Into the Dangerous Decade: 1979–82

Abstract

This chapter analyses the obscene and controversial depictions of Margaret Thatcher in MacSweeney’s three major sequences Colonel B, Jury Vet, and Liz Hard. It begins by examining manuscript material and goes on to elaborate the political context of the turn of the decade. Colonel B takes as one of its subjects the ABC trials of whistleblowers and radical journalists in 1977–78. Through archival research, this chapter shows MacSweeney’s interest in these trials with reference to his work as a journalist and in his reading of E.P. Thompson. The analysis of Jury Vet is framed by contemporary debates between Jacqueline Rose and Stuart Hall, and examines the aesthetic history of representing class domination and the nation state in sexualised terms. The chapter concludes by reading Liz Hard as a satire of the news coverage of the Falklands War and a critique of changes to the citizenship laws of the UK.