"In Ireland, seeking work has often meant moving to England. The early songs of the Pogues documented what awaited there in the early 1980s — a time when it was, to put it mildly, challenging to be Irish in London. Irish people had been portrayed variously as buffoons, insurrectionists and animals in the British media since Victorian times, and ethnic hate and discrimination were prevalent well into the 1980s. The conflation of all Irish with the Irish Republican Army led to miscarriages of justice like the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six and the Maguire Seven, who were wrongly imprisoned for I.R.A. bombings in the 1970s."
Shane MacGowan, right, and Spider Stacy of the Pogues in 1987.
Photo Credit: Stephen Parker/Alamy

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/24/opinion/fairytale-new-york-the-pogues.html