Paul McCartney's Ethnonationalist Moment

 

[Originally published at Aryan Skynet on April 11, 2019]

“On Sunday 30 January 1972, what became known as Bloody Sunday, news came from Northern Ireland that the British Army had opened fire on a Republican demonstration, killing 13 people: In the wake of this appalling incident,” Paul McCartney “did something that was for him very rare indeed,” writes Howard Sounes in Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney. Two days after the incident, he and Wings recorded “Give Ireland Back to the Irish”, a song “not only condemning the shootings, which most people lamented, but calling for the British to get out of Ireland, which was more problematic because the Protestant Loyalist population feared they would be murdered by their Catholic neighbors if the British Army withdrew. In writing this song,” Sounes contends, “Paul put himself on the side of the Republican movement and its terrorist group, the IRA, which was engaged in a murderous campaign against the British.” [1]

I never knew this song existed until, in my pre-internet adolescence, I happened to see a reference to it in the entry for Paul McCartney in the Chambers Biographical Dictionary. Often as Beatles and Wings songs occurred in the local classic rock radio rotation, this oddity somehow never turned up – and the song had effectively been buried since its release in February 1972. Sir Joseph Lockwood, head of EMI, had not even wanted to release the single, but finally indulged an impassioned McCartney [2]. “Down the years Auntie Beeb could be accused of being a little prim, banning records from its airwaves for what might seem rather mild breaches of taste,” writes Stuart Maconie, referring to the BBC, in The People’s Songs: The Story of Modern Britain in 50 Records. “It not only banned Paul McCartney’s ‘Give Ireland Back to the Irish’, a rather jaunty call for Troops Out and Irish Nationalism, DJs could not even mention the title on the chart rundown, referring to it as ‘a record by Paul McCartney and Wings’.” [3] To no avail, McCartney had included an instrumental version of the song as the single’s B side in “his hope that stations banning the politically charged song might play the flip side and mention its title on the air.” [4]

The protest song “usually went down well with the students” when McCartney and Wings performed it live, but the singer was “roundly criticized in the normally pro-McCartney national press for taking a simplistic stance on Northern Ireland,” writes Sounes. “In response, he took out an advertisement in the Sun newspaper urging the public to buy the record and make up their own mind.” Co-songwriter Linda McCartney told Melody Maker, “Look, in Ireland the IRA was forced into existence by the fact that Britain took over the country […] Therefore if the British got out of Ireland there’d be no need for the IRA […]” [5]. “Despite having no airplay, the single reached number 16 on the British charts,” recounts Bruce Spizer in The Beatles Solo on Apple Records. “In America, the single was released on February 28. Neither the public nor the critics could relate to Paul’s political statement about events in Northern Ireland. Airplay was so marginal,” Spizer asserts, “that the song, for all practical purposes, was also banned by American radio.” [6]

McCartney biographer Sounes, who is dismissive of the song’s “simplistic sentiment”, wonders “if his decision to write a Republican marching song had more to do with wanting to match John Lennon, who projected a trendy image of political engagement these days […] It is also possible,” Sounes speculates, “that Paul wanted to reach out to John again by aligning himself with one of his old friend’s pet causes.” [7] Slugger O’Toole’s Dan Payne, however, argues that McCartney’s artistic flirtation with Irish nationalism may have had a more substantial grounding:

[…] it may seem curious (to say the least) that such a quintessentially British band (and, for that matter, brand) like the Beatles – well, at least half of them – were firm supporters of Irish nationalism. On the other hand, both Lennon and Paul McCartney had Irish roots, both of them having descended from Irish immigrants (as is the case with thousands of Liverpudlians). These were, moreover, roots in which they both took pride, so perhaps their sympathy with the nationalist cause is not that difficult to understand.

The Beatles broke up in 1970, allowing John, Paul, George and Ringo to plough their own artistic furrows, free from any further acrimonious rows. At the same time, violence was raging on the streets of Belfast and Derry as the battle lines between the British army, the IRA, the loyalist paramilitaries, and security forces solidified.

With hindsight, it is clear that John Lennon was never going to stay silent on Irish affairs for long. […]

Lennon had nailed his nationalist colours to mast even before the events of Bloody Sunday had hit the New York newsstands. At the time he was recording tracks for his third solo album Some Time in New York City, one of which was entitled “The Luck of the Irish”. It is, to say the least, a strongly republican-flavoured song […]

On hearing the news of the massacre in the Bogside, Lennon penned the much more strongly nationalistic track “Sunday Bloody Sunday”. At a time when most British commentators unquestioningly accepted the army’s story that the Paras had come under attack from bullets and nail bombs when they opened fire, Lennon didn’t buy it for a minute […]

Ultimately, neither “Sunday Bloody Sunday” nor “The Luck of the Irish” were released as singles, so it is something of an irony that it was Paul McCartney, rather than John Lennon, who would create the biggest impact with a pro-nationalist pop song – considering that Lennon was easily the more politically opinionated of the two. […] Like Lennon’s musical contributions to the Irish debate, McCartney’s song similarly left listeners in no doubt as to where this ex-Beatle’s sympathies lay: “Give Ireland Back to the Irish” is an unambiguous call for Ireland to be united and ruled from Dublin, even if the tone is much less aggressive than in Lennon’s songs […] [8]

Lennon’s legacy, for Stuart Maconie, “is that we have started to think that pop stars have anything to say about politics. Lennon had nothing to say about politics: he was a berk [i.e., a fool], politically naive,” and “any half-arsed, two-bit, ill-thought-out revolutionary group who were happening to pass through London could have got money off John Lennon.” [9] What of Paul McCartney? Is he, by contrast, to be remembered for “Silly Love Songs” alone? Whatever thoughts he might have entertained of further work in a similar vein, the chilly reception given to “Give Ireland Back to the Irish” effectively ended this interesting phase of McCartney’s career. There was no law in Britain or in the United States forbidding an artist from writing a genuinely anti-establishment protest song – nor was there any obligation on the part of the defense-connected media establishment to promote it – and an older, more cynical McCartney had clearly learned his lesson by the time Neocon Woodstock slammed into New York City in 2001.

Rainer Chlodwig von K.

Rainer is the author of Drugs, Jungles, and Jingoism.

Endnotes

[1] Sounes, Howard. Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2010, p. 294.

[2] Payne, Dan. “‘You Say You Want a Revolution …’ – The Beatles and Irish Nationalism”. Slugger O’Toole (October 9, 2015): https://sluggerotoole.com/2015/10/09/you-say-you-want-a-revolution-the-beatles-and-irish-nationalism/

[3] Maconie, Stuart. The People’s Songs: The Story of Modern Britain in 50 Records. London: Ebury Press, 2013, p. 85.

[4] Spizer, Bruce. The Beatles Solo on Apple Records: The Entire Beatles Solo Catalog on Apple Records Including Imagine, Band on the Run, All Things Must Pass, and Ringo. New Orleans, LA: 498 Productions, 2005, p. 146.

[5] Sounes, Howard. Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2010, p. 296.

[6] Spizer, Bruce. The Beatles Solo on Apple Records: The Entire Beatles Solo Catalog on Apple Records Including Imagine, Band on the Run, All Things Must Pass, and Ringo. New Orleans, LA: 498 Productions, 2005, p. 145.

[7] Sounes, Howard. Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2010, p. 294.

[8] Payne, Dan. “‘You Say You Want a Revolution …’ – The Beatles and Irish Nationalism”. Slugger O’Toole (October 9, 2015): https://sluggerotoole.com/2015/10/09/you-say-you-want-a-revolution-the-beatles-and-irish-nationalism/

[9] Ibid.