Songfacts®:

• In this song, Sinéad O'Connor sings about loving an Englishman who has abused her in the past and refuses to love her back. It's an allegory for the conflict in Northern Ireland between the English, who wanted the country to remain part of the UK, and the Irish nationalists who wanted it to become part of Ireland. Known as "The Troubles," this conflict was still raging when O'Connor released the song in 1997.
  
  O'Connor has often spoken out against British intrusion in Ireland and Northern Ireland, notably in her song "Famine," where she blames England for the Irish Potato Famine. That song is very overt, but in "This Is A Rebel Song," she tells the story as if it were a relationship between a man and a woman. It's clear from the first lines that she hasn't softened her stance:
  
  I love you my hard Englishman
  Your rage is like a fist in my womb
• The title doesn't appear in the lyric. It's a reference to what Bono would say when introducing the U2 song "Sunday Bloody Sunday": "This is not a rebel song."
  
  The U2 song may not be a rebel song, but it refers to the Bloody Sunday conflict of 1972, when British troops killed 13 protesters in Northern Ireland.
• The song is part of O'Connor's EP Gospel Oak, which is named after an area of London where she went for therapy.