome. As an indication that Morrissey no longer identifies simply as English, he’s even backing Italy to win the football World Cup.
Recently Morrissey has proclaimed that pop music should be the ‘an untouchable platform for the working classes to stand up and say something noticeable.’ In line with this, his anthem The World is Full of Crashing Bores takes on the current stable of pop stars and the music industry. He sings: "It's just more lock jawed pop stars / Thicker than pig shit / Nothing to convey / They're so scared to show intelligence / It might smear their lovely career". Indeed. It’s good to have a proletarian-orientated artist with a desire to ‘wind the bastards up’.