Some said they were heroes, martyrs, idols of freedom in a time of tyranny. Others said they were communists, degenerates, subversive spies weakening the nation. But no matter the perspective, one thing was true, they made great music.
Despite the USSR, through the continent-dominating Berlin Pact, having dug its economic talons into the UK during the Cold War, Parliament in 1969 remained unaffected. In fact it had moved more to the right. The hippie movement that had exploded out of the isolationist United States failed to deliver on its promises of revolution and peace for all mankind. The Berlin Pact remained studiously unaffected, quickly arresting dissidents, "disappearing" them, and pretending they had never existed. The United States was stirred into self-reflection by the hippies, emerging from its isolation and realizing now how inadvertently isolated, though prosperous, it had become. Though the great marshal-president Huey Long was dead, his shadow lived on in the effects of his administrations. Slowly, surely, the slumbering giant woke and found itself alone. The markets of Japan, China, all Europe, and half of Africa were closed to it. South Africa and the Anglo nations of the Pacific were struggling to maintain economic and social independence. Some south American nations were falling to communism, and the UK itself was in dire straits.
In 1970 the dam broke. Five years of sudden and unrelenting political pressure from the United States forced the hand of UK foreign policy. After decades of watching the Berlin Pact sitting fairly amicably (despite the human rights abuses) across the Channel, Parliament and the British people had come to view them as less of a threat than the bogeymen they had once been. The sudden burst of the United States onto the scene, especially with the reputation of the divisive marshal-president and his successors, drove public opinion decidedly against the United States. Parliament began conceding diplomatically to Moscow after US submarines and fleets were sighted in the east Atlantic. One submarine even circumnavigated Great Britain in a stunt aimed to increase American confidence in the current administration's power.
But there was a third way. Led by students, disaffected middle-class teens and early-twenties loiterers, and the coastal urban poor, was a nostalgia for the empire and British exceptionalism that had fallen apart during the horrendous five-year long Blitz. The UK had exhausted its political and economic power preserving Great Britain from invasion, and in turn lost almost everything but the island of Great Britain itself. Colonial abuses unknown, the younger generation looked back to a greater, sovereign time, and viewed the current situation as a temporary embarrassment. So was born glam rock.
Satirizing stodgy stiff-lipped Britishness, precise authoritarian Communism, and gung-ho Americanism, musicians and artists of the glam rock movement quickly made a name for themselves. David Robert Jones of Brixton, Brian Slade from Manchester, the band Slade, Sweet, Paul Gadd (known as Gadd Glitter), and others rose from seedy underground clubs and pubs to play at major venues and amphitheaters. Public disapproval quickly turned to disavowal when the lyrics became political and the shows pornographic in their content and intensity. In a time of stagnation and decay, the glam rockers were the only ones working toward a shocking rebirth of Britain.
Others were seeking alternate avenues. A growing body of the people sought alliance with the United States, viewing them as the little brother come lately to save the day. Yet others grew closer to the Berlin Pact nations, and sought to abolish the monarchy and nobility. Regional and urban-rural divides came to the fore as local police forces tended to favor one side or the other or the third. The years through the beginning of 1974 saw a rise in crime and violence. The antipathy that began with fights at glam concerts, serious pranks at schools and universities, and strikes at dockyards and factories degenerated over the years into a vicious hatred punctuated by arson, vandalism, and aggravated assault. Around London the police forces were solidly aligned with the pro-Moscow government. Several cases of manslaughter and outright murder went unpunished because local authorities that were uncooperative in bringing perpetrators to justice.
Then on May 14th, 1974 came the first glitter bombing. Bradley Smith, a prominent young British communist, came to speak at Oxford University. Prior to the event an unknown person or group created a deadly mechanism of thermite, gunpowder, firecrackers, nails and other shrapnel, and glitter and placed it under the stage where Smith was set to speak. Halfway through the speech the bomb exploded, lifting the stage and sending globs of molten metal flying in all directions. Thirteen people were killed and hundreds suffered permanent injuries or scars. Despite the anonymity, everyone knew in general what "faction" of society was responsible. In the following five years, eleven more glitter bombs of varying size were detonated in the UK. The glitter bombs only aggravated public opinion and drove the country deeper into unrest.
To some they were plain terrorism, unwelcome in an ostensibly democratic society. To others they were tools in the enforcement of freedom, to keep Britain free of would-be authoritarians. Regardless, the acts of barely discriminate violence only served to fan the flames. Then in 1979 word came from France. The population and leadership, sick of domination from Moscow, rose up against the Berlin Pact. French communists joined with their people to oppose dictates from Moscow. Berlin Pact tanks crossed the French border and heavy fighting began, while American armies landed in western France and joined the fight against the Berlin Pact. However the Americans served their own interests as well, massacring anti-Moscow communists when they could get away with it.
The massive US Navy dominating the Atlantic, Channel, and North Sea were too much for British society. Communists fought for control of industrial areas and the cities, or fled to Belgium or the Netherlands. The pro-Americans set about taking control of the country and communicating with US intelligence and Navy elements ready to take advantage of this safe forward base of attack. And the glam rockers and their supporters--now more than just unemployed young people and schoolboys--rose up to proclaim an independent Britain that would frustrate any attempt to influence or invade.
In 1979 the Hot War began, and the glam rock legacy was to have a profound effect on the future....
