THE GREEN GIRLS

Jessica Berry on an all-female Irish band that only looks harmless

ULSTER'S peace talks may be founder- ing, but there is at least someone in the IRA's propaganda unit having a ball. Indeed, nationalist bars all over Ulster are enjoying a new kind of knees-up thanks to Summerfiy, a staunchly republican band that is taking Northern Ireland by storm. Summerfly — they took their name from their favourite Irish ballad — at first seem like shy Daddy's girls, at least off-stage. They do not 'talk' politics, they only sing them. They are the daughters of a certain Harry Hughes, formerly an unemployed Belfast Catholic. Now he writes their Songs. I met them in a dingy nationalist bar in Strabane, not generally the place for a girls' night out. Harry's four beautiful girls, Lorraine, 15, Dare, 17, Sharon, 18, and Tanya, 21, have one clear message to the British — get out and stay out. The peace process is not working, they chant. You would not have thought it by looking at them. At first glance they seem like new hopefuls for the Eurovision Song Contest. Either that, or they have just escaped from a convent. With long, freshly combed hair, they smell of all things nice and bubble-bath. They giggle and smile politely, speak only when spoken to. Never, says Harry, do they fight among themselves, unless it is over a pair of shoes. They are too busy fighting their own war for the Catholics, he said, adding proudly that they have 'very political minds'. Neither are they, as you might expect given their task, in uniform. They wear jeans or Lycra trousers and T-shirts. Two of them are wearing odd-fitting fann- ers' caps laden with badges from all the places they have visited. Sharon, the lead singer, looks and sounds like Joan Baez. In fact they could not look less like an IRA arsenal, but wait, I was told, until you hear their music.

It is midnight in Jerry's Bar and the place is rocking. The lads, not older than 25, are acting like whirling dervishes on the dance floor. Some are showing their appreciation by throwing teddy bears at the stage. The pensioners — and there are plenty of them — are slapping their thighs and singing along. Harry, who has been lying low from the RUC for years, is sitting with me in the corner playing the part of the proud father, drumming his fingers on his thighs. Occa- sionally he gets up to tell his girls to sing a particular song. He wrote them, after all.

Ulster's answer to the Spice Girls, as one man at the bar summed them up, had a very unconventional beginning. 'I was sitting in the kitchen one evening,' said Harry nostalgically, 'when Lorraine came in and said, "Daddy, will you write me a rebel song?" I went into my bedroom and came out five minutes later with a song. That's how we started.'

Since then, Harry, now songwriter, agent and bodyguard, has composed two albums (it is unlikely, though, judging by the lyrics, that they are going to be avail- able in high-street stores for quite some time). Each song more vehemently anti- British than the next, though the tunes themselves sound as sweet as his harmless- looking daughters. They gave their first concert at a rally of some 50,000 people after one of Harry's friends, a taxi-driver, was shot by loyalist gunmen in Belfast. Since then they have been everywhere and have gathered a vast following of fans to whom the lyrics have become an anthem against the British occupation.

Couched in a country-and-western-style singsong beat, 'Blair's Peace Train', one of the girls' favourite rabble-rousers, goes like this:

Tony Blair says he has a dream That he can solve the problems of our land, So roll up, roll up, pack your bags and bring a big piece, Because we're going on a first-class trip To cuckoo-land.

Chorus:

And we'll be going with Mr Paisley, Willy McCrea, With Reg Empey, Trimble and the UDA. He says we'll all have fun if we leave behind our guns And there'll be no treachery along the way.

Fancy a night of unbridled passion?' It ends:

You want us all to surrender now, You want us all to scrape and bow, When you're the one whose back's against the wall You can buy a ticket for the train.

Don't buy a return or come back again.

And for a final, stirring kick in case the message is not clear enough:

And take your armies with you one and all .

And don't forget to bring the IRA.

They are plainly Ulster's new hot talent and there are few who would dare admit they have not heard of them. 'No one', shouted Harry over the screams of the fans, `has their vitality. Ireland has not seen the likes of them before.'

They are natural performers. They just love the stage. All play at least three instru- ments, though Lorraine boasts nine, among them the accordion, keyboards, tin whistle and banjo. Tanya in her spare time is a licensed greyhound trainer. None of them, they say, has any particular affinity with school — the yonger ones go, but none takes it seriously. They prefer Daddy's line that he's learnt far more since he left school. Sharon had thought of studying law, but thought again when she realised what a success they were going to be. Harry says he was never that keen on having a lawyer daughter anyway.

They have had several offers from Pete Seeger's agent in America, Harry confided after the applause had died down. 'We have been asked to go on tour to Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago and Los Ange- les, but we are not ready for it.' He is wrong. Not only are they ready but if they found themselves the right New York bar — a good, solid, republican one — they would probably be singing encores till dawn.

But it really would have to be the right bar — they only look like Eurovision con- tenders. Until Harry sits down, as promised, to write them some rave songs, it is highly unlikely that they will find venues outside Scotland, Ireland or America. `Decommissioning', a song about the British occupation, would be as welcome in London as a tank in a glass factory. 'We don't want to hear any more of your condi- tions,' it goes, 'we will not forget what you have done with murder in your heart, when you took our men and tortured them.'

Harry knows that Summerfly's subject matter is slightly limiting. Ulster Radio, he recalled, had lined them up some weeks ago, but then began unearthing references to the RUC, the hunger-strikers in the Maze prison and Margaret Thatcher's `bloody legacy'. They were 'clisinvited', so now they stick to the bars where they are assured a grand welcome.

Harry denies rabble-rousing. 'We make a special point', he told me, 'of not attempt- ing to play music to people who don't want to hear it. See here,' he added, 'the rabble is already roused.