On June 7, 1977, Queen Elizabeth II celebrated at Buckingham Palace the first jubilee of her exceptionally long reign, which had already lasted twenty-five years. We did not know that the silver jubilee would be followed by the golden jubilee, then the diamond and platinum jubilee, the expression of which was invented for her. Another four years and we would no longer have been short of words but of precious metals.
It was sunny. The day opened with a ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral, attended by Jimmy Carter and James Callaghan, the Prime Minister at the time. All these beautiful people went to lunch at the Guildhall at the invitation of the Mayor of London, before going to party in Buckingham, a stone’s throw from Parliament, on the north bank of the Thames. A million people hoped to see her appear on the balcony and crowded in front of the palace gates. Everywhere in the kingdom, parties and brass bands, balls, concerts had been organized. The day before, they had lit, as the queen had done herself in her Windsor castle, bonfires worthy of Saint John.
Facing Westminster, on this afternoon of June 7, a tiny incident was to occur. A music producer rented a boat. The musicians are kids. Of those punks who shaved their hair after seeing Taxi Driver. The badly planted teeth, the thin arms, the tasteless t-shirts, the scowl eye and the turned up lip. They have a tough life. Their sentences are punctuated with insanity which has already made them a small reputation in December, when they were the first to hold, on a local channel, filthy comments which cost the presenter his career. They must sing on the deck of the boat, under the windows of the Parliament like a kind of pochade their title which has just left, a few days before and to which this day lends the occasion of a welcome publicity. But the song lasts, on the soundtrack of the documentary they are shooting, only two minutes thirty-four. The lyrics of God Save the Queen shock. Not today… Not when the Queen… A cameraman fights with a musician. The melee swells and degenerates, the police intervene, take everyone on board, the punks and their relatives, Malcolm McLaren, Vivienne Westwood. The Sex Pistols are legendary.
“Winter of Discontent”
They will be first of charts British for weeks. Second, in fact, behind a title by Rod Stewart called, it’s not invented, I Don’t Want to Talk About It. England are about to go through a difficult period. No Future has become the cry of a generation. Inflation is at record highs. Up to 27%. The price control plan is based on controlling wages, negotiated branch by branch with the unions, but the Labor Party, the unions are lagging behind the movement rising from the streets. Prices increase every week. People can no longer find accommodation. People can no longer feed themselves. Gradually, all sectors went on strike. The automobile of course, then it’s the turn of the railway workers, energy, then the schools and the hospitals, and then the transporters and the country really begins to suffer, there is no more gasoline, there there are no more corn flakes in grocery stores. The press who have read Shakespeare and love irony call it the “winter of discontent”.
Callaghan’s government falls and it’s a pissed off lady who has waged an aggressive campaign with the help of a firm of publicists who wins in the spring. Her name is Margaret Thatcher. It will wage ruthless imperial wars, aggravate mass unemployment and undermine social benefits and trade unions, as literature and cinema across the Channel bear witness to unanimously and unequivocally. Yet even today, a new prime minister cites her as a role model as another summer of discontent follows another jubilee, record inflation sparks strikes and riots across the country.
It’s hard to know, what is History, whether it’s treaties, wars and queens, or whether it’s people, their dreams and their sorrows. There is no doubt, however, that God Save the Queen be a song of Sex Pistols. Besides, The Queen Is Dead is a Smiths album.
Thomas B. Reverdy is a novelist. He is notably the author of Les Evaporés (2013) and L’Hiver du mécontentement (2018, Flammarion).