āDid you know Paul sent a telegram to Margaret Thatcher in 1982? He did. It wasnāt friendly. He lost his temper over her treatment of health workers and fired off a long outraged message, comparing her to Ted Heath, the prime minister (tweaked in āTaxmanā) felled by the 1974 coal strike. McCartney warned, āWhat the miners did to Ted Heath, the nurses will do to you.ā This controversy is a curiously obscure footnote to his lifeāit seldom gets mentioned in even the fattest biographies. He doesnāt discuss it in Many Years from Now. I only know about it because I read it as a Random Note in Rolling Stone, not exactly a hotbed of pro-Paul propaganda at the time. (The item began, āReports that Paul McCartney is intellectually brain-dead appear to have been premature.ā) But the telegram was a major U.K. scandal, with Tory politicians denouncing him. In October 1982, Thatcher was at the height of her power, in the wake of her Falkland Islands blitz. Many rock stars talked shit about MaggieāElvis Costello, Morrissey, Paul Wellerābut Paul was the one more famous than she was. He had something to lose by hitting send on this, and nothing to gain. What, you think he was trying for coolness points? This is Paul McCartney, remember? He was in the middle of making Give My Regards to Broad Street. He could have clawed Thatcherās still-beating heart out of her rib cage, impaled it on his Hofner on live TV, and everybody would have said, āYeah, but āSilly Love Songsā though.ā Why did he feel so intensely about the nurses? He didnāt mention his mother in the telegram, but he must have been thinking of Mary McCartneyās life and death. So he snapped, even though it was off-message. (He was busy that week doing interviews for the twentieth anniversary of āLove Me Doāāthe moment called for Cozy Lovable Paul, not Angry Paul.) He didnāt boast about it later, though fans today would be impressed that any English rock star of that generationālet alone Paulāhad the gumption to send this. You can make a case that it was a braver, riskier, and more politically relevant move than John sending his MBE medal back to the Queen in 1970. Still, Johnās gesture went down in history and Paulās didnāt, though his fans would probably admire the move if they knew about it. He couldnāt win. He was Paul. All he could do was piss people off.ā
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