Forty-eight young people die in a fire at the Stardust club in Artane, Dublin. After sitting for 122 days and hearing evidence from three hundred and sixty-three witnesses, a government report found that the fire was ‘probably started deliberately,’ a finding long deemed contentious. The 2009 Report of Reopened Enquiry found that “on a prima facie basis:

(1) that neither the Tribunal nor the Committee have identified any evidence which can establish the cause of the fire;

(2) that the new and other evidence relied upon by the Committee at its highest merely establishes that the fire began in the roof space but does not establish its point of origin or cause.

Christy Moore was renowned for performing socially conscious songs that covered topics ranging from Travellers’ rights to the conflict in Northern Ireland. No stranger to controversy, Moore’s emotive ballads about the hunger strikes of 1981 had been banished from the airwaves. One of his most popular songs, ‘Back Home in Derry’, was banned after the authorities realised it was written by the late Bobby Sands, who died on hunger strike three months after the Stardust tragedy. The reaction on that occasion was no surprise to him. But little did the singer realise how much trouble he would be in over a song about a fire in Artane.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, Moore wanted to write a song in honour of the Stardust victims. The song’s title came about after he heard a mother tell a television reporter that her daughters went out one night ‘but they never came home’. Moore’s acute sense of injustice was heightened by the fact that the families and victims had yet to receive any compensation for their loss and suffering. By this stage, the Butterlys had settled their malicious damages claim against Dublin Corporation. The irony of the situation was not lost on the singer.

After enjoying considerable success in the 1970s, both as a solo artist and with the influential traditional Irish group Planxty, Moore hit the big time in 1984 with his ‘Ride On’ album. His eagerly awaited follow-up, ‘Ordinary Man’, was released during the summer of 1985. The Stardust song, ‘They Never Came Home’, was the second last track on the album. The record was officially launched in O’Donoghue’s pub on Merrion Row in Dublin on 29 July. Journalist Gene Kerrigan, writing for Magill magazine at the time, noted: There were good songs on the album but the most deeply felt was ‘They Never Came Home’ – the Stardust song.

Just days after the launch, Clive Hudson of WEA, Moore’s record label, received a letter from legal representatives of the Stardust owners. It claimed ‘They Never Came Home’ was in contempt of court. it contained, they contended, a comment on matters still before the courts. The album was already in the shops and had been receiving considerable airplay on the radio. WEA was forced to recall the album from record stores and contact radio stations, urging them not to broadcast the song in case the allegation of contempt was upheld in court.

Moore was stunned. It had never entered his mind that the song would be the subject of a legal challenge. ‘In my innocence I didn’t have the song vetted,’ he recalls. ‘We just went for it and I suppose that anybody who had heard the song prior to its release assumed that it was telling the truth.’

‘They Never Came Home/Stardust Song’
(Christy Moore)

All our thought turn to love as the day it draws near,
When sweethearts and darlings, husbands and wives,
Pledge love and devotion for the rest of their lives.
As day turns to evening soon nighttime does fall,
Young people prepare for the Valentine’s Ball,
As the night fills with laughter some families still mourn
The forty-eight children who never came home

Down to the Stardust they all made their way
The bouncers stood back as they lined up to pay
The records were spinning there was dancing as well
How the fire started no one can tell.
In a matter of seconds confusion did reign
The room was in darkness fire exits were chained
The firefighters wept for they could not hide,
Their sorrow and anger for those left inside

CHORUS

Let us remember the suffering and pain
the survivors and victims of the fire in Artane,
mothers and fathers forever to mourn
the forty-eight children that never came home.

All around Dublin the bad news it spread
There’s a fire in the Stardust there’s forty-eight dead
Hundreds of boys and girls injured and maimed
Because the windows weire barred and exits were chained.
Our leaders were shocked, grim statements were made
They shed tears as the coffins were laid

In Poppintree, in Cabra, Coolock and Artane
The promises were broken time and again
The Days turn to weeks and the weeks turn to years
Our laws favour the rich or so it appears
A mother still waits for her kids to come home
Injustice breeds anger and that’s what’s been done.

CHORUS

Let us remember the suffering and pain
The survivors and victims of the fire in Artane,
Mothers and fathers forever to mourn
he forty-eight children that never came home