The Pogues Song That Got Banned (Not Fairytale of New York)
Source: Wiki commons. Shane performing in Japan. Photo by Masao Nakagami.
In 1988, the Irish band The Pogues found themselves censored by the British media. As part of a ‘broadcast ban’, one of their songs was forbidden from TV and radio, and alleged to be ‘inciting terrorism’. However, the band strenuously denied this, and, as events unfolded, they were proven right.
In 1987, Paddy Hill lay inside a prison cell, doing time for a crime he hadn’t committed. Having now reached his 13th year behind bars, he was told that the popular Irish folk band The Pogues, led by Shane MacGowan, were going to write a song about him. He said:
“I thought it was a joke at first, when I heard that MacGowan was going to do a song and the attitude I had was ‘I’ll believe it when it’s out’.”
Paddy was one of six Irish people known as ‘The Birmingham Six.’ In 1974, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) horrifically bombed two pubs in Birmingham, killing 24 people and injuring 182. The British government were understandably desperate to find the culprits involved and arrested six suspects. Among these six people, four confessions were signed. The police also had forensic evidence showing that they had handled explosives. From the outside, it looked like an open-end and shut case.
In the same year, the IRA bombed two pubs in Guildford, resulting in another five casualties. Four of these deaths were British soldiers, and The IRA claimed that these pubs were targeted because they were frequented by mainly British soldiers. Four men were arrested in connection with these bombings too.
However, numerous incidents called these imprisonments into question. In 1985, the TV series World in Action broadcasted a series of programs that strongly questioned the convictions of the Birmingham Six. The following year, the journalist Chris Mullin published a book, Error of Judgement, outlining why he thought that the Birmingham Six had been wrongly convicted.
Quite controversially, Mullins’ biggest piece of evidence came from engaging with the IRA, who informed him that the Birmingham Six were innocent. Mullins as a journalist had to follow the code of not revealing his sources, despite the fact that his sources included some involved in the actual bombing.
In 1987, scientists called into question some of the forensic evidence used against them An appeals judge claimed that the same forensic evidence that demonstrated that The Birmingham Six were handling explosives could also be found from people who had touched playing cards or cigarette paper.
This is the context in which The Pogues decided to write a song about The Birmingham Six. The Pogues were expected to do fundraising gigs for the imprisoned men, but their manager Frank Murray believed that they could do much better by releasing a song about them. And so they did.
The Pogue’s third studio album, If I Should Fall from Grace with God, featured the song Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six. The song is basically two songs rolled into one. The opening half, Streets of Sorrow, contains an acoustic number from Terry Woods, mourning the ravages of war and conflict. He talks of darkened streets, young men slain, and trying to find some solace.
At the 1:45 mark, the Birmingham Six section of the song kicks in. The song turns from sorrow to anger, as the band joins in and MacGowan begins his vocals. He sings:
“There were six men in Birmingham, in Guildford, there’s four
That were picked up and tortured and framed by the law
And the filth got promotion, but they’re still doing time
For being Irish in the wrong place and at the wrong time.”
The second verse says:
“In Ireland, they’ll put you away in the Maze
In England, they’ll keep you for seven long days
God help you if ever you’re caught on these shores
The coppers need someone and they walk through that door”
And the third verse, where Macgowan curses the judges to rot in Hell.
“A curse on the judges, the coppers, and screws
Who tortured the innocent, wrongly accused
For the price of promotion and justice to sell
May the judged be their judges when they rot down in hell”
In April 1988, The Pogues were invited onto the Thames Television show, Friday Night Live, to perform two songs. The show was hosted by Ben Elton, who had written TV shows such as Blackadder and The Young Ones, and was known for his edgy and politically charged humour. However, it would seem that his show’s willingness to push the envelope only stretched so far.
The Pogues first performed their song Fiesta and went off without a hitch. However, when they played Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six, they seemed to have been cut off early. This could have been to cut to an ad break, or, as many people maintained, they were being censored by Thames Television.
Kathy MacMillan, Shane MacGowan’s landlady, complained to the show Points of View about censoring the band.In the book, A Furious Devotion: The Life of Shane MacGowan, she said:
“He was a bloody hypocrite because they were pretending their show was the coolest thing in town and anti-censorship, and it was just a bloody lie. He was good, I liked him, but I was so disappointed with this episode… The band did get on the show and they let them do the “Streets Of Sorrow” bit and then up came “End of Part One” or whatever it was. So, they censored them.”
Thames Television did not cut off all of the Birmingham Six part of the song, but only at the fourth verse, when MacGowan sings:
“May the whores of the empire lie awake in their beds
And sweat as they count out the sins on their heads
While over in Ireland, eight more men lie dead
Kicked down and shot in the back of the head”
In this section, MacGowan is no longer speaking about wrongly convicted men in prison but the Irish Republican cause in general. The ‘eight men who died’ refers to the Loughgall Ambush, which happened in 1987, one year before the song was released.
In the town of Loughgall in Northern Ireland, a member of the IRA drove a digger with a bomb inside a bucket into a base for the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which was the then police force within Northern Ireland. The bomb exploded, destroying half the base, and other IRA members soon arrived in a van with guns. However, this was not the successful military operation they had planned.
Soldiers from the British Army’s Special Air Service had anticipated this attack and were in hiding. All of the IRA attackers were killed by the SAS, but one innocent civilian was also killed. The authorities involved were criticised because if they knew it was going to happen, they should have preemptively arrested the men involved.
The Pogues had their song cut short in April 1988. By October, it would be completely banned from the airwaves.
On October 19th, the then-home secretary, Douglas Hurd, announced what was called the “broadcast ban.” This ban was mainly meant to deplatform the political arms of the Republican movement, particularly Sinn Féin.
However, added to the list of things censored was the song by The Pogues Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six, and it was alleged that the song was ‘inciting terrorism.’
According to the Independent Broadcasting Authority, this song contained ‘lyrics alleging that some convicted terrorists are not guilty and that Irish people in general are at a disadvantage in Irish courts.’ Frank Murray said in response.
“I’m glad to see we’re that important, that we’re a threat to the State…..We stand by everything we say in our songs, there is enough proof, particularly in the case of the Guildford bombers, that Irish people are disadvantaged in British courts of law. The Pogues will continue to write about what they want and we hope every other artist does the same.”
On the 12th of November 1987, The Pogues had a live gig at Queens University in Belfast. In the book, In The Name of the Son: The Gerry Conlon Story, The Pogues PA, Joey Cashman, recalled getting a strange phone call before the show.
“Are you the manager of The Pogues?” a voice said.
“I might be,” said Cashman. “And to whom may I be speaking?”
“I’m the Chief Constable of Northern Ireland. I’ll come straight to the point shall I?”
“Please do.”
“I don’t think the band should sing The Birmingham Six song tonight…In my opinion, if it were to be played, it could cause a riot and might lead to, you know, riots and disorder.”
Cashman’s response was: “I’ll tell you what’ll cause a riot and what’ll start disorder, Mr Chief Costable: when I go out on that stage and announce that you, the chief of police rang me up in my hotel and told us not to sing the Birmingham Six song.”
The Pogues would be vindicated on the one-year anniversary of the Broadcast Ban. The Guildford Four were released in October 1989, and in March 1991, the Birmingham Six were finally released. Members of The Birmingham Six even ended up attending The Pogues gigs in later years, as part of their new lives as free men. Joey Cashman would go on to work with Gerry Conlon, a member of The Guildford Four, went on to have his life story made into the Academy Award-winning movie In the Name of the Father.
While this may look like a happy ending, the sad reality is that victims of the Birmingham and Guildford pub bombings never got justice either. The actual perpetrators of these atrocities were never trialed and convicted.
Having originally imprisoned the wrong men, the police have now been accused of deliberately delaying the investigations in the hopes that everything will go away.
In August 2023, a family member of one of the victims said: “They want to drag it out until we die. The government has no interest in looking for the murderers. What are they hiding? The names are known.” So, it is with this massive asterisk that the release of The Birmingham Six and Guildford Four was a cause for celebration.
When looking at the full picture, The Pogues cannot take full credit for their release. Journalists like Chris Mullin, who I mentioned at the start, and lawyers like Gareth Peirce, who represented the Birmingham Six, were all part of the coordinated effort to reverse this injustice. But like all good artists, The Pogues helped start a conversation, a conversation that was dearly needed. In 2013, James Fearnley said:
“I like to think that we helped not only to point out the noxiousness of the broadcast ban, but also contributed, by stirring public opinion, the eventual release of the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six.”
Credit should surely also fall to the men themselves, who never gave up hope.
