Political and Social Commentary
Moore is best known for his political and social commentary, which reflects a leftwing Irish Republican perspective, this despite the fact that his mother was a Fine Gael county councillor and parliamentary candidate in Kildare. He supported the republican H-Block protestors in the 1970s and 1980s with the album H-Block in 1978, the launch of which was raided by the police, and The Spirit of Freedom. He has also recorded songs by the hunger striker Bobby Sands. However, in 1987 he ceased supporting the military activities of the IRA as a result of the Enniskillen bombing.
Individual political songs he has performed throughout his career include Mick Hanly's 'On the Blanket' about the protests of republican prisoners, his own 'Viva la Quinta Brigada' about Irish volunteers in the Spanish Civil War and his own 'Minds Locked Shut' about Bloody Sunday in Derry.
Moore has endorsed a long list of left wing support causes, ranging from El Salvador to Mary Robinson in the 1990 Presidential Election. At Glastonbury Festival in 2005 he sang about the Palestinian solidarity activist Rachel Corrie.
With typical Moore social consciousness, he opened the festival marking Ballymun's inception as Dublin's first Fairtrade Town on 23 November 2006. Ballymun, once synonymous with social deprivation and drug problems, is currently the largest urban regeneration project in northern Europe.
Read more about this topic: Christy Moore
Famous quotes containing the words political, social and/or commentary:
“The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; the Greek and the Roman world, that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third, Monarchy.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The American people owe it to themselves, and to the cause of free Government, to prove by their establishments for the advancement and diffusion of knowledge, that their political Institutions ... are as favorable to the intellectual and moral improvement of Man as they are conformable to his individual and social rights.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“Lonely people keep up a ceaseless flow of commentary on themselves.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)