John Cooper: Tories can learn a lesson from Black Sabbath – Never Say Die

John Cooper is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Dumfries and Galloway.

Japan’s new prime minister Sanae Takaichi is her country’s first female leader, and I like her already.

It’s a bit about her ending decades of male leadership, but more about the fact she was a heavy metal drummer, anchoring an all-female band in her university days, and that she is a fan of Deep Purple, a truly fabulous British export.

I’ve been playing drums in a variety of bands since I was 14, and a fan of heavy metal since about the same time. And my Conservatism has gone hand-in-hand with my musical tastes, for I think heavy metal is nothing less than a working-class Tory phenomenon.

I mentioned Black Sabbath in the Chamber when Parliament was debating the entirely wrong-headed ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans from visiting Aston Villa. I quoted their song Mob Rules, which wisely counsels: “If you listen to fools – the mob rules.” Apposite when the state looks impotent in the face of an angry horde.

Sabbath and so many other bands emerged from the Midlands, firmly rooted in authentic working-class backgrounds. Guitarist Tony Iommi is hugely influential, but his career was almost over before it started when a guillotine in the Birmingham metal-bashing factory where he worked – aged 17 – sliced the tips off two fingers.

He created prosthetics so he could keep playing by melting down Fairy Liquid washing-up bottles. That’s the gritty resilience, the can-do spirit, I see time and again among Tories everywhere.

Labour’s deputy leadership race (Can’t they both lose?) has seen them scrambling to parade their working-class credentials, unleashing scenes similar to Monty Python’s Four Yorkshireman sketch. Talk about prolier than thou…

But Labour have no monopoly on the working class, far from it. I was delighted to be present at our Manchester Conference when the wraps came off Blue Collar Conservatism, brainchild of fellow MP Esther McVey and Clark Vasey, which is “fighting for a Britain which works for working people”.

It’s a hugely important group, for – amidst all the labels appended to various factions within our Party – I recognise ‘blue collar’ as the epitome of the Scottish arm. As Prime Minister, David Cameron talked of the “alarm clock generation”, the people who set an alarm because they have to be up for work in the morning.

That is our sort of people then, and now. The workers; the doers; the strivers – not skivers.

Bands are a fine example. They hone their craft with long hours of thankless rehearsal. They polish their USP – their music – and they keep slogging through tours and albums.

It’s far from glamourous. Motorhead’s We Are The Road Crew is an unflinching look at the grind of touring:

“I’m driving like a maniac / Driving my way to hell and back / Another room; another case to pack”

AC/DC (Australian? They’re Scotland’s finest with guitarists Angus and Malcolm Young and singer Bon Scott all hailing from North of the Border) wrote Highway to Hell not about supping with the Devil, but about the reality of a tour bus where your nose is scant inches from someone else’s sweaty feet.

And bands know hard work pays. For a few, it pays exceptionally well, but if the story of a band such as, say, Saxon or Def Leppard – rising from the post-industrial wastelands to the dizzying heights of stardom through hard work and determination – is not a Conservative story, I don’t know what is.

Yes, many bands talk Left – it’s fashionable – but many more act Right.

Meanwhile Labour tout themselves as the party of working men and women when things such as their woeful Employment Rights Bill, freighted with red tape, does more for trade union apparatchiks than those who actually graft for a living.

So more power to Blue Collar Conservatism and their message that we want to help people thrive, not just survive, with good well-paid jobs in a land where aspiration is matched with opportunity and success is celebrated.

It’s music to my ears and the sort of motto that can lift our Party’s fortunes from this present slough. I’m now playing a Black Sabbath album that rather sums it up: Never Say Die.