SINIAD O CONNOR has withdrawn from Fiile An Phobail. The singer had been scheduled to undertake her only concert appearance of the year at the West Belfast Festival on August 6th, in what would undoubtedly have been one of the highlights of this year s event. Now, however, those plans have been thrown into disarray.
I had let it be known that I would be making my feelings about punishment beatings clear during the concert, Siniad told Hot Press, but apparently this is not acceptable. Effectively I was warned by Sinn Fiin that I shouldn t mention punishment beatings. But they asked the wrong artist if they wanted a puppet. Nobody s going to tell me what to do or say on stage. I just couldn t let that happen.
Contact with Fiile An Phobail had originally come through the American writer Tim O Grady, and on through former Sinn Fiin publicist Danny Morrison. Hot Press has seen a copy of the letter sent by Morrison to O Grady and subsequently passed on to Siniad in which he expresses his concern that Siniad might use the concert to condemn punishment beatings.
The issue of punishment beatings is a controversial one, Morrison says, not just in terms of the violence inflicted on individuals (which appears to be Siniad s concern) but because criminals and joyriders have been used by the Government and the RUC to demoralise the community, to attack Sinn Fiin and to recruit informers.
He goes on to dismiss FAIT (Families Against Intimidation and Terror) as an anti-Republican group. It has never condemned RUC beatings of people in police custody, and RUC collusion with loyalist assassination squads, he adds.
Morrison s letter was clearly written with the objective of dissuading Siniad O Connor from condemning punishment beatings from the stage. Of course there is a real possibility that Siniad . . . does not fully appreciate the complexities of the issue nor the sensibilities of working class people in places like West Belfast where their houses are being burgled, their cars stolen, drug dealers are trying to introduce heroin, and the RUC do nothing but appear to facilitate crime.
For a concert platform to be used to make a point (even though Siniad may intend it to be a humanitarian point) which will be absolutely perceived as pro-establishment and anti-community is for a concert platform to be misused, he concludes.
It s a line which Siniad dismisses out of hand. That s what rock n roll is supposed to do, she says. Challenge the established dogma. They picked the wrong person to fuck with. As a victim of many punishment beatings myself, I couldn t possibly agree just to say nothing about it.
I felt that I was being intimidated and I couldn t go in and do a gig under those circumstances. I m sorry that I won t be able to, but I m gonna make up for that later.
I haven t got it fully worked out yet, but I intend to go into Belfast towards the end of the year and do a show of my own. I ll bring in a sound system and do it like a rave but with a whole reggae thing that ll blow people s heads.
I m looking for a place that can hold about 2,000 people and I ll donate the money that s generated to survivors of punishment beatings.
And on the cancellation, she has one final comment, which suggests that she hasn t lost her sense of humour. They shouldn t have tried to tell me what to say or what not to say, she says. I m a priest, for fuck s sake. Whadda they expect?