Mick Clifford: Young Wolfe Tones' fans are supremely untroubled by the Troubles

The pictures of the gig uploaded on social media conveyed a sense of ecstasy that is rarely captured in a live music performance. To that extent, it looked magic.

The reaction to this popularity, that appeared to come out of nowhere, has been, depending on one’s point of view, bemusement, concern or delight. The bemusement centres on the popularity of seventy-something balladeers playing to a young, festival-going crowd into their music. 

Tom Dunne, on these pages on Thursday, summed up the perplexity he felt about the Tones bigging it up with the kids.

“What can I say? They are nothing like Lankum, or Damien Dempsey,” Dunne wrote. 

“It’s more like Phil Coulter crossed with Foster and Allen, except not as edgy. It’s Ronan Keating’s version of ‘Fairytale of New York’ rather than The Pogues. It’s Rebels on 45.” 

A perusal of some of the band’s favourite songs suggests the writing falls short of Cohenesque. Here’s the opening verse of ‘You’ll Never Beat The Irish’. 

“Killing, plundering, burning, pillaging, creating destruction all across the land. Murdering, ravaging, stealing, corrupting until, the Irish were outlaws in their own land. Degrading torturing, murdering, plundering, the monasteries and nobles all across the land.”

By the last verse, a little retribution was being exercised on the aggressor. 

“A fat greedy king called Henry, his dick was bigger than his brain, imposed on us his reformation, confiscation and usurpation.” 

At least nobody could suggest the lyrics were shrouded in mystery and open to artistic interpretation.

Concern over IRA support

The second strand of reaction was one of concern from those who see the Wolfe Tones as purveying support for the Provisional IRA’s activities during the Troubles, which included killing anyone whose death might advance the cause of a United Ireland. 

One such voice, more of concern than anger, was former taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. He told Newstalk’s The Hard Shoulder he would not get hung up on a line in a song but young people should be educated on what happened in The Troubles.

“I think people can sing songs about war and Vietnam and God knows what,” he said. 

“But I think young people, as a separate project, should educate themselves about what happened on this island. About the ferocious trauma that we had from ’68 on, the fact that 3,700 people were killed, that we had tens of thousands of bombs, shootings that damaged our image all over the world.”

Delighted over hatred of British

Then there were those who were delighted at this apparent display of untrammelled hatred of the British and undying love for the Sean Bean Bhocht. 

This cohort generally seeks to justify the Provos activities and drive on to urgently reclaiming the fourth green field. The glee surfed social media for days. Little thought is given to how it might sound to those in the northeast of the island who would prefer to stay in their own, separate field.

There may well be a more prosaic reason behind the surge in popularity of the Wolfies.

This week, the band announced a gig for the 3Arena, which will take place in October 2024 and commemorate their 60th anniversary of being a band. It was hastily announced on the back of the Picnic experience, with tickets on sale in the coming days in a bid to ride that wave of euphoria.

Will the multitudes of youth flock and throng to big it up in a concert venue where the Tones are the main attraction? Let’s wait and see, though it is worth noting long-announced shows at the much smaller 3Olympia and the INEC in Killarney remain on sale. 

'Streisand effect'

One probable factor in the popularity at Electric Picnic is surely what is known as the “Streisand effect”. 

This phenomenon got its moniker following an attempt by the legendary singer in 2003 to stop a Californian state project photographing her cliff-top home as part of a programme to tackle coastal erosion. 

Babs went to court over what she considered an invasion of privacy. The outcome was that there was a clamour among the public to see, photograph and get photographed outside her mansion. 

Once people were told to stay away, they came in their droves. The Streisand effect dictates that if you don’t want somebody to see something, or hear it, there will be a rush to do so.

Last year, a furore erupted after the national women’s soccer team were capturing singing Oh ah, up the ‘Ra. Outrage was expressed by those whose lived experience was of this cuddly entity cast as the ‘Ra. 

Some of that outrage was justified. More of it was attributable to a modern culture in which being outraged is a default emotion. 

Through it all, younger folk who weren’t around during the Troubles, figured out that if the older generation were agin’ it, then they had to find out what it was about so they could be for it. 

Hence, like smoking, gambling and drinking, the Wolfe Tones acquired the attraction of being the thing that your Da warned you against ever going near.

History narrative

But what of the history narrative being purveyed? For one side, it is glamourising the killing engaged in by the Provos, while the other sees it as retrospective approval from today’s youth. In reality, history through the songs of the Wolfe Tones is from the land neither colonised nor rebelling.

This became apparent to me when I attended one of the last concerts given by the Real Wolfe Tones, just before they succumbed to the Irish curse of The Split. Their last gig but one was on a cold January night in 2002 in Dublin’s Temple Theatre. 

By then, they had been going for 38 years. Within weeks, Derek Warfield, the band’s lodestar, would depart, leaving the three pieces that has current purchase on the brand as the Provisional Wolfe Tones, or maybe the Continuity Wolfe Tones.

At the time, it appeared as if the game might be up. The Tones without Derek would have been viewed as U2 without Bono, the Beatles without John, or even Bon Jovi without their Jon. Nobody would have thought they would still be belting out the tunes another two decades down the line.

Anyway, on the night in question, Derek was the main man. The fab four trooped onstage at 8.45pm with nary a hint that within weeks they would become three. Derek stepped forward to the microphone.

Boys and girls, we’re here to sing of the misery and suffering and destitution of the Irish people at the hands of the British.” 

The place went absolutely ballistic, erupting in whoops and cheers as if a dominatrix had just walked on stage armed with whips and the promise to inflict pain in search of pleasure.

Hit Parade of the Suffering 800

He introduced a succession of songs from the Hit Parade of the Suffering 800, such as God Save Ireland. 

“Boys and girls, this is a song about the Fenians who were hanged in 1864.” 

And on it went. Then the band came to one of the numbers they penned themselves, The Ballad Of Joe McDonnell.

In 2002, McDonnell had been dead just over 20 years. He was the fifth hunger striker to die in the H Blocks in 1981. Whatever one may have thought of his activities, he died for what he believed in. 

And his death was controversial, as the spokesperson for the prisoners in the H Blocks, Richard O’Rawe, would later claim he could have been saved but the Provisional leadership outside the prison refused to accept a compromise from the British. And now this man was apparently being honoured in song.

Brian Warfield, a branded headband wrapped around his skull, set the scene inside the H blocks. 

“They weighed the plates after they brought them back out to see if the boys had eaten as much as a pea. But they didn’t eat one pea. They were patriots,” he roared. 

The crowd responded in kind. Then Brian had a proposal. He told the audience that for this song the band asked that they would all sit on the floor. This was to replicate the street protests in places like Belfast during the hunger strikes.

By that time of the evening, a lot of drink had been taken on board, so some sat down, a few toppled over and more just didn’t like the idea of getting their jeans soiled on a sweaty dance floor in the name of a dead hunger striker. 

Unseemly vista

And then some of those seated began shouting at the refusniks to get their asses in gear, anger breaking out from behind beer goggles. The whole thing would have been funny if it wasn’t such an unseemly vista, allegedly crafted to honour a man who had died a horrible death within living memory of many of those present. 

If this was a salute to those cast as patriots, God Save Ireland if the Wolfe Tones ever got around to taking the mick.

That was then. 

Today, Joe McDonnell is a relic from history, the details of his life and death now firmly dispatched to the mists of time. 

For many of those who sang along last Sunday, he could have been at Robert Emmet’s shoulder, or a murdered Fenian, or in the GPO, and sure, what does it matter, wasn’t he done down by the Brits and it’s a catchy tune to sing along with. 

Right now, the smart money says the Wolfe Tones will be on the main stage at the Picnic next year. At this rate, we’ll be a nation once again in no time at all.