Re: Clause 28 ?
Clause 28 was introduced in 1988, Shoplifters would have been written in about 1986 at the latest. The single was released in January 1987 I think, not sure on the exact date of the top of my head. For me 'Shoplifters' could symbolise anyone, the working classes or homosexuals, I find it open to intepreation.
Thatcher really should have gone up in smoke with the Brighton bomb, it wouldn't have put an end to the Tory bullshit, but it would have given a lot of people some sense of justice. Particually the striking miners at the time.
> I would agree with Tingle's interpretation of the song as a double
> entendre of Shirtlifters and Shoplifters.
>
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> From the website "It May All End Tomorrow":
> Clause 28 was a Maggie Thatcher invention during the mid-late eighties to
> stop the "promotion" of homosexuality and other
> "alternative lifestyles"; this meant that such things as plays,
> books and other media or arts related things were not allowed to promote
> alternative lifestyles (sounds unbelievable, but quite true), for example
> libraries could be prosecuted for holding books which specifically
> promoted such things.
> "I follow her career," Morrissey says. "Obviously, I find
> the entire Thatcher syndrome very stressful and evil and all those other
> words. But I think there's very little that people can do about it. The
> most perfect example, I suppose, is Clause 28. I think that absolutely
> embodies Thatcher's very nature and her quite natural hatred."
> I still believe that's what he was referring to in Shoplifters. The part
> about Channel 4 covering a future war could be to do with Clause 28 being
> overlooked in the channel's news, which I think was around the same time.
> Maybe the whole song is inspired by this Clause as it ties in with the
> line "...a listed crime".
>
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> This works extremely well with Uncleskinny's argument that the
> "Alabaster Crashes Down" line refers refers to sex (alabaster as
> semen - "A heartless hand on my shoulder, a push and it's over,
> alabaster crashes down..."), as the next line is "six months is
> a long time", which could then be meant to imply that gay sex has
> been criminalized (resulting in prison time - the "six months").
> However, being that Morrissey is such a genius, he draws parallels to the
> crime of shoplifting (beginning with the very title of the song), and so
> the line has a double meaning, in which case it may also be interpreted,
> as Patrick McCann said, as a shoplifter getting caught by a security guard
> ("a heartless hand......"), and pushed against a wall.
> In this way, the song uses the crime of Shoplifting as an analogy of the
> criminalization of being a "Shirtlifter", which was happening at
> that time in Britain with Clause 28.
> Morrissey is brilliant.