A curmudgeonly report of the Beatles’ first visit appeared in the regional paper, the Sligo Champion: The Beatles were met at the border and taken by a secret route to Belfast. In what was known as ‘Operation Beatle’, extra police were on duty and crash barriers were erected. A display of ‘Beatlemania’ which accompanied their time in Dublin, led to the Belfast police ‘bracing themselves ’ for similar scenes in the city. On each occasion, fans queued all night to get a ticket to the show. Brought up by his Aunt Mimi, John never knew his Irish family, yet he identified strongly with that part of his heritage.Įarly in the Beatle’s career, they played in Ireland: in Dublin and Belfast in November 1963, and again in Belfast a year later. However, while the majority of these emigrants travelled to North America, James settled in Liverpool-usually the only option for those who could not afford to go further afield. He, like so many of the post-Famine generation, emigrated to seek better prospects of employment.
His grandfather, James Lennon, had been born in Dublin in 1858. True to form, John’s ancestors were Irish. John was born in Liverpool in the north of England-a city sometimes referred to as the 33 rd county of Ireland or East Dublin, because its Irish roots were so evident.
On one lazy bed, a colony of mushrooms had established itself (no comment).Friday, 9 October 2020 marks what would have been the 80 th birthday of rock legend, John Lennon, a founder of the Beatles, and a singer, song-writer and social activist. A lively hare scampered across the hillside and looked like it had the whole place to itself. In 2020 the only sign of previous inhabitants were the ruins of a few old houses and a pattern of lazy beds which pre-dated the Hippies. God knows what people were supposed to do on the island, it wasn’t much more than a large rock in the Atlantic.” Lennon visited once only and when he was shot dead, his wife Yoko Ono sold the island and donated the money to an orphanage. Years later one member looked back with less than nostalgia: “We shared a primitive kind of ruin which was not much more than scant protection from the weather.
God knows what people were supposed to do on the island, it wasn’t much more than a large rock in the Atlantic However, the experiment was doomed to failure and eventually the commune dissolved in 1972. In the event of an accident, they were to raise a white flag and a neighbour on a nearby island would call for help.
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They grew cabbages, potatoes, and onions, and had around a dozen hens which ran free on the island. They even had a baby called Benedictine among their number as one of the two women members had given birth. They had built wells for water and cold- storage holes to keep milk and butter. However, that situation became resolved and after a year of living there, the 12 or so individuals were on the best of terms, reported a newspaper. “We are not foolish enough to grown marijuana on an island through which we have worked so hard last year to make it into a home for ourselves,” came Rawle’s rebuttal to Fine Gael TD Hugh Byrne. There were continuous charges from the locals that the hippies were taking marijuana. The boatman’s family had been threatened by a pressure group, said Rawle. However, this avenue of access was compromised when boat services were suddenly withdrawn. The group did not have their own boat when they arrived but Rawle reported that local boatmen were friendly to them and would help them get food. And the cost of sustaining one person on the island for one week was only £1.50. As for money, they had become experts in handicraft he said. They also hoped to establish a lobster fishing enterprise. He stated that the hippies had planted crops and intend to hang on to the island in spite of any obstacles. “Mothers will lock up their daughters but many people have told us a breath of fresh air will be welcome,” he said. Rawle was well capable of deflecting such criticism. An ICA official said, “they would oppose these characters by any means they could”. “Foreigners with free love, drugs and pot parties aren’t for us even at 30 minutes’ hard-rowing distance,” a local was reported as saying. Why a group of people living in harmony with nature and not interfering with anybody’s life should become a target of vitriol shouldn’t be surprising, but a target they did become.
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