Confronting the Long Shadow of Sallins
Sold out a month before opening, the Sallins Inquiry Now benefit gig was a great sucess. All the acts gave of their time free.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin was invited to attend the Sallins Inquiry Now benefit concert on Sunday night at Vicar Street (29 March), we were told. To a chorus of boos and laughter, we were read his best wishes and told he wouldn’t be there due to a ‘prior commitment’. When pressed on the subject of the concert, an inquiry into the Sallins train robbery and subsequent arrests, coerced confessions, and imprisonment of three men, the office of the Taoiseach did not respond.
Later, the poet Theo Dorgan stood on the same stage and said, ‘Imagine if Micheál Martin, the Minister for Justice, and the Garda Commissioner were sitting there in the front row. Could you imagine that?’ The audience response was instant: ‘No.’
At this point, the truth around the robbery and subsequent events is generally well-understood. In 1976, the train was robbed by the Provisional IRA (who subsequently admitted they carried it out), and the Gardaí made arrests of members of the Irish Republican Socialist Party. Those men were injured and signed confessions; according to Gardaí, they fought with each other – except Osgur Breatnach, who wasn’t with the others. He’d beaten himself up, it’s asserted. They were tried, and two of them – Osgur Breatnach and Brian McNally – were imprisoned, while Kelly fled the country. In 1980, Breatnach and McNally were acquitted on the basis that their confessions had been forced. Kelly returned to Ireland expecting acquittal, and was himself imprisoned. He was released four years later, and in 1992 was given a presidential pardon. The three received financial compensation the following year, but no official apology has been issued, and no inquiry has been launched into the events.
This was the fourth benefit concert for the men, after two in 1984 and one in 1992. But the organiser, musician Cormac Breatnach (brother of Osgur), chose this week to stage a new concert for a major anniversary of the robbery, which took place fifty years ago on 31 March.
There was no shortage of Irish music and literary luminaries who gave their time to this event. After an introduction by MC Doireann Ní Ghlacáin, performances began with fiddle player Colm Mac Con Iomaire and poet Paula Meehan. Mac Con Iomaire’s performance was rich with loop and reverb effects, creating an engaging ambience over which Meehan read her poetry with an almost hypnotic rhythm.
This was followed by a special guest – ostensibly secret but so closely involved with the cause that it would have been a bigger surprise if he hadn’t attended. Christy Moore began with his song ‘Wicklow Boy’, written about Kelly. He first sang this song in 1984 with Dónal Lunny outside Portlaoise Prison while Kelly was on hunger strike inside, and footage of this performance was played before the concert.
John Spillane’s performance brought the first half of the gala to a close, with his ‘Dance of the Cherry Trees’ and a new song, ‘Full Moon in Finglas’. The latter was a sweet song built on a falling scale and rich with sentimental lyrics. ‘Full moon in Finglas / Walking in the dark / Walking with my girl down Dalymount Park’, before he was joined for a duet with Pauline Scanlon.
Alongside Moore and Kíla, Damien Dempsey was the act that got the biggest cheers from the audience. Dempsey’s band started with his song ‘Colony’ before bringing the house down with ‘Rocky Road to Dublin’. He returned to the stage later with Scanlon for a beautiful duet rendition of ‘The Unquiet Grave’.
Kíla closed the show. It’s been longer than I realised since I last saw them live, and I’d forgotten the level of energy and rock star electricity the group bring to their performances. And the wealth of inspirations as well – grunge, dance and funk all in the mix.
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