22 November 1973
Yes, this is a Wolfe Tones song about the escape by helicopter of three Republican prisoners, including the Provisional IRA chief of staff, from Mountjoy Prison in Dublin a few weeks earlier, in October 1973 – in other words, literally “ooh, ahh, up the ‘Ra”. However, it’s not really a rebel song but a comic ballad that focuses less on the prisoners or their cause and more on the embarrassment for the Fine Gael-led Irish government of the day, who had prided itself on a strong law and order stance and whose ministers were also known to travel by helicopter. (Apparently the prison officer who saw the helicopter approach the prison yard assumed it was a visit from the Minister for Justice and didn’t immediately raise the alarm.)
By November 1973 The Wolfe Tones don’t yet seem to have been synonymous with support for the Provisional IRA. Stan Erraught in his book Rebel Notes points out that they hadn’t been among the prominent folk acts that dominated the charts the previous year with protest songs about internment and Bloody Sunday, instead until then being one of many generic Irish trad-ballad acts – and on their 1965 debut album had even performed Loyalist favourite ‘The Sash My Father Wore’. So, it’s likely that ‘Up And Away (The Helicopter Song)’ could at the time be taken as mere topical satire at the expense of the Dublin government, like a sketch on Hall’s Pictorial Weekly. Still, I assume this record was banned, or not played, or whatever the prevailing euphemism may have been.
Despite its contemporaneous setting and the previous year’s politically engaged anthems like ‘The Men Behind The Wire’, ‘Up And Away (The Helicopter Song)’ feels more like the mid-’60s Saturday-night-Fenian barroom bravado of ‘The Sea Around Us’ or ‘The Merry Ploughboy’. It’s not particularly catchy or stirring, and like most comic songs it flounders outside its immediate context. I suspect that putting this to number one in the charts was 26-county Ireland yet again finding some way out of having to deal seriously with the grim, brutal reality of events just up the road on the same island.
