Oasis should run a mile from this Irish rebel band

Liam Gallagher, it is fair to say, is not renowned for thoughtfulness or tact, particularly on the platform formerly known as Twitter. Still, many fans will have been appalled to learn that the singer apparently wants the Irish republican band, the Wolfe Tones, to perform at Oasis’s shows in Dublin next year. In response to a suggestion that the ‘rebel’ group should be added to the bill at Croke Park, Liam tweeted, ‘I’m up for it, let’s do it!’

The Wolfe Tones are best known for their song Celtic Symphony, which features the refrain, ‘Ooh, ahh, up the ‘Ra,’ in celebration of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. It was the PIRA that launched several bomb attacks on the Gallagher brothers’ home city of Manchester during the Troubles, injuring almost 300 people and causing hundreds of millions of pounds worth of damage.

Liam and Noel might not have the clearest memories of the nineties, but they will at least recall the explosion near the Arndale shopping centre in 1996, that was timed to coincide with that year’s Euro football tournament. Nobody was killed by that 1,500 kilogram lorry bomb, thanks to the emergency services’ professionalism, but over 200 people were injured and insurers estimated the cost of the damage to be £700 million (over £1 billion today). One of the survivors, Barry Laycock, who suffered severe back and leg injuries, recently launched a civil case against the former Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, in a bid to hold somebody responsible for an incident that resulted in no prosecutions. 

In the wake of the Manchester Arena bombing several decades later in 2017, the Gallaghers’ songs, such as Don’t Look Back in Anger and Live Forever, became symbols of defiance against Islamist terrorism. Now, if Liam’s tweet is to be believed, the band could allow ‘Ooh, ahh, up the ‘Ra’ to form part of Oasis’s comeback tour. If that did happen, it would be an indictment of the sentimental blind spot that many second-generation Irish families in Great Britain seem to have for republican paramilitaries, and a troubling sign of the IRA’s rehabilitation in modern Ireland.

The Wolfe Tones’ songs were once associated with unreconstructed republican shebeen bars or the Provo-friendly Feile festival in west Belfast. Unfortunately, in recent years, they have become rather more mainstream on both sides of the Irish border – helped, in part, by a surge of anti-British feeling in Dublin after Brexit.

In 2022, the Football Association of Ireland was fined £17,000 by Uefa when members of its women’s team celebrated a victory by singing Celtic Symphony in their dressing room. During the last two summers, the Wolfe Tones, whose original members are well in their seventies, performed in front of tens of thousands of young revellers at Electric Picnic, the island’s largest music festival. And, just a month ago, viewers were shocked when children at a welcome home event for Ireland’s Olympic team chanted ‘Ooh, ah, up the ‘Ra’ on live television.

Noel Gallagher has spoken previously about ‘rebel’ music influencing his development as a songwriter, thanks to the brothers’ Irish background. Indeed, they could perhaps have been forgiven for their naivety when they were younger. Other prominent people with Irish roots, like the footballer Declan Rice, have apologised for youthful messages about the IRA. Meanwhile, the Gallaghers’ fellow Mancunian, Steve Coogan, courted controversy when his This Time with Alan Partridge show featured a fictional guest singing the Provo ballad, The Men Behind the Wire. At least, in his defence, he was making a joke.

Noel has said that he sometimes felt unjustly vilified growing up as part of the Irish community in Manchester. His family’s car was searched after holidays in Ireland, due to the threat of IRA bombs entering Great Britain.

Oasis’s concerts in Dublin will attract fans from across the island and beyond, some of whom will have suffered the consequences of terrorism. The band, while it is proud of its Irish heritage, also displays the Union Flag prominently on guitars and Liam and Noel are icons of British music.

It was the Wolfe Tones themselves who raised the prospect of supporting Oasis, no doubt with self-promotion in mind. Their lead singer, Brian Warfield, described it as the group’s ‘main ambition’. It is not at all clear that Liam knows anything about the Tones’ politics or notoriety, but he could certainly do with taking more care on social media. You would hope that, despite this enthusiastic tweet, Noel and the band’s managers will show better judgment.

Meanwhile, in Ireland, an increase in pro-IRA sentiments undermines the image of a modern, forward-thinking society that the Republic’s leaders like to project. The kind of behaviour that, even in the 90s, was considered extreme and primitive has become mainstream and scarcely bothers to disguise itself anymore with a veneer of irony.