Although the best known covers of this song are by The Pogues and The Dubliners, the “dirty old town” of the title is not in Ireland as many think. It is, in fact, an English town, Salford, which is in Lancashire. The song was written in 1949 by Ewan McColl, a fervid communist who was born in England of Scottish parents. Symbolically the “dirty old town” is capitalism and “the axe to cut it down” is communism.