I FIRST listened to The Pogues in late 1984 on a bootleg cassette. We were sharing music tapes when someone who knew of my interest in all things Irish suggested I might like Red Roses For Me by Pogue Mahone. Pogue Mahone? My interest, at 14 years old, was piqued by the name alone. Of course, the band’s name had already been shortened to The Pogues by then. But my interlocutor insisted they were really called Pogue Mahone. As I listened to Transmetropolitan, and Brendan Behan’s The Auld Triangle and Waxies Dargle and Streams of Whiskey—which opens with an encounter with Behan in a dream—I was mesmerised. I had never heard anything like it.
The death of Shane MacGowan has been followed by a tremendous outpouring of tributes, and love. Which is testament to the impact he had on music and culture throughout the world. This is especially true of his significance to Irish music and culture. But not only Irish, also the diaspora Irish. Because The Pogues were the definitive Irish diaspora band. As often happens the death of an icon, someone we have never met, but felt an affinity with nonetheless, it prompts reflections not just on their lives but on our own. How and when we first encountered their work and what it meant to us and continues to mean to us today.
Sense of Irishness
Edinburgh in the 1980s was a hostile environment to be embracing our inner Irishness. There might have been some twee, conservative expressions of Irishness that would have been tolerated in Edinburgh. But, in the aftermath of the Hunger Strikes and the Falklands War, a loud embrace of James Connolly and Irish Republicanism was not one of them. During this period the council banned Irish marches and blocked the hire of council buildings to Irish groups. The Trades Council banned meetings related to Ireland. You would have struggled to find one bar with Christy Moore, never mind the Wolfe Tones, on the jukebox. It was common for people with an Irish background to assimilate at rapid speed. Many viewed Irishness as baggage that would hold them back in Scottish society. Our identity, after all, is made up of those identifications we reject, as much as those we embrace.
This was a time before hybrid or hyphenated identities were everywhere. Before Riverdance was a hit in theatres, before Angela’s Ashes, before Gerry Adams was allowed into the US and became a global celebrity. Irish jokes were a staple of TV comedy. The hatred and distrust which existed just below the surface in those jokes often broke the surface in workplaces or bars. Regularly accused of being ‘wannabe Irish,’ or ‘plastic Paddies,’ or told that if we wanted to be Irish we should go and live there. It was true we were drawn to Irish politics, Irish football teams, to Irish people and Irish culture. It was also true we were not born in Ireland. When we were in Ireland we were ‘Scotchies.’ How to make sense of this as a teenager? Then along came Shane MacGowan and The Pogues.
Unique quality
Rum, Sodomy and the Lash—released in 1985 and produced by another son of the diaspora, Elvis Costello—was and remains a masterpiece. Featuring A Pair Of Brown Eyes and the definitive version of Eric Bogle’s anti-war song, And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda. Not to forget the anti-fascist, The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn, which links the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War with the Gaelic legend and a brief critique of antisemitism. Streaming services now allow us to curate a personal playlist anywhere, anytime. Despite that, Rum, Sodomy and the Lash is one of the few albums I regularly listen to from beginning to end.
The sound, the lyrics, the appearance, the performance. The blend of punk and Irish traditional music was at the time unique. For some of us it appeared just at the right moment. At once Irish and immigrant The Pogues were also speaking to universal truths. With the lyricism of an Irish poet, and punk attitude, Shane MacGowan was weaving narratives of racism, of colonialism, of poverty. And, like us, he was not born in Ireland. There was nothing ‘wannabe’ about The Pogues. There was nothing ‘plastic’ about Shane MacGowan.
Giving identity a voice
All of this in the 1980s, against the steady drumbeat of death, repression, vilification and censorship. We were repeatedly told by the media, by politicians, and by many in our own community, that we should move on, leave the past behind. Keep our heads down and keep quiet. The war in Ireland reminded us that silence does not mean forgetting. Just as shouting does not mean remembering. Finding ourselves and making our way in the world during this period The Pogues were a breath of fresh air and breathtaking. Many of us have Irish names, but very little else connecting us to any sense of an Irish ‘home.’ We are, to borrow Paul Cowan’s phrase ‘orphans of history.’ We are both Scottish and Irish, but also not. We live in the space between those two poles. In Scotland, but of Ireland. A space where no hyphen can reach.
At that moment, as a teenager in Edinburgh, Shane MacGowan gave that identity a voice. The Pogues gave us a voice when nobody else would. They showed it was possible to be ourselves. We did not have to assimilate or cling to a nostalgic view of Irishness forever fixed somewhere in the past, which could be performed for natives in very specific and safe contexts. Shane MacGowan was talented, proudly Irish Republican, part of a rebel tradition. He represented an Irishness of the activist, radical and non-conformist. An Irishness the opposite of twee and conservative. We were no longer looking for a door to our future. Shane MacGowan had just kicked it off its hinges.
The Pogues were representing through music their London-Irish, and the broader diasporic, experience. This experience, like much else, is very different today. It is easy to agree that The Pogues would be out of place in today’s strictly marketed culture. Shane MacGowan would be cancelled pretty quick. But it is important to remember how they rubbed against the grain even in the 1980s. During the era of Thatcher, when we were told ‘Greed is Good’ and there was no such things as society. Everything about Shane MacGowan rejected the embrace of selfishness and obsession with personal wealth. He told us stories of community, solidarity and commonality of experience. These stories—and his songs were cinematic poems—resonated deep in our Irish diasporic consciousness.
Bravery and ingenuity
By the time If I Should Fall From Grace With God was released we were not even surprised it was fantastic and risk-taking. From the title track to Thousands are Sailing, it was another classic album. When Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six was banned by the BBC it only secured more firmly The Pogues place in our hearts. “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 same album also featured The Fairytale of New York. The Pogues’ biggest hit and Christmas favourite. The title is taken from a novel by JP Donleavy—another diaspora figure—and reminds us that Shane MacGowan was an exceptionally intelligent and literary songwriter. His lyrics regularly feature and nod to writers and historical figures. Reading the lyrics was an education in itself. Such is his influence that it is difficult to read books like John Healy’s The Grass Arena or Timothy O’Grady’s I Could Read The Sky without hearing Shane MacGowan’s voice. His best songs stay with you, lingering long after you have moved on. Both Healy and O’Grady are diaspora writers, but Shane MacGowan’s work transcends that description. When you read Jean Genet—who was namechecked in The Pogues song Hell’s Ditch—you think of the Irish rent boy in The Old Main Drag. Genet is not of the Irish diaspora, but he is another rebellious outsider and brilliant storyteller of the dispossessed and marginalised.
Since his passing there has been some talk of regret and disappointment that he didn’t produce more albums. But this too speaks to the exile’s journey. A journey of longing, but never reaching. Longing not for things, but longing for contentment, for home. The exile’s journey is often accompanied by self-destructiveness and creative genius. Sometimes in the same person, at the same time. Regret and disappointment are signposts. His songs, with their ability to tug the heartstrings and simultaneously deliver a gut punch, helped many of us along our own journey and we should be forever thankful. Shane MacGowan was an insurgent genius. He was our diaspora insurgent genius. His journey is over but his songs will live for as long as music is played.
Jim Slaven lives in Edinburgh and is a member of the James Connolly Society. His book Solidarity Not Charity will be published later this year
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