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THE IRISH GOVERNMENT was alerted to the presence of a number of entertainers on a UN blacklist in 1986.
Documents released under the 30-year rule show that a number of Irish singers were on the blacklist of the UN Centre Against Apartheid.
The register, dated April 1986, says it is the third such document and includes a list of artists who had performed in apartheid-era South Africa and not pledged to avoid the country in future.
The Irish Permanent Representation to the UN sent a note back to the Department of Foreign Affairs, alerting them to the list.
On it are:
A further page shows that singers Mitch T Mitchell, Mary O’Hara and comedian Hal Roche were removed from the register as they had pledged not to perform in South Africa until apartheid was ended.
The register came at a time when apartheid was hotly debated in Ireland. The Dunnes Stores strike led to high-level discussion over an embargo of fruit from the country.
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Oh me oh my
….you make me sigh…
Those great Irish artists chose to contribute in normalising relations with the rogue state by visiting and performing there, in SA, when it was neither fashionable nor too profitable.
Soon after these visits the apartheid beast was tamed for ever.
Love and music conquers all.
Maybe Glen Hansard, Bono and Imelda May and a few more Irish artists could now give North Korea a bash!
@Rory
Are you still on the booze? What a lot of bollix!
They played and toured there to fill their pockets even more and they did not give a shite about the political situation!
Shame on them greedy feckers!
Respect to the Dunnes strikers who were hounded by establishment Ireland for the stand they took against the poisonous Apartheid regime.
But I do think it’s a good idea to send Bono to north Korea wonder how long they will put up with his shite
Benjy the Dunnes strikers were lionised by the political and media establishment.
Really? “I have given much thought to this question and I am afraid all my instincts tell me that the Government should not become involved in any activity which is designed to restrict imports from South Africa,” said John Bruton, the Minister for Industry, Trade, Commerce and Tourism. He had warned Labour Minister Ruairi Quinn on July 23: “There is no gain for Irish exports but there are potential dangers” because South Africa was “a hefty net importer of Irish goods”.
Free open air concerts, were they? Don’t be so naive. Yes, apartheid was “unfashionable”. For good reason!
Interesting…Not so holier than thou Dolan and Coulter….Anything for a buck
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
More, and more and more
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Maybe it was a clandestine full-on assault of Irish country music that finished off the apartheid regime. That stuff should be tried against NK.
Maybe it was later but wasn’t there controversy about Paul Simon recording the grace land album there, even though it includes a lot of work by black artists?
There was but as Paul Simon said @ the time it was the only way to get SA musicians into mainstream ears ,,, Soweto Choir & Ladysmith Black Mombasa would otherwise never have been heard
Perhaps it was part of an elaborate plan to bring down apartheid from within, if this list of awful “entertainers” was all one could see it makes a compelling case to end apartheid
I don’t hear the do-gooders complaining about Mugabe The Black people were better off under Ian Smith
Never see the Sunday world mention that when they’re going on about st joe
The UN are of course pillars of decency…
Phil Coulter? We should ban Ireland’s Call
good for all those talented artists!The un is all washed up.
Maybe artists should blacklist the UN in return
@Gus
Fool! So you did support Apartheid then?
I’d like to know if they performed during lent when half the place here was closed.
It doesn’t justify it at all but some context can be helpful.
He was gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that) is that context enough for you
@Boganity:
Where did you get that info from Boganity. I knew Joe fairly well and never saw him with another man. If he was homosexual it was his own business and something he wished to keep to himself. It is none of your business.
@Robespierre: A bit far to go for an open pub on a Good Friday then ;)
Today there is a reverse Apartheid in a lawless South Africa. Affirmative Action and BEE. Farmers are been murdered, mugged and raped everyday. You may call it Genocide.
The world does absolutely nothing now…..the racist ANC government has an incompetent “leader” with god knows how many charges of corruption against him. The ANC are corrupt to the core…..much like the present ruling parties in Ireland and the world does nothing.
It is time to sanction all sports and music events in South Africa until there is proper democracy and the corrupt ANC removed and law put back into the country.
Anyone who thinks otherwise should travel to the lawless and corrupt African state and see for yourselves…..
Alan Mathew, bad boy…don’t you know it’s only white Anglo-Saxons that do wrong. Everyone else is utterly blameless as anything they may have done was due to them being radicalised by the aforementioned group.
I sometimes wonder how these commenters can stand to live with themselves, they are filled with so much hate for their own group….or is it just virtue signalling? Hmmmmm.
Journalists I can maybe understand. They get paid to write whatever suits the editorial narrative and money beats morals every time, or seems to in journalism.
At the same time the UN was protecting pedos in its army?
have your say