The Wolf Tones were drifting towards retirement. As a three-piece band whose members are closing in on eighty years of age, they had a good career playing Irish rebel songs on the Folk scene in Ireland and to the Irish diaspora abroad. Some of these songs are controversial and deal with aspects of the troubles in Northern Ireland from a particular republican slant. But, by and large, the band had been successful, were well known on the Irish music scene, and had played some larger venues in Ireland and abroad over the decades.
An unlikely Irish sporting achievement was to change their retirement plans and catapult them back into the limelight and a new era of fame and notoriety. In a game played in Glasgow, the Irish women’s football team secured a famous 1-nil victory over Scotland to secure a place at the 2023 World Cup. A truly marvellous achievement, the team celebrated in style and players were filmed singing Celtic Symphony, a song by The Wolfe Tones written to celebrate the centenary of Celtic Football Club. The song featured the words ooh, ah, up the RA, a reference to support for the Provisional IRA. Brian Warfield of the Wolf Tones explained that those who were offended by the song were misguided about its intentions and that it was a direct quote from graffiti he’d seen on a wall in Glasgow, but from many politicians and those in the media, it was roundly condemned. UEFA began an investigation, and the FAI were eventually fined a total of €20,000, and some of the gloss was taken off the significant achievement of the women’s football team.
But while some politicians and commentators doubled down on the controversy, many others in Ireland simply couldn’t understand nor comprehend the fuss around singing a song that is widely known across Irish society and regularly sung and played from jukeboxes across the country. In supporting the team in the best way they thought possible, some began to normalise the chant thus inadvertently boosting the popularity of the Wolf Tones, their music, and their concert attendance.
Why this all came about is an interesting question but the answer, as always in the case of Ireland, is multifaceted and complicated.
One of the first explanations is that many of these songs and lyrics are ideal to sing along to. An Irish singsong is closely associated with spontaneity, passion, drink, community and diaspora, and the lyrics and songs of the Wolf Tones lend themselves to such activity. Music of this nature plays an important role in collective identity and confirming group solidity.
Another explanation is the normal time-honoured rebellion of youth. Once it was revealed that singing along to such songs will cause offence then some will be drawn to the subversive nature of singing and supporting the group that popularised the song, The Wolf Tones. Rebellion (pardon the pun) is part and parcel of the normal rite and passage of youth.
But other reasons led to the resurgence in popularity of these songs and, thus, the Wolf Tones.
There is an interesting scene in Martin Scorsese’s award-winning The Departed In which Matt Damon’s character, in conversation with his soon-to-be psychologist girlfriend, claims that ‘the Irish are impervious to psychoanalysis’. It is an interesting statement, totally devoid of any evidence, but intriguing all the same.
Irish people don’t handle or deal with collective trauma very well: we tend to bury it and bury it deep. Our recent attempts to fully understand the immense trauma of the Civil War is a case in point. Apart from an excellent historical documentary by Throne Productions, little by way of attempting to deal with the deep family and community trauma the war has had and that is carried through generations through our genes was evident. Another case in point is The Great Hunger. Ireland suffered a calmative famine in the mid-nineteenth century and to this day we have never had a national reckoning with the events around and after such trauma. The official day of remembrance in May is not widely observed or known and there is no truly national event or activity fixed on the immense suffering and death of that period.
To this catalogue of collective suffering, we now add the troubles in Northern Ireland. We appear to be a long way from facing the terrible and deep hurt on all sides and the loss of so many lives in the later decades of the twentieth century. So, it should come as no surprise that a new generation, born after the Good Friday Agreement, would be unaware of the recent past and that the singing of some songs closely associated with the Provisional IRA would be so hurtful to large swathes of the Unionist community and others across the Island and further afield. In the absence of an understanding and public debate and discussion on the hurt from the troubles, the negative reaction to the singing of ooh, ah, up the RA might appear to be an overreaction to some innocuous remembrance and fun.
A new digital and Ryanair generation, unaware of the recent past and confident in a new sense of what it means to be Irish in the modern world, views the past through a rosy, green lens. Attending a Wolf Tone concert and singing along to the songs, as huge numbers did at Electric Picnic and the recent Point Depot concerts, is not a new surge towards militant republicanism but rather an expression of what it means to be Irish in a new multicultural Ireland that is trying to remember the past in a void of understanding and discussion.
And it is at this point I see a small comfort in the resurgence of the songs and music of the Wolf Tones. The same people who sing the songs with passion also widely cheer Rhasidat Adeleke and her marvellous achievements in athletics and chant the names of Festy Ebosele, Andrew Omobamidele, and Chiedozie Ogbene from the terraces at Landsdowne Road at Irish games. There is no evidence to suggest that renewed support for the Wolf Tones and their music has led to any significant upsurge in support for Far-Right politics. So, maybe such songs and collective singing may be an important counterweight to the anger and hate of the extreme right. While accusations of sectarianism in their songs have been levelled against the band, their supporters are in the vanguard of change in terms of social injustice and inequalities.