They’ve fuck all else to be doing
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Bands were marching through the streets of Derry last weekend with banners of sectarian UVF killers, shouting FTP and carrying Para berets , but it’s the songs sung in a ticketed event in West Belfast that gets people all hot and bothered. I’d love it if the Wolfe Tones never came north again, but I also understand why people there won’t be dictated to in terms of the bands that perform.
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Yup, all of them. I never sang them anyhow. Not my thing. I don’t tend to listen to that type of music, same as I would’t sing a Westlife song. I don’t think, but could be wrong, that Feile event in Belfast would not be on the radar througout Ireland anyhow.
They get govt funding do they not?
Any idiotic behaviour can be excused if there are others who might behave even worse.
Something like that, I think.
The reality of the situation is that when the crowd at Feile sing Up The RA, they are glorifying the Shankill bomb, Enniskillen, Kingsmills and all the rest.
There’s no point even debating about it, it’s simply an obvious fact. That’s what they are doing.
Lads here need to get that through their thick skulls.
I don’t buy the “they’re just kids, they don’t know anything about the troubles, it’s just a song etc” either. If it’s just a song, it’s just a flag etc.
Of course they know what they are singing when the sing up the RA/UVF etc. Just admit it, and it’s fine and we move on, instead of pussy footin around and giving it “but themuns” etc.
There wouldn’t be many like you I reckon who never sang The Fields of Athenry at some stage. Our GAA club has a rule that no rebel songs can be sung on the club grounds, at club events, or by members dressed in club gear. It means members can travel to Irish rugby games and sing The Fields with their Unionist pals, but get in bother for it if they are wearing a club hoodie and sing it in the local pub.
Féile gets some arts council money and some charity money or something, I’m not sure the full details.
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I’ve played it in bands plenty of times on request, but not sang it, and wouldn’t have been on the setlist as such. Just not my cup of tea, that type of music, and in the interests of “moving on”, I would leave it alone in the drawer if needs be. It’s funny how, depending on the context, you can or can’t sing it.
Anytime folk used to request the rebel songs, we’d call them “bord failte” songs. That’s what folk wanted to sing a lot of the time!
Though I do like McIlhatton (Bobby Sands song), Arthur McBride (Paul Brady version) and one of the best “The band played Waltzing Matilda”. “Green Fields of France” is also a cracker, but I wouldn’t call that a RA song myself.
The Fields Of Athenry is not Ooh Aah Up The RA.
Rule Britannia is problematic for reasons that aren’t too dissimilar to Ooh Aah Up The RA.
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What point are you trying to make?
Are you trying to say that relatively it is not as bad, so what?
Halfpipe engages in classic double speak on the subject. On the one hand the kids of the north don’t care about the past but are just having a laugh, but on the other that generation are better educated than those who lived through the worst of the Troubles.
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There’s nobody loves ‘up the ra’ more than the forum west brits, stephen nolan etc
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It is a great way to put the skids on a UI tbf.
Aye, a bunch of kids aping it up at a concert will derail the whole thing
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Just like a bunch of kids lighting a bombfire really appeals to the other side.
The north has two sides antagonising one another and a load of people in the middle who quite clearly not going the way people on the nationalist side thought they would.
You seem to have less of a clue about the north than you do about America.
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Being apes yeah. You’d think they’d have more sense.
Standard enough response from the under pressure Nordie when you get beyond the whataboutery.
It’s pretty sad that your generation blew this chance and passed on this kind of toxicity to the next generation.
Poor auld @Tim_Riggins, he has made such a fool of himself on matters of the north he is afraid to tag me in posts anymore even when he refers to me in them. He is the only fella iv ever seen try to debate the point that multiple inquiries are carried out to leave people less informed on a subject than they were previously.
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