Gardai survivor of IRA landmine trap says people singing paramilitary 'propaganda' is the last thing he wants to hear

Jim Cannon, a former sergeant in An Garda Siochana, was blown up 46 years years ago this week – October 16, 1976 – in Portarlington, a village in the centre of the Republic, after being lured to a house with a false call for help.

He was reacting to the saga around pro-IRA chanting across Ireland – a controversy which began last week and which continues to smoulder on.

It all started on Wednesday, October 12, when the Irish women’s football team beat Scotland one-nil, qualifying for the women’s World Cup for the first time ever.

Afterwards members of the squad huddled together and sang ‘Celtic Symphony’ by the Wolfe Tones, a rebel song which ends with a chant of “ooh ahh, up the ‘Ra!”.

This was filmed and uploaded on to the internet, sparking intense criticism and causing the team to apologise.

But this then touched off a trend of other people chanting the song, ranging from a large group of men in a bar in Dublin airport, to a woman on TikTok who filmed small children on the back seat of her car singing the pro-IRA lyrics.

On Saturday Conor McGregor, the world-renowned Irish UFC star, joined in.

He posted a video clip online of a newscaster asking whether an apology would be made over the IRA song. The clip then cuts to McGregor saying “I’d like to take this chance to apologise… to absolutely nobody!” before the song ‘Celtic Symphony’ kicks in, to the sight of him swaggering through a ring.

Following the outcry about the song, it has reportedly shot to the top of download charts in Ireland.

Recalling how he was nearly killed by the IRA, Mr Cannon said he had entered a remote farmhouse shortly before 1am after a woman made a fake 999 call.

His fellow officer Michael Clerkin from Monaghan, aged 24, entered the building and tripped a hidden switch attached to about 45kg (c.100lb) of explosives.

He died immediately, and Mr Cannon and another man called Gerry Bohan were buried in the rubble of the collapsed house.

His clothes largely blown off his body, Mr Cannon fought his way across fields and through barbed wire fences to raise the alarm at a distant farmhouse. It was his 42nd birthday.

Mr Cannon believes the attack was IRA revenge for the Emergency Powers Bill, a new law allowing Garda to detain suspects for up to seven days instead of 48 hours.

Speaking of the Irish sportswomen chanting “up the Ra”, the 88-year-old said: “I’d say these girls weren't even born at the time [of the Troubles]. I think they just don’t understand it – they were just copying others. I don’t think they’d mean it.

"I’d completely condemn it, of course. Things are bad enough in the world – in Ireland, England, the north of Ireland, everywhere – without shouting and singing this propaganda about the IRA.

"They’re glorifying atrocities. I’d certainly object to it – it’s the last thing I’d want to hear after what we went through down here, all the guards that were murdered and injured.”

He would not have objected to republicans “peacefully” pushing for Irish unity, but that “there was no sense to the atrocities that were carried out".

The IRA killed five other gardai, and one Irish soldier.

According to the book Lost Lives, an encyclopaedia of Troubles deaths, the IRA was behind 48.7% of all killings from 1966 to 1999 – 1,771 in total.

This is a significant underestimate however.

Some 135 killings are just attributed to “other republican”, and it is highly likely many such unclaimed fatal attacks involved IRA men.

Of course, for the most part the figures also omit people whose deaths did not occur soon after an attack but were hastened substantially by injuries received, or things like premature alcohol-fuelled fatalities and suicides resulting from trauma.

Of those 1,771 people killed outright by the IRA, the biggest single category of victim was civilians (636), followed by regular army, air force, and Royal Navy (443), police and police reservists, including Gardai (284), the UDR/RIR (182), fellow republicans (161), loyalist paramilitaries (28), prison wardens (23).

All told, republicans were behind 58.8% of all deaths in the Troubles, loyalists 28.9%, and the state (overwhelmingly the regular army and SAS) 10.1% – with a remaining 2.2% of deaths caused by unknown killers.

More from the News Letter:

Donaldson says pro-IRA chants hurting republican cause while Sinn Fein calls for ‘respect’ - as spotlight also falls on loyalist antics