The Clash. Topper Headon (drums), Mick Jones (guitar), Paul Simonon (bass) and Joe Strummer (lead vocals/guitar). Belfast, 20th October 1977.

In the 1970s the Irish Republican Army (IRA) stepped up their bombing campaign in Northern Ireland and England. In 1974, a Birmingham pub was bombed, killing 45 people. The Clash, all too aware that as grim as the situation was in England, life for Catholic and Protestant teenagers amidst daily random violence and death was infinitely worse. News of punk had reached Norther Ireland. Honestly believing that playing a gig in Belfast would give their fans some respite from civil war, the band took the opportunity to see for themselves the barbed-wire barricades, street dividing “peace walls”, no-go areas and British Armed Forces brandishing machine guns… As it happened, for complicated reasons, including venue insurance being withdrawn, the Ulster Hall gig was cancelled and disappointed, angry young fans united across their sectarian divide to ‘riot’. Later, unfair opprobrium was pored over The Clash for not really caring for their fans but instead using a war zone as a backdrop for some publicity photos that amounted to ‘cynical radical chic’ and ‘cultural pornography’.

From one of the two split sets of the limited edition box 'THE CLASH. A RELEVANT REBELLION'