Naturally Unnatural Issue #7 6th June 2017 | Page 3

Issue #7, 6th June 2017
merely playing what the public have
asked for. Britain has had a long history
Broadcasters should rightly stay impar-
tial; however, BBC impartiality has been of protest music that we are proud of, yet
question multiple times over the years. In some support this kind of censorship.
2013, the BBC Trust found that a BBC doc-
A brief histor y of protest
umentary on the welfare state breached
music
impartiality guidelines, they found that
the programme failed to back its views
Protest music has been around for dec-
up with statistics after implying the wel-
ades and Tom Robinson’s Glad To Be Gay
fare state is in ‘crisis’. In 2015, Radio 4’s
in 1978, was refused to be played by the
Today programme faced multiple com-
BBC on the Top 40 however, has since
plaints after presenter Sarah Montague
become a defining anthem of gay libera-
failed to challenge the Israeli defence
tion in Britain. This has striking similari-
minister over Palestine, Ken Loach was
ties with ‘liar liar GE2017’. Other famous
among those who complained to the BBC. protests songs include The Jam’s Eton
In January, BBC political editor, Laura
Rifles, which was written by Paul Weller
Kuenssberg’s November 2015 report on
after a protest march for jobs in slough
Jeremy Corbyn’s views on shoot-to-kill
encountered the local public school and
policy had breached impartiality and ac- its army cadets. Pink Floyd’s Another
curacy guidelines.
Brick In The Wall, which tackled the issue
...continued from page 2
Refusal the play the song ‘liar liar GE2017’
is a form of censorship. The song explicit-
ly expresses the views of those who have
bought the song and those who made the
song. Refusal to play it, shows that media
outlets aren’t as impartial as they should
be. Playing music that has gotten into the
charts by its own merit is not that media
outlet ‘declaring an allegiance’. It is
of individual personalities being op-
pressed and to conform whilst in school.
The list is too big but a few more also in-
clude The Farm with All Together Now,
which was a song about the Christmas
Day truce during World War I in 1914.
U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday which high-
lighted when the British Army opened
fire on a civil protest against the division
of Ireland on Sunday 30 th January 1972, an
event that has since been dubbed
‘bloody Sunday’. This event led to an in-
crease in membership to the IRA and
fuelled anti-British sentiment within Ire-
land. Billy Bragg stopped Top of the Pops
viewers when he performed Between The
Wars, a song that exposed the frequently
violent struggle of the UK’s miners. Of
course, the most famous but highly mis-
understood protest song is John Lennon’s
Imagine. The song was written during his
most militant period and the song was
Lennon’s attempt to ‘sugar-coat’ the harsh
personal and political ideas of his first
solo album.
British music history has had fine exam-
ples of protest songs, and tracks such as
‘liar liar GE2017’ should be played by
media outlets. Otherwise it can be seen
as censorship and it could be misinter-
preted as an act of bias against those ide-
als and favourable towards those who
oppose the content within the song itself.
In other words, refusing to play it could
result in more people thinking they are
biased than if they played the song. Im-
partiality isn’t about representing a point
of view of neutrality but representing
opinions from all sides.
A brief history: Sinn Fein, the IRA and the Troubles
By Matthew Clifton
Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of
being a ‘terrorist sympathiser’ for his
links to Martin McGuinness and sup-
porting the cause of the political party
Sinn Fein, the eventual reunification of
Ireland. This saw the rise of the IRA
and their exploits as a terrorist organi-
sation, killing countless innocent civil-
ians in the process. Corbyn has explic-
itly condemned the IRA and the killing
of innocent civilians and his links are
only to Sinn Fein, who differ from the
IRA but how?
What is the history of the IRA and Sinn
Fein? Are they one and the same or is it
more complex than that? Martin McGuin-
ness was not a member of the IRA but he
was a member of Sinn Fein, this highlights
that they are separate from each other.
The foundations of Sinn
Fein
Firstly, we draw to the foundation of Sinn
Fein which occurred on November
28 th 1905. They began life as a nationalist
pressure group and the name ‘Sinn Fein’
means ‘Us’ or ‘Ourselves Alone’, this was
a statement to the public that the solution
to Irelands predicament was in the hands
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of the people, not anybody else. They
foundation consisted of two different
groups by Arthur Griffith and Bulmer
Hobson and a year later established the
group Cumann na nGaedhael (Tribe of
the Gaels), the principle ancestor to Sinn
Fein.
Continued on page 4...