Why the perpetual outsider offends all the right people.
A minor controversy over a major event arose at the start of Morrissey’s career, and a similar experience may soon plague him in the present. Common to both are children, murder and Manchester. What has changed throughout the intervening years is the nature of controversy. What has changed is the nature of those taking offence. It was once the reactionary and the conservative, now it is the radical and the progressive. It was once the old, now it is the young. ‘Manchester, so much to answer for’, he sang in 1984, recalling the bodies on Saddleworth Moor from the 1960s of his childhood. The tragedy of the Moors murders continued to resonate. That’s how the nation grieved back then. It allowed itself to mourn; it allowed itself to be angry. While some events were too sacred to be sung about. ‘Suffer Little Children’ became a tabloid story, hyped up into a minor controversy; the lyric provided a list of the lost. ‘We will be right by your side, until the day you die.’
