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Showing posts with label Martin Dino McGarrigle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Martin Dino McGarrigle. Show all posts
Martin Dino McGarrigle ✒ A self-proclaimed hood from Belfast picks up a Hezbollah flag thrown on stage by a concert goer and makes some anti-Israeli remarks. 

The British police charge him under The Terrorism Act. The media goes into a furore. While it wasn’t exactly The Sex Pistols singing “God Save the Queen” on the Thames during the British monarch’s silver jubilee, it still turned out to be a masterstroke in publicity, propelling a group of young Gaeilgeoirí rappers from relative obscurity to international attention. 

Of course I’m talking about Kneecap. Now they are everywhere, giving rise to a common theme in the comments from their detractors –“If they are so anti-British why are they taking British money? Why are they playing British festivals, concerts, courthouses etc”? OK, I made the last bit up, but that’s the gist of it. The problem here is the word “Brits.” 

When I was a child a “Brit” was a bastard in uniform with boot polish on his face, who carried a rifle and would raid your home at 6am. As I got a bit older the meaning expanded to include the British government, its agents, and their establishment, as well as the soldiers on the ground. And they were rarely just “the Brits.” They were, almost always “the fucking Brits.” It was an insult. They knew it and we knew it. The word wasn’t so much spoken as spat in disgust. 

Then, gradually, a subtle change began. I suspect it was part of the Normalisation part of the three-pronged British strategy for the north which included Criminalisation and Ulsterisation. They began to adopt the word. Aided by their propaganda wing in the BBC and the editors of red top rags they took away its power as an insult by using it to describe themselves, much the same way as African Americans did with the N word. The first time I heard some upper middle class talking head on TV talking about “we Brits” I nearly fell of my chair. And therein lies the confusion. Those of us from the north of Ireland know exactly who we are referring to when we talk about “the Brits” and it’s not the ordinary British people. 

So, for the Kneecap detractors, when you hear them sing “Get Your Brits Out” rest assured they’re not referring to the British public, they’re talking about “the fucking Brits.”

⏩Dino McGarrigle is a Strabane raconteur.

Get Your Brits Out

Martin Dino McGarrigle ✒ I’ve been rifling through my memory bank for anecdotes of Eddie / Edward Mc Garrigle.

His staunchness and loyalty have already been lauded by his comrades.

But I want people to remember that sense of humour.

I chose this anecdote because a lot of people who weren’t close to him never realised he had a mad sense of humour.

He and I were blasting down the Melmount Road, late 80s, XR3i, (me back from England for a wee break) –“Never Mind the Bollocks” by The Sex Pistols playing – singing along.

Brits stepped in the road just before Beechmount Avenue waving us down.

Eddie swerved around them and continued down the Melmount Road then up the Ballycolman Lane to drop me off.

There were 6 British soldiers waiting for us outside my Ma’s house.

They surrounded us in a well rehearsed move.

I, as per usual, started ranting at them.

Eddie smiled at me, locked all the doors and turned the volume of the Sex Pistols tape as loud as it would go and said “ignore them.”

There were Brits tapping on every window going “excuse me sir?”

We just sat there, staring straight ahead, nodding our heads slightly, to the music, pretending we couldn’t hear them. Just refused to acknowledge their existence.

Then “Anarchy in the UK” came on...

It was my favourite song at the time. (it still makes me jump all round ..)

Eddie, thinking I was gonna start pogoing gripped my arm and out of the side of his mouth said “don’t move!”

Next thing the Brits started pogoing round the car and “strumming” their rifles like they were guitars.
Eddie said to me “don’t look at the cunts and don’t laugh at them!”

I shouted “I won’t!!” then I burst out laughing... then he did!

We all laughed for about 5 minutes.

Them and us!

Having a laugh together–it wasn’t exactly playing football in no man’s land on Xmas day but it was surreal.

My parents had come out to watch.

Long story short – the Brits gave us a cursory search and left.

Eddie went home; I looked across the street at my Ma and Da standing in the front garden and thought “just the oul doll’s wrath now...”

She never opened her mouth.

Remember we were playing The Sex Pistols – Never mind The Bollocks?

I’d bought the record about a decade earlier and drove everybody in the house mad by constantly playing it. Especially my Da.

He had watched (and listened to) my punk faze in the ‘70s with absolute horror! That day, as soon as the Brits drove off he turned to me and shouted - “How many times did I try to tell you about that fucking music, ye wee shite!”

Dino McGarrigle is a Strabane raconteur.

Anarchy In Strabane

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