Brexit and Northern Ireland: What Irish musicians think about leaving the EU

As the Brexit date looms and Boris Johnson struggles to reach an agreement for Northern Ireland, Ed Power speaks with bands including Touts and Fontaines DC about the ongoing tensions in their hometowns

Voices of concern: (clockwise, from top left) Fontaines DC, Ryan Vail, Touts, and Kitt Philippa (Getty/YouTube)

Brexit was the unofficial theme of this year’s Mercury Music Prize ceremony. Post-punk band Idles railed against the dumbed-down culture that brainwashed millions into voting for economic self-harm. Just so nobody missed the point, Slowthai brandished a severed effigy of Boris Johnson’s head. In the process, the Northampton rapper went where no pop star had previously gone before – earning a stern-ish rebuke from Lauren Laverne.

But while Brexit is understandably a fraught subject for Slowthai and other English artists, across the Irish sea it is regarded as no less serious: at that same awards ceremony, the Dublin-formed band Fontaines DC satirised physical force Irish republicanism with their battlecry of “Brits out”. In Ireland, there are real fears that the re-institution of a hard border between the Republic and the North – potentially as early as the end of October – could re-ignite the Troubles.

Lives, not tariffs, are on the line. Forget WTO, the initials du jour are IRA and UVF. And, more than anyone else, musicians will appreciate how essential it is that boundaries between north and south remain in the past. In the darkest days of the Troubles, artists served as a vital connection between the two Irelands: Cork-raised Rory Gallagher had much of his early success in Belfast, and U2 played the city’s Queen’s University as early as 1979. The bill for the inaugural Slane Castle festival in 1981, on the blood-and-history-soaked banks of the Boyne in County Meath, featured Belfast new wave of heavy metal act Sweet Savage.

In those days, Northern Ireland wasn’t always safe for someone with a “southern” accent. Just four years before U2 performed at Queen’s, the popular Miami Showband were ambushed by the UVF driving home to Dublin following a gig in Banbridge, Co Down. Three of its members – frontman Fran O’Toole, guitarist Tony Geraghty and trumpeter Brian McCoy – were killed while the surviving two were seriously injured. The band was “mixed”, in that two of its members were Protestant, four were Catholic. In the Republic of Ireland, this would hardly have been worth mentioning. Not so up north. A recent Netflix documentary, ReMastered: The Miami Showband Massacre, investigated suggestions that the attack was orchestrated by British intelligence. The doc was widely discussed in Ireland. In the UK, it came and went without comment.

An MI5-sponsored ambush is not something with which the present generation of Irish musicians, north or south, must contend. Not as things stand at any rate. But they are nonetheless united in their shock and horror at how Brexit has played out. And by the seeming indifference of the Conservative Party, especially, towards peace in Ireland (any by extension in the UK), despite the most recent talks between British prime minister Boris Johnson and the taoiseach Leo Varadkar being deemed “very positive”.

“I’m in my kitchen now and I can see Donegal – I can see the Republic,” says Jason Feenan, drummer with Derry punk trio Touts. Their relentless punk-pop doubles as cultural weather vane, with songs bearing titles such as “Bomb Scare” and “Political People”.

Nor was the band’s name lightly chosen: “Tout” is a Northern Irish term for an informer. In the worst years of the conflict, being labelled as such could earn you a visit from the IRA and a burial in a silent bog.

“I was nine and a half weeks too young to vote in the referendum,” says Feenan. “At the time everyone wrote it off. It [a Leave vote] would never happen. You never heard anyone complain about the EU before [the referendum].

“I don’t see how anyone could genuinely believe Brexit was going to positively impact on their lives. Nobody is going to benefit, apart from a few bankers and politicians moving a hedge fund.”

Any attempt to reinstate a border is doomed, he thinks. “When I walk my dog, I cross the border. Within a 10-minute walk of me in Derry there are least three border crossings. You don’t even know you are crossing. These are just old country roads.”

There’s widespread disgruntlement about the arch-Brexit stance taken by the DUP. Not that Feenan is surprised. The opportunity to erect barriers between north and south was always going to be seized on by these hardliners. It’s their raison d’être.

“The DUP are never going to change,” he says. “You have to change voters’ minds. You need for there to be a genuine alternative for unionist voters. I’m not a unionist but most people that vote for the DUP aren’t anti-gay marriage. They would maybe jump the line on abortion. The majority of voters aren’t hardline, people vote out of fear.”

South of the border, Brexit has been watched with befuddlement, worry and – and let’s just get out in the open – a degree of schadenfreude. In music circles it by no means the dominates conversation, however. The big talking point this year has instead been the rise of middle class hip hop outfit Versatile, who have been criticised for “misogynistic” and “racist” raps . You can make up your own mind when Snoop Dogg takes Versatile on tour as support for his UK dates next year.

“This is the normalisation of classist, racist, homophobic and sexist lyrics that have now managed to become a part of mainstream Irish media,” tweeted singer Erica Cody about Versatile and lyrics such as “all my side b*****s are dark skinned and kissing and licking my d*** / they prefer it to chicken”. This is what has been burning up Irish music social media – not Brexit.

It would also be an overstatement to claim citizens of the Republic have suddenly rediscovered an incendiary hatred for the British. For one thing, people are intimately versed in the politics and culture of the UK. Just as British people understand Donald Trump doesn’t represent all Americans, so in Ireland there is an appreciation that many in the UK are no less appalled at Johnson, Dominic Cummings and their mob.

That said, the minority that has long harboured resentment against Britain and its colonial legacy in Ireland may feel revitalised. That’s one of the themes of Fontaines DC’s “Boys in the Better Land”. The Dublin-based group blew the shutters off with it at the Mercurys. The line that will have stood out for Irish people was: “Driver’s got names to fill two double barrels/ He spits out “Brits out”, only smokes Carrolls.”

“The song is about a character,” says Fontaines bassist Connor Deegan. “He has a very superficial hatred of Britain. He smokes an Irish brand of cigarettes and says things like ‘Brits out’. But that hatred of Britain, after the Brexit vote, it’s become a different thing. My generation has grown up with the Good Friday Agreement. There is now a genuine concern [that violence might break out again].”

Deegan and his bandmates were backstage at the Mercurys when Slowthai brandished Bojo’s bonce. As someone who enjoys watching YouTube clips of Oasis take on all comers back in the day, he was encouraged to see a performer just go for it, honestly and earnestly. And he couldn’t help but notice that the BBC cut the footage – and that presenter Laverne immediately sought to distance the corporation from the protest by insisting that the rapper was expressing “his own views”.

Fontaines DC are, he says, also struck when touring England by just how left behind some parts of the country can seem. Small-town Ireland, where a majority of Fontaines originally hail from, perpetually grumbles that it is overlooked and that resources are instead diverted towards Dublin and Cork. Yet that is nothing compared to the contrasts that you see the UK.

“The only people who have asked us about Brexit in Britain are journalists,” he says. “Everyone in Britain is so fed up with Brexit that to bring it up is a serious social faux pas.”

Asked if he agrees that the Irish government has played its hand effectively on Brexit, Deegan reacts strongly. “I don’t really respect Leo Varadkar or [the rest of his government],” he says, referring to the taoiseach. Brexit affects a different country. Why are Fontaines DC being constantly quizzed about it, he wonders. There are lots of things that affect Ireland – unsustainable rents and homelessness just for starters. Why isn’t the Irish government being taken to task for those?

In the north, concerns are different. The Troubles are far less of an existential worry there. They are a clear and present danger. “The memory of being evacuated from my home in the middle of the night due to a bomb scare and, on another occasion, waiting while our car was potentially going to be ‘burnt out’, is relatively faint. Yet currently there are people under extreme conflict all over the world – and I see them as our neighbours,” says Belfast songwriter Kitt Philippa. “Divisive words can incite violence and everyone has a responsibility to be careful of the motivations behind opinions.”

“There were tensions long before Brexit, [and] with or without Brexit, these tensions will persist, if not deepen,” Philippa continues. “It is important to listen to voices with good intentions from various perspectives and try to learn from each other. That’s something many organisations in Northern Ireland have been trying to do for some time.”

“I found a huge machine gun when I was 11 in a bush where we played daily. Armed and fully loaded,” remembers Derry songwriter and electronica artist Ryan Vail. “Going to the beach when we were young, we crossed border checkpoints that had fully armed soldiers. We constantly had bomb scares on the bridges preventing us from getting to school. So we did experience the Troubles. We welcomed the Good Friday Agreement and got to see the checkpoints removed.”

Brexit has no winners – aside from disaster capitalists and currency speculators, and it’s hard to see any positive for Ireland, especially. Yet it may serve as a clarion call for artists. The past decade has been somewhat lamentable for Irish music; a parade of bloodless bands and solo performers have been shoved down our throats. Many seem to harbour ambitions no deeper than to be the next Coldplay.

But with groups such as Fontaines DC, the Murder Capital, Pillow Queens and rappers such as Kojaque, Irish music has finally reconnected with its heart of darkness. That isn’t entirely a consequence of Brexit. Yet the two are surely bound together.

“There were a lot of lads with acoustic guitars there for 10 years,” nods Deegan. “When there’s so much going on, there’s going to be a reaction.”