The Hooligans raise hell at the Battle
The Irish band from Saffron Walden return to the Battle of Ideas festival to play - and discuss - some foot-stomping folk tunes.
You might be used to reading Liam Halligan’s column in the Sunday Telegraph, or watching him discuss the economy on GB News and other channels, but he is also part of the Irish band, The Hooligans. Since 2014, Liam, along with his daughters Maeve and Ailis, and their school friend Lewis Naughton, have raised the roof and brought grown men to tears with jigs, reels and tunes from folk’s past and present.
Talking about the beginnings of the band, Liam says: ‘One of my earliest memories is of my Irish grandfather, Martin Halligan, expertly playing a fiddle, silencing a packed working-man’s pub in London’s Willesden Green, close to where I grew up. My daughter, Maeve, now plays that very same fiddle (albeit with new strings) having picked up the musical gene. Since they were tiny, our family has experimented with Irish tunes that we’ve found in books, picked-up from YouTube, or that were lodged at the back of my head. My daughters, classically-trained and formally taught, had discovered the power, the emotional punch, of live unscripted folk.’
‘Since then’, Liam describes, ‘in between schoolwork, hockey matches and normal family life, The Hooligans have thrived - with Lewis joining in 2018 - not least due to the generosity of local people in our hometown of Saffron Walden. Busking in the Market Square, we’ve been embraced by stallholders and shoppers. Local musicians Tim Atkinson, John Starr and Adrian Inwood volunteered their expertise to record us in the small studio at Fairycroft House youth centre - resulting in a CD of the same name. Bob Linwood and the Ethan Rees Memorial Fund have given us numerous opportunities to perform.’
Last year, The Hooligans made their debut at the Battle of Ideas festival’s Saturday night drinks - even drawing Academy of Ideas director Claire Fox out onto the dance floor.
This year, they’ll return again - but with an exciting twist. Liam will be speaking on Saturday morning at our opening economy debate, RISING TENSIONS, FALLING GROWTH: PROSPECTS FOR THE GLOBAL ECONOMY? And Maeve Halligan will be joining the festival with a Breakfast Banter discussion on folk music on Sunday morning. Alongside fellow speakers Brian Denny and Denis Russell, Maeve will be interrogating the rise in folk’s popularity - from former postie Nathan Evans’s viral performance of ‘The Wellerman’ to Lil Nas X, the controversial protest song ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ by Oliver Anthony to Ed Sheeran. Does this mean folk has lost its fuddy-duddy reputation?
Maeve certainly thinks so. Ahead of her debate, WHO GIVES A FOLK?, she told me: ‘Folk music is needed now more than ever - especially for the young - to remind us that bringing past ways into the present is not always bad. Folk shows us that we can acknowledge this fact, while still claiming and shaping the genre as our own - as generations before us always have.’
‘The return of old, historic music in a fast-moving age, when people feel a need to constantly be looking for the new and the current, isn't just demonstrative traditionalism and old people Morris dancing, it walks the line between being steeped in lore and tradition and being graspable by new generations.’ Maeve also stressed that folk is ‘applicable to the current political climate of cancelling and shouting down - a genre that has a true and unifying voice, one that people have sung along with since people existed. Folk music is the music of the people.’
In 2014, when Maeve was 11, The Hooligans competed against 75 other acts in the Cambridge Busking Festival – coming second in the audience poll. The band went on support Slade and Heather Small at the Big Weekend, before featuring on BBC Radio. The Hooligans have since played at numerous high-profile events and venues including the Cambridge Folk Festival, The Junction, The Saffron Walden Carnival (supporting Toploader), Bestival and Common People.
If you’d like to watch The Hooligans - and join Maeve, Liam and 400+ speakers for the Battle of Ideas festival - get your tickets now, with concessions available and free tickets for volunteers.