I had to sell pub after Bob Dylan Slane Castle riot – my family fled in terror

PUBLICAN Michael Kelly has told how he decided to sell his beloved bar 40 years ago this week when marauding rioters destroyed Slane Village.

He was left with 40 broken panes of glass and 105 unsold kegs of beer due to the mob battle ahead of the scheduled Bob Dylan concert at Slane Castle in Meath, on July 8, 1984.

Dylan was the voice of world peace and very few expected trouble – but that’s exactly what happened when a drunken crowd tried to burn the garda barracks, setting fire to three cars and damaging local businesses.

Michael said: “My wife and three children had to escape over the back wall and I decided there and then I was selling the bar.

“The whole village smelled of burning rubber. I’ll never forget that smell.

“The day before the concert was very hot and crowds arrived from all over the country. There was music playing very loudly on ghetto blasters around the village and scuffles were breaking out here and there.

“I opened my pub at 10.30am as usual and there was a good atmosphere in the village in the morning.

“Later that day two gardai asked a crowd of about 30 to move a parked van. They moved it about two feet and laughed at the gardai and I just sensed then that things were going to get out of hand.”

There were a lot of regulars in the pub that night and Mr Kelly was unaware of any trouble brewing until he received a phone call from a journalist, asking about a riot on the street.

Michael explained: “I went outside to have a look and I met a chap from Dublin who told me ‘they are burning the barracks!’ I asked him to go into the pub and have a chat with the journalist on the phone. He gave a vivid description of a crowd trying to push a van into the barracks.

“I went up onto the flat roof of my pub and I watched the mob charging at the gardai at the crossroads in the village. The gardai were using breadboards – given to them by the local supermarket – as shields against the rocks and bottles being hurled at them by the angry crowd.”

Mr Kelly went back down to the pub and turned off the lights, advising customers to stay where they were for their own safety.

He revealed: “There were about 60 people in the pub and some left, some stayed.

“The mob then passed up the street and the front of my pub was completely destroyed. About 40 of the 48 newly-installed stained glass window panes were shattered by rocks.

“It was like a scene from a horror movie the way the windows suddenly came crashing in. I vividly remember a wine bottle coming in through the window like a missile and breaking off the far wall of the pub.

“It was no less than wanton destruction. There were women in the pub sitting close to the windows and they were tearing off their blouses because they were sure some glass had gone down their backs. Thankfully though no customer was hurt.”

Licenses rescinded

The following day, all pub licenses in the village were rescinded and Mr Kelly was left hundreds of pounds out of pocket with unsold beer.

He told: “Closing all the pubs meant I was left with 105 kegs of beer and stout which I was banking on selling for the concert. At that time I was only selling about 15 kegs a week. The life-span of each keg was only a month so I had to offload some kegs at a discount to publicans in other areas of the county.”

However, Mr Kelly – who is now 79 years old – had already made a life-changing decision as he swept up broken glass the night of the riots. He was selling his beloved pub of 12 years and moving from the village.

‘They were terrified’

Michael said: “My wife Frances and my three children, who were then 14, seven and five, had to escape out of the pub and jump a wall into Lord Mountcharles’ wood. They were terrified trying to make it home to the Hill of Slane.

“I swore on that night that I was selling the pub. There was no way I was putting them through that again. It took a bit of time but sell I did and we moved to Co. Kildare.”

Meantime retired garda Mick Molloy recalled hearing the phone ringing in a wrecked garda station and finding it under a pile of rocks.

“When I answered it, there was a journalist asking me to confirm that my body was in the morgue!”