On 21 November 1974, bombs exploded in two public houses in Birmingham, England. They killed 21 people and injured 182 others. This despicable act of terrorism was the deadliest to occur in England between the Second World War and the 2005 London bombings.
This happened just weeks after bombs exploded in two pubs in Guildford, on 5 October 1974. Five people were killed and 65 injured. Tensions were already high, and to say this was a time of great unease is a significant understatement.
Sadly, these events fit into a pattern of terrorist bombings, often done by (or in support of) the Irish Republican Army (IRA) – an Irish republican paramilitary organisation that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, facilitate Irish reunification and bring about an independent republic encompassing all of Ireland. It was active between 1969 and 2005 (on ceasefire from 1997). This time came to be known as ‘the Troubles.’
While the IRA admitted responsibility for the Guildford bombings, they never officially did so for the Birmingham pub bombings. Six Irishmen were arrested within hours of the blasts, and in 1975 sentenced to life imprisonment for the bombings. The men became known as ‘the Birmingham Six’. Four men were also arrested within hours of the Guildford bombings and became known as ‘the Guildford Four.’ All of these men maintained their innocence and insisted police had coerced them into signing false confessions through severe physical and psychological abuse.
After about 15 years in prison, and a lengthy campaign, the convictions were all declared unsafe and unsatisfactory and quashed by the Court of Appeal in 1989 (the Guildford Four) and 1991 (the Birmingham Six). Proof of tampering with and/or manufacturing of evidence to suit the prosecution had been found, along with several inconsistencies in records from their interrogations. The episode is seen as one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history.
The Pogues released a song about these events, showing strong support for the convicted. At the time the ‘Birmingham Six’ and ‘Guildford Four’ were still imprisoned, and it was highly controversial to speak out so strongly against the police and legal system.
The song in question is called Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six. It was included on the band’s third album If I Should Fall From Grace With God, released on 18 January 1988. The song is an amalgam of two different songs, each different in style and approach.
The first part of the song, Streets of Sorrow, is written and sung by mandolinist Terry Woods who was new to the band at the time. With a background that included British mainstay folk act Steeleye Span he was no stranger to writing poignant and relevant poetry set to a melodic backdrop with great emotional payoff.
The song is a gentle acoustic ballad of three verses. Originally it was a longer piece more specifically about Michael Collins, the Irish patriot and revolutionary. It was trimmed down to act as a prelude to Birmingham Six, in the process focusing more on describing the pain and sadness on the streets of Northern Ireland at the height of ‘the Troubles.’
Oh farewell you streets of sorrow
Oh farewell you streets of pain
I’ll not return to feel more sorrow
Nor to see more young men slain
Through the last six years I’ve lived through terror
And in the darkened streets the pain
Oh how I long to find some solace
In my mind I curse the strain
The song is told from the point of view of someone who is leaving a place behind due to the increasing violence and conflict. Though it is not by choice, he also vows never to return “to feel more sorrow, nor to see more young men slain”.
Accordionist James Fearnley said of the song: “Streets of Sorrow is very plaintive and well-meant, but I think that song could only work by taking it into Birmingham Six which is a bit more gutsy and vengeful. They work together particularly well.”
The second part is Birmingham Six, written and sung by Pogues lead singer Shane MacGowan. The song is more upbeat and raucous, engaging the full band. The lyrics are angrier than the first part and much more political, written pointedly about the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four. The song paints them as Irishmen framed for terrorist crimes through miscarriage of justice, confessions extracted by torture at the hands of the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad.
As we now know, all of these things turned out to be correct, but at the time the people involved were still convicted. That only makes the lyrics all the more insistent:
There were six men in Birmingham
In Guildford there’s four
Who 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
MacGowan takes aim at the English police, the legal system, and anti-Irish sentiment in Britain. More broadly, the song can be interpreted as a comment on the perceived victimisation and oppression of Irish people by the British – or indeed, the experience of any minority group in the world that is suffering persecution.
In the book “A Drink With Shane MacGowan” by Victoria Clarke, Shane said “The crusade was to make Irish music hip… for the Irish music to make the language hip again. And the literature hip. In other worlds, to build Irish self-esteem, right? And for the whole world to know what an incredible wealth of culture we’ve contributed to the world, for such a small nation. Also with “Birmingham Six” I began singing songs about the atrocities by the British. I’d come to the stage where I could get away with that.”
Admittedly the anger builds as he gets further into the song:
A curse on the judges
The coppers and screws
Who tortured the innocent
Wrongly accused
For the price of promotion
And justice to sell
May the judged be their judges
When they rot down in hell
In the final verse there is a reference to a third event. It goes, “While over in Ireland eight more men lie dead; Kicked down and shot in the back of the head.” This is not related to any of the bombings. MacGowan has stated that this refers to the Loughgall ambush, where eight Provisional IRA were ambushed and killed by a platoon of British Special Air Service (SAS) commandos. Irish civilians were also killed and injured in the ambush.
Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six was a highly political song from a band that was reaching their creative peak at the time. The album it was on also marking the high point of their commercial success. If I Should Fall From Grace With God entered the UK album charts at number 3 on its release in January 1988 and was well received by critics and audiences alike.
Banjo player Jem Finer called the record “a very cohesive album that drew on a lot of styles. Everything came together and it was very focused. That was really the creative peak for me, in terms of the whole band being on a wavelength.”
Of course, a certain song on it would prove to be controversial. This was first evident when the band was due to perform on the Ben Elton Channel 4 show Friday Night Live on 15 April 1988. When the time came, they were introduced and launched directly into Birmingham Six. Well before the song was finished, the show cut to advertising.
In the book “A Drink With Shane MacGowan,” Shane spoke of the incident: “We were cut off on television during the beginning of a verse, cause they saw, suddenly, that it was about eight IRA who’d been shot by the SAS a few weeks before in Armagh. It wasn’t about the Birmingham Six at all, the last verse, you know. And when they heard that, they freaked. And so they put the ads on. And everybody really noticed that.”
In the book “Here Comes Everybody – the Story of the Pogues,” accordionist James Fearnley says: “The producers had been informed of the song we intended to perform. In the afternoon of the show we had played through the song more than once in technical rehearsal. When the time came, we took our places on stage, against a backdrop of large, pink, fibreglass hands, our feet invisible under streams of dry ice. Well before the song was finished, the producers made the decision to cut to a commercial break. We withdrew into righteous indignation. Our first thought was that Thames Television had been cowed by the political climate engendered by the Thatcher government, even though it was a full six months before the execution of the broadcast ban. We accused Thames Television of suppression, but I was ashamed of my abiding ambivalence as to whether the song had been subject to censorship, preferring to assume that we had simply gone over time. My stubborn predisposition to believe in the benevolence of the English government inclined me to believe that the shortening of our performance was merely due to the exigencies of television. Then, in November, the song was banned by the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), which claimed that the lyrics could “incite terrorism”.”
The ban that Fearnley is speaking of happened later on. The song got a blanket blacklisting by the IBA (Independent Broadcasting Authority), preventing it from being broadcast anywhere and in any form in Britain. This fell under laws which were also responsible for a ban on the broadcasting of direct interviews with members of Sinn Féin and other groups. The IBA claimed the song alleged that “convicted terrorists are not guilty, the Irish people were put at a disadvantage in the courts of the United Kingdom and that it may have invited support for a terrorist organisation such as the IRA”. The Pogues was the first musical act ever to fall foul of this particular law.
Via their manager Frank Murray the band issued a statement calling the ban ‘hilarious’ and maintaining that “Irish people are disadvantaged in British courts of law. The Pogues will continue to write about what they want and we hope every other artist do the same.”
In 1991 the Birmingham Six were released after having their convictions overturned in the Court of Appeal and the allegations of torture at the hands of authorities were vindicated. The song’s ban was subsequently lifted, yet when it featured on a Channel 4 documentary in the early 1990s the channel was still not allowed to play the song, only to show the words on screen. The relevant section from that documentary can be seen in the video below.
The band got to meet some of the accused after they were free, as James Fearnley remembers: “Gerry Conlon, who spent 15 years in prison as one of the Guildford Four, hung out with us on tour for a few months. His gratitude for publicising the plight of the Guildford Four and that of the Birmingham Six – not merely by means of Shane’s song, but through press interviews and collections at our gigs for the prisoners’ families – was affecting. So too was Paddy Hill’s, one of the Birmingham Six, when he was interviewed on a Channel 4 chart programme. Hill talked with bemusement at the IBA’s banning of the Pogues’ Birmingham Six and fondly of the group’s efforts on his behalf and the five other accused. I like to think that we helped not only to point out the noxiousness of the broadcast ban, but also contributed, by stirring public opinion, the eventual release of the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six.”
The Pogues’ unrepentant stance was indeed justified in the end. Their statements ring as powerful today as they did then, with the added benefit of proven righteous indignation. The combination of lament and anger continues to shine with the same power and vitality as their very best tracks.
The song was not a single (imagine if it had been!), but we can now pretend it was thanks to the 7’’ cover art made for this article by Alan Anbari. Thank you, Alan!
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