‘How petty can political policing and interference get? Speak out against genocide and they’ll use every single angle they can to silence you’. That was the hip-hop band Kneecap’s response to the London Underground’s refusal to run advertisements for their gigs after a police investigation of the band’s onstage comments. The London Underground had previously run posters of the trio from Belfast, but that was then, and this is now. Transport for London stated that ‘all adverts submitted for display on our network are reviewed on a case-by-case basis’. Very helpful. No need for irritating objective criteria to justify their decisions.

The group has seldom been out of the news over the past few months, mainly for its uncanny knack of inducing British institutions and British public figures to score own goals. It all culminated when the Glastonbury music festival announced Kneecap as part of this year’s line-up. British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, was quick to condemn the decision, saying that he did not think it ‘appropriate’ for Kneecap to play at the iconic festival. (Starmer’s predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, had been glorified at Glastonbury in 2017. That was when the Labour Party leadership still saw the importance of representing young voters. Starmer has, by contrast, embraced the role of delivery boy of letters from King Charles to Donald Trump). On the day that Kneecap took the stage in Glastonbury, a fine sunny day it was, Móglaí Bap of Kneecap told the crowd: ‘The prime minister of your country, not mine, said he didn’t want us to play, so f… Keir Starmer’. That crucial sub-clause, a rejection of Britain’s hold on the North of Ireland, could have been lost amid the cheers. They amplified what the UK government wants to silence, playing against a projection which read: ‘Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people, aided by the UK government. Free Palestine’.

The BBC sat on the fence about broadcasting Kneecap’s Glastonbury performance, saying it would not do so live but might do so later. To a younger generation that wants its media instantly, the BBC’s handwringing made it out of touch twice over. Kneecap mocked the BBC on stage, saying the broadcaster would have its work cut out to edit out the sea of Palestinian flags in the audience.

Kneecap was not alone among the performances at Glastonbury to excoriate Israel. For example, Bob Vylan said from the stage, ‘death to the IDF’ [Israeli Defense Forces]. The good old BBC could only apologise for failing to censor that — they live-streamed Vylan’s performance. The same media organisation had apparently no issue publishing Chancellor of Germany Fredrick Merz’s praise for Israel’s bombing of Iran in June: ‘They do our dirty work for us’, the German leader said, which is surely tantamount to saying ‘death to Iranian Armed Forces’.

Kneecap has an unerring ability to expose official Britain’s hypocrisy and how allegedly neutral British institutions are anything but. Last year, when they received a 14,250 pound ($19,000) government grant from the Music Export Growth Scheme, which is under the UK Department for Business and Trade, the grant suddenly became politicised. The then Business secretary, Kemi Badenoch, claimed that public money should not be given to people who ‘oppose the United Kingdom itself’. Kneecap took the UK government to court for discrimination and won.

George Bernard Shaw once quipped that ‘England and America are two countries separated by a common language’. What about Ireland and Britain? Two countries separated when the Irish speak English and all the more when the Irish speak Irish? From its inception, Kneecap composed its songs in the Irish language. That, too, although completely without justification, raises the ante in the UK, which comes out brilliantly in a film about the band, Kneecap, a raucous and compelling watch starring the band members and co-starring Michael Fassbender. When Kneecap failed to get nominated for ‘Best International Feature’ at the Oscars this year, Irish Times journalist, Hugh Linehan, quipped: ‘Well done MI5’. That may well be plausible, although by the nature of Britain’s secret service we will never be able to prove it.

In a pivotal scene in the film, one of the band members, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh (Mo Chara), is being interrogated at a police station. His Torquemada is of a unionist persuasion and exhibits no discernible interest in Gaelic culture. So, he decides to respond to her exclusively in Irish. An interpreter must be sourced. The police demand to know from Mo Chara why he cannot respond to the questions in English. The interpreter, who later joins the hip-hop group and becomes known as DJ Próvaí, reasons: ‘He sees no reason to prove he cannot speak English because he’s here asserting his right to speak Irish’.

Fiction became handmaiden for fact in June at Westminster Magistrates Court when Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh appeared in court to answer for his alleged support for Hezbollah. Like many a civilised person, he sought an Irish language translator to get him through the hearing. The judge acknowledged that, so far, the court had been unable to find one and added ‘if anyone knows of one…’ The gallery erupted in laughter and pointed to DJ Próvaí. The hearing had to be adjourned until August 20th. One of the trio, Bap, added: ‘If success is a means of getting the Irish language to new places, then that’s something we have to take on…An Irish interpreter will be sourced for the next hearing’. While the British judiciary’s record on Ireland is patchy, nowadays of course it is wholly civilised and will no doubt leave no stone unturned to find the requisite Irish language interpreter to enable the trial to proceed. And, who knows, maybe the interpreter will join the band?

In creating Irish language hip-hop, Kneecap has single-handedly managed to forge a subgenre of music and much else that goes with it: an attitude, a look, a form of dissent and protest that should be valued in itself. They are a hugely important presence in Irish culture and an endless source of irritation for official Britain. Britain would do well to study rather than censor the political positions Kneecap has staked out and to ask questions of itself. How can the leaders and institutions of a self-confident country be so quick to panic in the face of a trio of hip-hop artists?

Maurice Fitzpatrick, July 2025