CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by ResearchOnline@GCU Let the people sing? Irish rebel songs, sectarianism, and Scotland's Offensive Behaviour Act Millar, Stephen R. Published in: Popular Music DOI: 10.1017/S0261143016000519 Publication date: 2016 Document Version Peer reviewed version Link to publication in ResearchOnline Citation for published version (Harvard): Millar, SR 2016, 'Let the people sing? Irish rebel songs, sectarianism, and Scotland's Offensive Behaviour Act', Popular Music, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 297-319 . https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143016000519 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please view our takedown policy at https://edshare.gcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/5179 for details of how to contact us. Download date: 29. Apr. 2020 Let the people sing? Irish rebel songs, sectarianism, and Scotland’s Offensive Behaviour Act1 STEPHEN R. MILLAR School of History, Anthropology, Politics, and Philosophy, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland BT7 1NN, UK Email:
[email protected] Abstract Irish rebel songs afford Scotland’s Irish diaspora a means to assert, experience, and perform their alterity free from the complexities of the Irish language. Yet this benign intent can be offset by how the music is perceived by elements of Scotland’s majority Protestant population. The Scottish Government’s Offensive Behaviour Act (2012) has been used to prosecute those singing Irish rebel songs and there is continuing debate as to how this alleged offence should be dealt with.