I really enjoyed the first episode of the Beatle Blethers podcast with Alan McClure and Gerry Hassan. It was a lively conversation, yet Alan and Gerry managed to avoid that excess of bonhomie, weak jokes, and loud laughter which can infect the podcast genre. It was definitely “a blether”, and yet that word, “blether,” understates the depth of knowledge of the subject, and the cultural and historical context which underpinned the discussion. I learnt a lot of things I didn’t know.
I grew up with the Beatles – well, I was 9 years old in October 1962 and living in Newry, Co. Down, when their first single Love Me Do was released. I have my eldest brother Michael to thank for bringing each of their LP records into our household as they arrived in Carlin’s record shop, just opposite Newry Market. Our family sat around the telly to watch them perform All You Need Is Love as Britain’s contribution to Our World, the first live global television link. It was heady stuff, but the Beatles broke up and the world moved on.
It is a good moment to reflect on the seismic impact of the Beatles on UK culture and on the culture of the wider world but also on the culture and politics of Northern Ireland. The first stirrings of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) were in the early 1960s. I am guessing the leaders of that movement were probably listening to singers like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, early Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and, no doubt, the speeches of Martin Luther King.
The appeal of the Beatles went way beyond the boundaries of folk music and created a much larger space for young people to start thinking and behaving in ways that were challenging to the old orthodoxies. I am quite sure that Terence O’Neill, who became Prime Minister of Northern Ireland in 1963, only listened to the Beatles long enough to make him very uneasy about their likely impact. Reverend Ian Paisley, on the other hand knew, with his usual certainty, that this was the devil’s music. (Sorry, I can’t provide references for either of these speculations, but somehow I doubt many will question the accuracy of those guesses.)
A possible moment for peaceful political change occurred in Northern Ireland as NICRA gained strength with its formal establishment in 1967. Its stated objectives were:
- To defend the basic freedoms of all citizens
- To protect the rights of the individual
- To highlight abuses of power
- To demand guarantees for freedom of speech, assembly and association
- To inform the public of its lawful rights[1]
Unionism and, above all, Reverend Paisley, dug in to defend the status quo from such nonsense.
There were to be other moments during The Troubles when the music scene set a course towards cross community rapprochement that the campaign of the Provisional IRA and the unyielding inflexibility of the Unionist establishment were relentlessly undermining. Terri Hooley, a heroic figure in the recent history of Northern Ireland, founded Good Vibrations record shop in the early 1970s and created a space in which a Northern Irish punk rock scene emerged with the Undertones, and Stiff Little Fingers breaking through into the wider UK music market.
So what? Nothing changed until 1997 and the Good Friday Agreement and that didn’t really owe much to Lennon and McCartney or Terri Hooley. And yet, the Beatles were the opening blast of a popular cultural revolution which has crossed all of the political divisions in Ireland. A deeply divided community has become more aware of the things that unifies it. There can be no doubt this cultural shift made political change not just easier, but perhaps inevitable.
As for possible themes for future episodes of Beatle Blethers … What about the impact of Bob Dylan on the direction in which Lennon McCartney’s song writing and lyrics developed? I imagine that impact to have been significant, but maybe I am overestimating it?
Or the Irish connection; in episode one Gerry and Alan referenced some ill-judged interventions from Lennon and McCartney in the debate on the The Troubles across the water, but I am more interested in the cultural influence of Ireland through the family connections of Lennon and McCartney. Perhaps that’s just fancy on my part and I am trying to claim something for Ireland that is indelibly Anglo American in its roots. Discuss!
I dare say Alan and Gerry have got a few other things in the pipeline!
References and End Notes
1] Wikipedia Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement
Carruchan 
Though I doubt it could be set to song, Stephen, I was prompted to remember this piece of verse of mine by your thoughts on the NICRM if not the Beatles (though my hair at the time must have owed something to John). Not really worthy of the conflict, perhaps — but it did/does reflect my attitude to it all. Good to see this resumption of thought and reflection. Rob
Now, that piece of verse you mention?
Demo
Deserters don’t like to be reminded that the world is a battlefield.
Ian Hamilton-Finlay
How would we gauge the distances from here to there?
What were our hopes and what tale told of them? And how
might these be tallied against all the ways we age?
A measure of miles trudged, years lost, blood shed
through all the wars we wage?
And for the case in question, half a century ago?
A few days trooping out from Belfast: across the border,
marching for rights, in someone else’s dream – no evidential
proof it ever happened. An unrecorded demo,
peaceful and inconsequential.
What did we demonstrate? Observe:
packed on our backs and rubbing raw,
the dead weight of history and impossibility,
the sores on which we trod, our hobbling need
for meaning and fraternity.
Observe too with me: the urgent clamourings,
the camaraderie of others, the well-curated
pains, the brandished flags, the hollow
lockstep songs, the serried ranks
of certainties to follow.
My comrades, on the other hand, happened
upon, as was the whole performance,
leaned to the Officials, though that was unofficial,
they being Anarchists: we marched
like on some legendary pub crawl.
We toasted all our good intentions,
the stout smooth and going down
easy, with its bitter after-taste
left on the lips and… no notion of what
would later be laid waste?
We might have guessed – and yes
I think I did. We raised glasses yet again in Dublin
to what we called the end, and made a speedy exit.
And after that… please God – I wanted
nothing more to do with it.
I am thinking about that! Longer reply in due course.
Thanks as always for your interesting reflections and connections Stephen. With regard to your final point, is there any mileage in John Lennon’s purchase of Dornish island in 1967?
I do seem to remember hearing something about that, that perhaps it was a big idea which in the end never came to anything very significant…perhaps Beatle Blethers will find its way to the topic.