4 March 1972
The immediate responses to Bloody Sunday included the burning of the British Embassy in Dublin, Bernadette Devlin slapping Tory minister Reginald Maudling on the floor of the House of Commons, and Paul McCartney writing ‘Give Ireland Back To The Irish’. Also: Irish people buying ‘Give Ireland Back To The Irish’ all the way to number one in Ireland.
We can see in this the now-familiar dynamic of Simple Minds’ ‘Belfast Child’: rock star has ego and audience; rock star catches sight of a news headline; rock star has Something To Say. Surfeit of ego fills the deficit of self-awareness: Paul’s slant here is essentially to tell a British audience “It could be you!” (“Tell me, how would you like it / If…”) and “It could be me!” (“Meanwhile, back in Ireland / There’s a man who looks like me”), which doesn’t score highly on empathy but certainly tastes a lot like privilege and self-indulgence. That said, there’s a genuine frisson with that first-verse scenario of Irish soldiers stopping and hassling British people on their way to work: Paul, you tease!
Aside from that glimpse into Ireland’s expansionary near-future, ‘Give Ireland Back To The Irish’ is as naff and clumsy as you’d expect. The sound is jaunty Abbey Road-era blues-pop. The lyrics contain some eye-watering clunkers: “Great Britain, you are tremendous” vies with the image of Paul’s Irish counterpart sitting in a prison “and he’s feeling really bad” on that score. Not helping matters is that Paul’s Irish counterpart is actually standing right beside him; Wings’s guitarist on ‘Give Ireland Back To The Irish’ was Henry McCullough from Co. Derry. So, do we reckon Paul gleaned Henry’s insights and feelings on Bloody Sunday and the situation in his home county, all the better to inform Paul’s poetic vision of some young fella from the FCA rifle-butting the man on the Clapham omnibus?
Later in 1972 John and Yoko release their own ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ which, while being of the same ilk, at least sounds lyrically informed and credibly angry, as well as featuring Yoko, the second-coolest Beatle after Ringo. So of course ‘Give Ireland Back To The Irish’ written by the same guy who goes on to write ‘Ebony And Ivory’ is an embarrassment; it could never have been anything but. On top of that, ‘Give Ireland Back To The Irish’ is actually the first single released by Wings: embarrassment begets embarrassment.
Yes, 1972 was a febrile time, pop hits as protest records were still a relatively new thing, a globally-famous mainstream pop star coming right out with such a bald political statement as the title of this song must certainly have been jolting, and Paul’s existing fanbase meant this single was always going to be bought by a hit-making quorum of Irish people regardless of how it treated the issue. Still, could the warehouse storing ‘Give Ireland Back To The Irish’ not also have been burnt down? Could Bernadette Devlin have slapped a few more people?
