The voice of Luke Kelly and the music of the Dubliners provided a very welcome wake-up call for a sleepy and depressed Ireland in the early 1960s. It was the dawning of a new and brighter day
when more and more young people in Ireland began to find their own voice and shake off some of the more debilitating cobwebs of a very repressive church and conservative state establishment.

Luke Kelly had a voice that was undeniably Dublin at its best. The songs he sung were expressed with the depth, beauty, spirit, and exuberance of the Irish tradition. He and the rest of the Dubliners were Bohemian-type characters, distinctly Irish yet with a street cred that evoked a universal emotional spirit among people everywhere, particularly those who were seeking a better
and fairer world. Luke Kelly’s voice became an important clarion cry for the changing life in the city of Dublin and beyond in the 1960s, when song, music, the arts and the impetus for social change combined in a single generation.

Ireland, for too long, had been slumbering after decades of economic and social stagnation following the Civil War. It was a depressed country, plagued by emigration, unemployment, censorship, repression and inequality. The Dubliners connected readily with the feelings of people who wanted their voices heard, from homes, factories or farms, mines or quarries, the workshops, streets or country or from the cruel seas. This cry for change reverberated across Ireland, inspiring many other musicians, singers, poets, writers, artists and workers, male and female. It encouraged all those who were demanding a better world. But in particular, it helped us all to share the joy of living in a much more open and liberated Ireland.

Des Geraghty is a trade unionist and social activist. He was president of SIPTU from 1999 to 2004 and served as an MEP from 1992 to 1994. He has authored several books.