30 August 1969
Back in August 1969 Ireland was setting up refugee camps for families fleeing persecution and civil strife in their homeland. As it happens, those refugee families were also Irish, their homeland was the six counties of Northern Ireland, and they were fleeing loyalist attacks on nationalist areas of Belfast, Newry, Armagh and elsewhere. I wonder if, just like in current-day Ireland, this influx of traumatised, destitute refugees into the Republic raised the sort of “local concerns” that apparently can only be expressed by burning down the proposed camps while vituperatively suggesting that those people go back to the very place they had fled.
As I’ve mentioned here before, neither the Irish singles charts nor this site are the best forum for engaging with the Troubles. However, we can at least see what the pop culture of the neighbouring 26 counties was like, and whether that tells us about any response here to events happening just up the road. That’s not to suggest that ‘Honky Tonk Women’ at number one in Ireland earlier in August 1969, while Jack Lynch was making his “the Irish Government can no longer stand by” TV address, can be characterised as an entire country callously distracting itself with thoughts of dissolute American ladies. Still, I find it interesting that the first Irish record to top the Irish charts in these times was an old-fashioned accordion waltz version of a sentimental World War I ballad in which a soldier departs for battle and leaves his sweetheart behind. Was this soldier no longer standing by, ready to intervene in the six counties, and this record played at a certain time on Raidió Éireann would be the signal? Or was it, as with 1966 chart-topper ‘Black And Tan Gun’, Ireland avoiding the uncomfortable reality of events up North by retreating into the romanticised and legitimised military heroism of the past?
Of course, it could just be that its clean-cut crooning singer and slow-set shiftalongability, complete with climactic key change, made ‘When The Fields Are White With Daisies’ the Westlife ballad of its time. Still, take this as fair warning that the impending ’70s will see many of Ireland’s chart-topping singles either be overtly engaged or bewilderingly incongruous – and maybe sometimes both.
