| Tiocfaidh Ár Lá Fanzine - Issue 30 8 Dec 2002 One More For The Road Shane MacGowan's girlfriend Victoria Clarke collaborated with the ex-Pogue on his biography A Drink With Shane MacGowan. TAL prints an extract from one of their conversations. Here Shane gives his views on the Irish, the IRA and his republican hero Frank Ryan, the Blueshirts, and socialism. In his own rambling way Shane shows that whilst his view of history may not always be an entirely accurate one, it is nonetheless heartfelt. ACT SEVEN Shannon Airport, Ireland, morning. An immense, immeasurable expanse of verdant land rises up to meet our couple, as their plane lands on friendly soil, finally. The broad, majestic Shannon sparkles and dazzles and vocalises a greeting, mightily. A hundred thousand small birds take up the chorus, joyously. Shane and Victoria disembark, gratefully, and kiss the ground, reverently, before adjoining to the bar, fastidiously. Victoria: What does being Irish mean to you? Shane: The Pogues would never have existed if I wasn't Irish. Ireland means everything to me. I always felt guilty because I didn't lay down my life for Ireland, I didn't join up. Not that I would have helped the situation, probably. But I felt ashamed that I didn't have the guts to join the IRA- and The Pogues was my way of overcoming that guilt. And looking back on it, I think maybe I made the right choice. Ireland is the greatest nation in the world and the Irish are the most important race in the world. We're travelling people. That song, The Travelling People, which is about tinkers or itinerants or whatever you want to call them, could be about any Irish people. The Irish people are travelling people, we all travel, we've always travelled. We all leave home and go back and leave again and our influence has spread all over the world and this has been going on for thousands of years. In the early days of Christianity, the missionary monks were nearly all Irish. And it was said that if a man could speak Greek and Latin he was probably Irish. Behan said it. A proud and intelligent people. Wonderful sense of humour, brilliant imagination. I'm proud of everything the Irish do well. Even Che Guevara 's military hero was Michael Collins. But we can be treacherous people. As Collins discovered. Collins was an example of an honourable Irishman. Honourable and dead. I wouldn't join the IRA now under any circumstances. I don't agree with killing civilians. I don't think I'd be any good in the IRA is another reason. You find your task in life and you do that. I haven't got the qualifications to be an IRA man, I have the qualifications to be an Irish musician. And I've still got a few kicks in the arses ready for the boring old farts of Irish music. They're still there, the ones who couldn't handle The Pogues. But what a talented race. I'm proud to be one of them. Great sportsmen, great soldiers, great musicians, great lovers, great artists. Nobody loves like an Irishman. And women always find Irishmen attractive. I think women are attracted by the fact that Irishmen are so much more intelligent than Englishmen. That's a bit of a generalisation, of course. There are some glaring exceptions to that rule. There's no bigger b****** than an Irish b******. And most Irish-Americans are great, but an Irish-American b****** is a real b******. The Irish are backstabbing, gossiping and begrudging, with a tendency to mindless violence. But they're faults that all people have. You can't say the Irish are any worse than anyone else. Their faults are very few. But the last thing the Irish are is perfectionists. And they're more interested in having a good time than in making millions. Lazy. There is a section of the Irish people that is very obnoxious, also. The rich Irish are obnoxious. I don't mind stage Irishmen like Terry Wogan, though, and Val Doonican. Gay Byrne. They're funny because they don't realise they're so bad. The plain simple people of Ireland are the ones I really like. I'd rather be a plain simple person. I'm not a boring rich one. I'm not rich enough. An Irish person has to be very rich before they become boring. I want to talk about Frank Ryan now. Okay. Who's Frank Ryan? Who was Frank Ryan? Frank was the laughing cavalier of the old of the old IRA. He was a womaniser, a drinker, a bold figure of a man. He was a Limerick boy. I thought you didn't like Limerick. No, that's not true. You said some derogatory things about Limerick people earlier on in your book. Well, I want to take them all out. Do you? Yeah. I've got nothing against Limerick people. Anyway, he's from Limerick County, not Limerick City. He's from Knocklong. And he went to school in Tipperary anyway. And what's so special about him? First, he fought in the Irish war of independence, then he fought in the Irish civil war, then he fought in the Spanish Civil War. And he was a passionate, Irish-speaking Republican socialist. Can you do him? Yeah, except I can't speak Irish. I wish I could, but I can't. Apart from the odd phrase, you know. He could speak it fluently, and write it fluently. And he was a great orator. And he could stir the hearts of man, you know, with his voice. With his oratory. You can do that. No I can't. I can only do it in song. Like, I don't know what kind of a singer he was. Maybe he wasn't as good a singer as you. Probably wasn't, you know, most people aren't. He could wow the ladies. Was he a good-looking bloke? He doesn't look very attractive in the pictures. Well, he had a cocky way of handling himself, y'know. And the gift of the gab. And like, he had no enemies. Why did he have no enemies if he was in wars? Well, apart from General O'Duffy. Who was General O'Duffy? The leader of the Blueshirts. Well, apart from the Blueshirts he had no enemies. He (Frank Ryan) was universally liked. He fought in the Irish movement for independence, and he fought in the Irish civil war, on the Republican side. And he was one of the most important movers in the movement of the IRA to the left. How did they become socialists? They didn't start out as socialists, did they? They didn't start out as socialists, no. But in the 1930s, they had to take sides. De Valera wasn't a socialist, was he? No, de Valera wasn't a socialist, no. De Valera was never a socialist. De Valera was a f****** right-wing b******. De Valera was rich, yeah? But that isn't why he wasn't a socialist, know what I mean, lots of socialists have been rich. In fact more socialists than not, have been rich. Champagne socialists? I don't call people like Karl Marx and Lenin champagne socialists. There is, nowadays, a breed of people that you could call champagne socialists. I'm not a champagne socialist. I've always been a socialist. So why did he become a socialist? Because he had the brains to become a socialist. Like, the IRA split down the middle in the 1930s, between the socialist faction and the right-wing faction. The hardliners. And he went to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War. On the Republican side, obviously. Against Franco. Which is where most of the Irish people went to fight, against Franco, in the Spanish Civil War. Some Irish Blueshirts went to fight for Franco. They were sent home with a letter from Franco saying thank you to Ireland for its support, but that General O'Duffy was the worst alcoholic he'd ever come across and he was completely useless as a soldier. What do we know about the Blueshirts? For the benefit of the readers who are ignorant. The Blueshirts were the fascist party of Ireland. They were the strong-arm boys of Cumann Na Gael. Which turned into Fine Gael. That's why Fine Gael supporters are called Blueshirts. And would they support Oswald Mosley, and people like that? They were in with them, yeah. They were in with them, Franco, Mussolini and Hitler. Fine Gael are a fascist party, you know. To this day they're a fascist party. The Blueshirts were their bully-boys. They used to parade and give the fascist salute, and wear blue shirts. Really ridiculous colour for Irish people to wear, know what I mean, who were meant to be nationalistic. Blue shirt. But they'd run out of colours. Couldn't wear green shirts, cause the Fianna wore green shirts. The IRA volunteers... the young IRA volunteers wore green shirts. So, they couldn't wear green shirts, they had to wear blue shirts. And they were led by General Owen O'Duffy. Who was a ridiculous character. And when de Valera got into power, he got the IRA into his office and he said, "Listen, boys. do me a favour, get those b****** off my arse will. ya! Get the Blueshirts off my arse!" So, the Blueshirts had a march on a Saturday, and the IRA turned up and fired a few shots over their heads, and they all ran like f***. And that was the end of the Blueshirts as a mass movement. If there ever was a mass movement. Irish fascism doesn't make sense, so it didn't have much of a popular draw to it. But even the loonies who were f****** involved with it shat themselves when the real boys turned up. The real bang-bang men. Know what I mean? |