Huge crowds send a message to RTÉ

A campaign by Ireland’s state-run broadcaster to demonise republicans backfired spectacularly this week after events it tried to smear drew record-breaking attendances.

Talk show host Joe Duffy had accused the Wolfe Tones band of “glorifying slaughter” with their hugely popular brand of rebel music on a radio talk show earlier this year.

Wolfe Tones singer Brian Warfield had said Duffy was “totally out of line” with his comments made when he took part in an episode of Liveline presented by Duffy, RTÉ’s highest-paid celebrity.

The discussion came after the Wolfe Tones’ performed at the Electric Picnic festival in County Laois last year and saw their tent venue filled to overflowing.

The broadcaster called Warfield’s music “awful, brutal old rubbish.” The controversy continued this summer when Mr Warfield issued proceedings in May against RTE.

And Duffy’s campaign backfired further when the Wolfe Tones, performed on the Main Stage at the Electric Picnic festival last week to a record-breaking crown.

The hour-long set drew the largest crowd ever seen at the event as young and old festival-goers danced and sang along to the classic tunes, including ‘Celtic Symphony’ with its chant of “oh ah up the ‘RA”.

Speaking before the gig, Mr Warfield said that the continuing efforts to silence the song amounts to censorship.

“We’ve been campaigning for years to let the people sing,” he said. “It’s one of the songs I wrote back in the early ‘70s and it’s about the way people want to control what people sing and the way they sing it.

“Censorship has gone on in this country for years and years and it continued on with the music on the radio and The Wolfe Tones were the victims of that.”

Mr Warfield said he thinks the band has benefitted from trying to be silenced.

“Since [former Minister] Conor Cruise O’Brien brought in the Section 31 [broadcasting ban] when he mentioned the fact that he didn’t want any Wolfe Tone songs on radio; he scared people away from playing The Wolfe Tones,” he said.

“The Wolfe Tones were basically hidden away for years - we’d loads of new songs and records but people get a chance to really hear them. The difference was made when the internet came around and people could latch on to The Wolfe Tones and choose what they want to hear.”

Meanwhile, this year’s John Joe McGirl commemoration on Saturday, August 17, also saw a record number of people in attendance since the Republican’s death in 1988.

Earlier this month, Duffy had organised a ‘debate’ to call for the event honouring the IRA legend to be permanently cancelled.

But instead, the annual commemoration, which typically attracts a couple of hundred people in Ballinamore, drew over two thousand people to honour the man who also served as a councillor, TD and vice-president of Sinn Fein.

Sinn Fein MP John Finucane gave a wide-ranging oration in which he paid tribute to John Joe McGirl as “a great Irishman and a true patriot.”

“John Joe McGirl was and remains for Republicans, not just here in Leitrim, but across the island, an inspirational figure,” said Mr Finucane.

He also defended the annual commemoration, saying that as everybody equally deserves truth and justice, everyone also deserves ‘the right to commemorate their dead’.

Urgent Appeal