In the week that Kanye West changed the name of his upcoming album to Cuck, featuring back-to-back songs about Hitler and one notable track advocating for the release of alleged sex trafficker P Diddy, one would think that there couldn’t be a more controversial musical story in the global media. Alas, it was not to be.
Last week, Belfast rap group Kneecap were referred to counterterrorism police as a result of recordings of one member of the group shouting “up Hamas, up Hezbollah” at a live performance, both of which are proscribed terrorist organisations in the United Kingdom. In a similar move, at the Coachella music festival last weekend, they shared a message on-screen saying “fuck Israel, free Palestine”. This has led certain renowned political commentators such as, er, Sharon Osbourne to call for the United States to revoke the band members’ visas.
Older footage has been released which purports to depict a member of the group sneering “the only good Tory is a dead Tory” and “kill your local MP”. (This was allegedly recorded just two years after the murder of David Amess MP.)
In the light of these recent transgressions, the right-wing British political landscape has come together to criticise the band. Robert Jenrick, the Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and the figure who many in the Conservative Party view as the real Leader of the Opposition, questioned why the band hadn’t yet been investigated under the Terrorism Act. Jenrick went on to state that if a band “were to glorify a proscribed far-right group, action would have been taken”, reiterating cries of two-tier policing.
Strong words. Unfortunately for Jenrick and the rest of the media, however, their arguments and this display of righteousness against support for proscribed organisations are utter nonsense. Let’s take a step back and look at the band, its members, and what they sing about.
For a start, they are named Kneecap, after the prevalent paramilitary practice in Northern Ireland during the Troubles where individuals were shot through their kneecaps as punishment for many forms of perceived infringement on paramilitary honour codes. One of the members of the band, a former teacher who performs in a tricolour balaclava, goes by DJ Próvaí, an Irish slang word for members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. You know, that proscribed organisation responsible for the deaths of approximately 1,700 people during their terrorist campaign.
Many of Kneecap’s songs advocate for Irish cultural causes, and the band largely gained their initial popularity as a result of their 2017 song C.E.A.R.T.A — Irish for “rights”, which became the unofficial song of the entire Irish Language Act campaign. Throughout their existence, they have been tied to Irish republicanism, referring to themselves in their music as “Republican hoods”, and singing songs with endearing titles like “Get Your Brits Out”.
Popular music has a long and storied history of provocation, and Kneecap are not the first band to align themselves with violent causes. While their music is not to my taste — the film about the band is much more entertaining to a wider audience — one cannot criticise them for simply being provocative or supporting sociopolitical causes that speak to them. Their methods of doing so may often be distasteful, and may even necessitate police investigation, but music has always existed in this way.
My grievance with this latest news cycle of Kneecap stories, however, lies in the responses to Kneecap’s latest antics. If the band has a past filled with rhetorical support — arms-length and overt — of other proscribed terrorist organisations which have had a much more hands-on impact on the cultural and social fabric of the United Kingdom, ruining many lives in the process, why are we only now calling for investigations into the bad after it criticised Israel and supported its antagonists?
Indeed, on that note, why have there not been any recent calls by the mainstream media or front-bench parliamentarians to investigate the countless number of people in Northern Ireland, on both sides of the divide, who openly support proscribed organisations? Why have these organisations been allowed to run havoc in local communities across the country and beyond, without a second thought by politicians who are very much aware of their existence?
Jenrick claims that if this were a far-right band supporting a proscribed organisation then the state would be quick off the mark to investigate them. On the contrary. Just two weeks ago, hundreds of people attended a commemoration of Wesley Somerville, a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force, a proscribed organisation in the United Kingdom, who was accidentally killed while taking part in the murder of the Miami Showband in 1975. This month’s commemoration was held on the fiftieth anniversary of his death.
At this commemoration, thirty bands marched and played music in Somerville’s honour, with several bands carrying wreaths with “UVF” written on them. The Police Service of Northern Ireland, rather than investigating these bands for support of proscribed organisations under the Terrorism Act, simply had a presence at the parade to ensure the event passed peacefully.
On Easter Monday, on the other side of the divide, a parade commemorating the 1916 Easter Rising took place, in which supporters hurled over fifty petrol bombs at police officers and organisers touted the event as celebrating the “unfinished revolution”. People marching at the event wore the uniforms of paramilitary organisations, and signs clearly displayed support for the IRA. Some individuals parading carried the flags of Palestine.
This is the reality of life in Northern Ireland, over 25 years on from the signing of the Good Friday Agreement which many in Great Britain like to believe led to lasting peace in Northern Ireland. Support for terrorist organisations in this region is still strong, and it’s clear for all who care enough to look. Kneecap have never hidden their support for the struggle for Irish reunification, in whatever form it comes.
Politicians and the media ignoring all forms of support for proscribed organisations by people in Northern Ireland as long as it relates to Northern Ireland highlights the lack of interest that the state and all within it have in mending the fabric of the most western parts of the United Kingdom. If as much effort was spent focusing on tensions in Northern Ireland as is spent pestering people for their views on foreign wars, we might actually see some progress rather than division. Unfortunately, as last week’s events have shown, this is unlikely to ever be the case.
