So here is, to mark the 65th birthday this week of Jake Burns – the very first punk single to come out of Northern Ireland exactly 45 years ago.

Suspect Device by Stiff Little Fingers came out on their own Rigid Digits label in a limited edition of 500 copies, just six weeks after they recorded it in Belfast in February 1978.

With its sinister black-and-white cover photo of the kind of incendiary devices favoured by the IRA for bombings – and its equally inflammatory contents – it sold out within weeks.

I’m guessing my copy is one of the re-pressings ordered by Rough Trade, after John Peel helped spread the word about what was then a novelty – a punk single directly addressing The Troubles.

I didn’t know ’til now that the lyrics to Suspect Device and Alternative Ulster (and most of their debut album, Inflammable Material), were written not by the band but by a local journalist, Gordon Ogilvie.

He had actually written Suspect Device before meeting the band at their fourth gig in Belfast, in November 1977, where he suggested to singer Jake Burns that he should start singing about the Troubles all around – and handed him the completed lyrics on a sheet of paper he had brought along for that purpose.

Burns then put a tune to the words and Ogilvie and his friend Colin McLelland, another local journalist, became their managers, setting up the Rigid Digits label for them while Ogilvie carried on writing song lyrics for Burns to sing – and Burns began writing more political lyrics himself, such as the songs Wasted Life (about a friend of Burns’ killed in The Troubles) and State Of Emergency.

It was a radical change of direction for Burns and his mates – guitarist Henry Cluney, bassist Gordon Blair and drummer Brian Faloon – who had started out as a covers band at school in Belfast and went by the proggy name Highway Star (taken from a Deep Purple song).

By the time they began playing live in August 1977 Blair had left to join Rudi and been replaced by Ali McMordie and they had changed their name to Stiff Little Fingers (after a Vibrators song) after Cluney discovered punk rock and persuaded his bandmates that this was the way to go… albeit without the political edge until Ogilvie came along.

Not that this edge was universally acclaimed; rival bands Rudi and The Undertones, with their poppier sound and more traditional lyrics about boys and girls, openly accused SLF of exploiting The Troubles, though there were plenty of young punks who appreciated the social realism of the songs – and there were plenty of songs that were mainly about more general teen rebellion.

After the success of the single, in early 1979 SLF signed to Rough Trade who released their incendiary album Inflammable Material. And, remarkably, the band is still going, with Burns and McMordie still at the helm.

I first saw them at the Lyceum after they moved to London (minus Colin Faloon, who stayed in Belfast) in 1979 – headlining a Sunday-night bill that included Gang Of Four, The Human League, The Fall and The Mekons. Those really were the days.