Son of Salford, dear to Dublin – An Irishman’s Diary about Ewan MacColl

‘Dirty Old Town’ has all but taken out Irish citizenship in the years since it was written

I see that the town of Salford has been criticised for ignoring tomorrow's centenary of one of its greatest sons, although I'm not entirely surprised. James Henry Miller, better known as the songwriter Ewan MacColl, was born there on January 25th, 1915. And among his later achievements was the ballad that immortalised the place, Dirty Old Town.

But if Salford is playing down his anniversary, there may be the rub. Because for all its popularity, especially this side of the Irish Sea, Dirty Old Town is a dubious tribute. Its nostalgia is more than offset by the song's keynote emotion – anger. And even its most poetic images ("I saw a train set the night on fire) are embellishments on the theme of pollution. Indeed the line in the original version about smelling a spring on "the Salford wind" is sometimes sung as "the sulphured wind", which may be apt. But in any case, most Irish singers tend to drop the Salford reference altogether, in favour of calling the wind "smoky".

The resultant anonymity has allowed the song to be unofficially adopted by Dublin. Thanks to Luke Kelly, the Pogues, U2, and others, in fact, Dirty Old Town has all but taken out Irish citizenship in the years since it was written. And there must be at least some people in Salford who were happy to see it emigrate.

MacColl wrote many other fine songs too, of course. His greatest success, probably, was the 1957 ballad The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, now synonymous with Roberta Flack but also covered by countless others, from Shirley Bassey to Christy Moore.

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With that on one side and Dirty Old Town on the other, MacColl had an artistic range broader than most. But in between, it must be said, he didn't always get it right. His life-long commitment to leftwing politics informed many of his songs. And his earlier work could be a bit gauche, in more ways than one.

A particular low was his Ballad of Stalin, which opens "Joe Stalin was a mighty man, and a mighty man was he" and doesn't improve thereafter. Not only did it play down the criminal lunatic side of Stalin's personality, it was also generally lacking in virtue.

As one of MacColl’s wives, Peggy Seeger, commented when apologetically including it in a collection of his work, it displayed “a lack of economy, an excess of cliches and filler lines, many awkward terms and an errant chronological flow”. Its composer lived to be embarrassed by it and banished it to the salt mines of his repertoire.

Even so, for the aforementioned classics, and others like The Tunnel Tigers – his tribute to the Irish emigrants who built London (in this case the undergrounds bits) – MacColl's memory is secure, at least west of the Isle of Man. There won't be a singing pub in Ireland safe from Dirty Old Town tonight, although that goes for most weekends.

His flirtation with Stalin notwithstanding, by the way, MacColl was well known for his anti-war activism. So in the interests of balance, I should mention the weekend’s other notable anniversary, the death 50 years ago today of Winston Churchill.

Churchill was in his own way intimately connected with Dublin, having spent early years here, in what is now Áras an Uachtaráin. It’s said that his interest in militaria was awakened by his childhood experience of watching parades outside the Viceregal Lodge, although no doubt he would have found his talent sooner or later.

In any case, among the memories evoked by the anniversary is an entertaining account in the latest Oldie magazine, by the writer Stanley Price, who watched the funeral on a television in Bray, of all places. It wasn't just any television, though. It was in the dressing room of Richard Burton, who was filming in Ardmore Studios at the time.

Elizabeth Taylor was there too. And as they watched the BBC’s funeral coverage, Burton turned Richard Dimbleby to silent and suppled his own commentary, Churchillian style.

This reduced everyone to tears, apparently; although the champagne – of which they were on their second bottle, even though it was morning – may have been a factor too.

Churchill had famously spoken of an "iron curtain" descending across post-war Europe, separating the eastern bloc from the west. That curtain was still down when he died. By early 1965, in fact, there was even a bit of it Dublin. Burton was here to play The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. And as part of the backdrop, the Berlin Wall stretched bleakly across the cobblestones of Friedrichstrasse, or Smithfield as it was known locally.

@FrankmcnallyIT