DERRY JOURNAL Editorial: Shane McGowan stood up for the oppressed and was a friend over the years

The nation lost one of the finest lyricists it has ever had with his death last week.

Many in Derry mourn Shane’s passing. He was a friend to the city in various ways, direct and oblique, over decades.

On a visit in 1987 to perform on 'The Tom O’Connor Roadshow’ he was asked by the the local Centre for the Unemployed to return for a benefit gig in the Embassy and agreed.

At the height of the conflict he was sympathetic to the plight of nationalist communities when such a stance was neither 'profitable nor popular' to borrow a catchphrase from Strabane’s Flann O'Brien, one of Shane’s heroes – 'Streams of Whiskey' was inspired by O'Brien's 'An Béal Bocht'.

A tangible example was his 1988 protest against the miscarriage of justice perpetrated against the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six – including Derry man John Walker who spent 17 year in prison after being wrongly convicted of involvement in the Birmingham pub bombings. ‘Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six’ was banned by the BBC.

Its message was blunt: ‘There were six men in Birmingham; In Guildford there's four; That were picked up and tortured; And framed by the law’.

This punk poet will be remembered alongside the likes of The Clash and The Dubliners but it seems possible – as Bruce Springsteen has predicted – that his work will endure for centuries in a manner similar to that of O’Carolan, Thomas Moore and Percy French. RIP Shane. Ní bheidh a leithéid arís ann.

Hot Press tribute to Shane McGowan and The Pogues published on day of punk poet’s passing