In no particular order:
1) The Specials Ghost Town (1981): "Ghost Town is a prophecy that sounds like an aftermath. The ghost town it describes, gutted by recession, is the terrain before a riot ("people getting angry") but you sense it will be as bad or worse after the anger has erupted. Hence the song's circularity: it begins as it ends, with a spectral wail that could be either a cold wind or distant sirens. When the riots did break out, the Specials found the experience frightening rather than vindicating. Let's not forget that the violence had pernicious unintended consequences: Thatcher ignored many of the recommendations in Lord Scarman's report and instead invested in state-of-the-art riot gear that came in handy during the miners' strike three years later." Via The Guardian
2) The English Beat Stand Down Margaret (1980): "'Margaret' is Margaret Thatcher, who was British Prime Minister from 1979-1990. Dave Wakeling of The English Beat explains: "The late '70s in England were troubled times: high unemployment, secession, the fear of nuclear war breaking out, the kind of fantasy end-of-the-century, end-of-the-world kind of feeling. And Margaret Thatcher came on, kind of like the last great hope of the British Empire. She'd actually been born above a grocery store in Nottingham, a working class city. But had developed airs and graces and a posh accent and kind of saw herself as being of the upper classes, which she wasn't. So it was sort of a false accent, and a false attitude that went with it. Then she fell head over heels with her teenage heartthrob, Ronald Reagan, and went about trying to dismantle any sense of social unity that England had: breaking the unions, letting people go out on strike and starve. And in a very few short years she managed to turn people in England from neighbors to competitors. A lot of people bought shares in the gas company and the train company and the water company, bought shares in the companies that our dads had already paid for. And in doing so turned everybody into competitors - instead of neighbors now we were competing as investors, jealously guarding our shares. Our people stopped talking to each other at bus stops. People started to become more suspicious of each other. And the sense of camaraderie was broken in a way that I haven't ever seen fully replaced, really. It may have been that Britain needed dragging into the 21st Century, but it may also be that making the mistake of believing that just because communism was obviously collapsing, that didn't mean that all of the tenets of world capitalism were absolutely accurate. That there was perhaps stuff in our system that weren't that great, either. And I think they're starting to see that it's okay for someone to make a billion dollars, but if they do, somebody else has to go without dinner that night, because that money comes from somewhere. And so the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and poor old Margaret was acting as though she had airs and graces to the manor born. So it was stand down in the political sense – resign. But it was also stand down as in get off your soap box. Get off your high horse. Stop trying to talk down to people. You don't really know that much more than them, anyway. And stop putting on this hoity toity accent, because you know you're really a shop girl from Nottingham." Via Songfacts
3) Pet Shop Boys Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money) (1986): "Written as a satire of Thatcherism and its embodiment in conspicuous consumption and yuppies in the United Kingdom during the 1980s, the song's indirect attack on its subject matter has come to exemplify the Pet Shop Boys as ironists in their songwriting. Via Wikipedia
4) Morrissey Margaret on the Guillotine (1988): "In a 1984 interview, Morrissey spoke of the then-Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher: "She is only one person. She can be destroyed. It is the only remedy for this country at the moment." Morrissey's first solo album, Viva Hate, included a track entitled "Margaret on the Guillotine", a jab at Thatcher. British police responded by searching Morrissey's home and carrying out an official investigation, while Simon Reynolds, who had interviewed Morrissey for Melody Maker, was questioned about the tone in which Morrissey had made certain remarks about Thatcher." Via Wikipedia
5) Billy Bragg Between the Wars (1985): This song relates to the Miners' Strike of 1984-1985, which started when Thatcher's government closed down the Cortonwood Collery in Yorkshire, along with 20 other pit closures. The National Union of Miners responded by calling for national strike. However, Thatcher violently and brutally crushed the miners' strike. Many of the towns affected from the strike have never been able to recover and are still in an economic depression. You can read more here & see photos from the various strikes from 1984-1985.
6) Chumbawamba Fitzwilliam (year unknown): Before Chumbawamba received world-wide fame for their song, Tubthumping (1997), this anarcho-punk, alternative band had written many songs devoted to the Miners' Strike. The song Fitzwilliam is dedicated to the pit village of Fitzwilliam, which was one of the worst cases of economic decline following the strike. Via Wikipedia
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