Up the ‘Ra: The chant that does not seem to go away

It’s a chant that led to warnings of arrests and prosecutions if sung at Scottish football matches over a decade ago.

“Ooh ah, up the ‘Ra” is the chorus from Celtic Symphony, a song written by the Wolfe Tones’ Brian Warfield in 1987 to celebrate the centenary of Glasgow Celtic Football Club.

A social media post of the Republic of Ireland women’s soccer team singing the pro-IRA chant in their dressingroom after their historic World Cup qualifying win in Scotland quickly went viral.

Ulster Unionist leader Doug Beattie condemned it as “truly disgraceful” and welcomed the FAI and team apologies. “They have let themselves down,” he said. “Apology welcome… We cannot have that. We cannot glorify the actions of a terrorist group.”

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Kenny Donaldson, directors of victims’ organisation South East Fermanagh Foundation (SFF), said it was “a new low”:

“The IRA do not represent folklore and nor is it an expression of one’s narrative to chant the organisation’s name.”

However, Jake Mac Siacais, a former IRA prisoner and director of the Irish language development agency Forbairt Feirste, hit out at what he described as “faux outrage”.

“The chant is from a whole medley of Glasgow Celtic songs; they’re football supporters’ songs. That song is about a Celtic supporter walking home from Celtic Park and seeing graffiti on a wall. This is all manufactured outrage. What people can’t get away from is that there is a huge repertoire of songs in the Irish republican tradition alone and they can be outraged about all them.

“Some people who sing them have no interest in the history of the IRA or anybody. This chant has been sung in bars the length and breadth of Ireland where Celtic fans gather and it’s just become popularised. Anybody who lifts a newspaper in the North will go no more than two days without ‘unionist outrage at…' They basically don’t want you to be republican,” Mr Mac Siacais said.

“I feel very sorry that anyone died in the Troubles. I feel very sorry that the Troubles were visited on us. But the reality is there were two very conflicting identities in an artificial state that was meant to secure supremacy for one over the other… so people are proud of their own histories.”

The Wolfe Tones posted the song on their Twitter account on Wednesday afternoon, and Warfield accused critics of being “cranks and unionists or people who side with them”.

For historian and former Belfast Sinn Féin mayor Tom Hartley Irish rebel songs have been “part of the culture of this island”.

“Song was always a part of the instrument by which people remember their history. In Ireland that’s a very long history. With the beginning of the conflict in the North from the late 1960s onwards, I think you find the suppression of Irish rebel songs. If you think about it, singing political and historical songs has been a part of Irish culture for a very long time. So I don’t think you can say: there’s a generation coming up and why are they singing it?

“For instance, one of the famous songs sung at rugby matches is the Fields of Athenry. So I think that shows the link in to a deep cultural resonance of singing rebel songs,” he said.

In contrast, Lauren Kerr, a former Ulster Unionist Party candidate who plays soccer, described the chant as “toxic”.

“Let’s be honest, these women are role models and that was not the behaviour of a role model,” she told the BBC. “It speaks to something much wider and it speaks to something that we as a society – have we really become so desensitised to our past that we think that singing ‘ooh ah up the ‘Ra’ is no more than a bit of craic?

“Because if we are we are now in a position where we are trivialising the deaths of thousands of people and the trauma of people across the island. What might have been a bit of craic for those girls shows their ignorance towards their neighbours. It shows a failure of society to educate itself in the journey we’ve been on. While they may have all been born after the Troubles, we all have had equal opportunity to educate ourselves on the horrors committed on this island.”

Visiting the North on Wednesday for meetings with political leaders, Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney said he hoped people would accept what he described as a “very sincere apology” from the Ireland manager and team players.

“Vera Pauw says she apologises from the bottom of her heart for offence caused. This is a group of people who are very tight and close-knit. Clearly there was a mistake made after the match last night. That shouldn’t have happened. I think it’s acknowledged, and there’s a very sincere apology made, and I hope we can move on from that now. Last night was about sport primarily, an extraordinary achievement by a group of people who have qualified for a World Cup for the first time.”