Monsters In Disguise

This is another anarchic number written by O'Connor for the film Breaking Glass. The monsters in this song are the faceless bureaucrats of Whitehall, where the administration of the British Government is carried out. The archetypal British civil servant wears a bowler hat and carries an umbrella, a somewhat outmoded stereotype in the 21st Century, but the secret machinations of bureaucracy frequently seem like a vast conspiracy to ordinary people who have the misfortune to clash with it. The song makes the point that the secrecy and rules are constructed first and foremost for the protection of the often anonymous and always unaccountable apparatchiks who at times have the power of life and death over us all. It will strike a chord with anarchists and angry citizens everywhere because this is something which is not unique to Britain; in many supposedly democratic countries, unelected bureaucrats are even less accountable.