Last night I had a vision. A premonition of approximately twenty years into the future: DJ Próvai, his balaclava thrown aside, has just been appointed to Seanad Éireann after previously serving a single term as TD for the newly created constituency of Belfast West. He has long since abandoned rap, and is due to come out with a much anticipated biography of Connor Cruise O’Brien, featuring a highly emotional prologue that begins with the line ‘did that sick beat of mine send out certain men the IDF shot?’
Never take laudanum before bed. Of course, I’m facetiously alluding to the news that Counter Terrorism police are ‘reviewing’ concert footage of recent performances by Kneecap in which they shouted out to the audience ‘kill your local MP,’ ‘the only good Tory is a dead Tory,’ and voiced support for Hamas and Hezbollah.
Robert Jenrick to Henry Hill were just as quick to condemn the rappers, as they were slow about condemning their then party colleague Lee Anderson who said the Mayor of London was a stooge for the ‘Islamists who have got control of our country,’ said in the context of 6,000 instances of hate crimes against Muslims were recorded last year. Sayeeda Warsi, who recently gave up the Tory whip, wrote in Muslims Don’t Matter that because of this epidemic, herself and her husband, as well as many of their acquaintances, are making contingency plans for leaving Britain.
One has to wonder what strange potion Jenrick had taken that caused him to so drastically transform his position on freedom of speech. As immigration minister in 2023, Jenrick told GB News that freedom of speech was one of the great ‘tenets’ of British life; a year later, as a contender for the leadership of his party, he suggested that police should ‘immediately arrest’ any protesters who shout ‘Allahu Akbar.’ One wonders if Jenrick also thinks police should respond with equally harsh measures for buskers covering Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, considering ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Allahu Akbar’ essentially mean the same thing; there is also a far greater pandemic of ‘Hallelujah’ covers, with Cohen himself coming out in support of a ‘moratorium’ on the song.
Conservative commentator Henry Hill, writing for Unherd, went so far as suggesting it was not enough for Kneecap to apologise to the families of the Jo Cox and David Amiss, two MPs murdered in recent years, but the band should also apologise to the families of Robert Bradford, Airey Nieve, Ian Gow, and Anthony Berry who were killed by republicans. He stopped just short of blaming them for the Phoenix Park murders.
A sensible person will recognise that mere provocation is not incitement to violence. As of yet, no sitting member of parliament has been murdered by anyone who was in the audience for Kneecap’s performance. Under the Terrorism Act 2006, a person can be said to be guilty of an offence if they publish a statement that encourages someone else to go out and commit a terrorist act. There are many complex reasons why a young man would be pushed to join Hamas, yet surprisingly attending an Irish language rap concert in London, or indeed at Coachella, has never been one of them.
The British establishment does have a tradition of taking offence at Irish voices. Come December we can now expect that there will be another slew of latchycos whinging about ‘censorship’ because a single word has been edited out of The Pogues song ‘Fairytale of New York.’ The masses will be oblivious to the irony that another Pogues song, ‘Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six’ was banned by the BBC under the first implementation of Margaret Thatcher’s broadcasting ban which led to Irish republicans ludicrously having their voices dubbed over by Irish actors. Though I gather Ian McElhenney was glad of the work, at least. The song in question, written by Shane MacGowan, was rightesiously angry at the fact that fourteen Irish people were imprisoned for a crime of which they could not possibly have been guilty and were merely arrested on the basis of their ethnicity.
The notoriously obnoxious Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel, while serving as Secretary of State for International Development, suggested that the UK should ‘let the Irish starve’ in order for the Republic of Ireland to drop its demands for a backstop that would maintain free movement over the border post-Brexit. It should not need to be pointed out how moronic it was for a serving British government minister to suggest forcing famine on Ireland in 2018, however it also shows a willingness in Patel’s mind to actively commit a crime, in contravention of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, by intentionally starving a civilian population.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch also demanded that Kneecap be prosecuted, calling their comments ‘completely unacceptable.’ She said that four days after accusing the Labour government of not understanding the ‘importance of free speech’ and ‘how it is a core British value.’ Badenoch made this stand as Deputy PM Angela Rayner was considering new laws that formally define Islamophobia.
The Conservative Party has been delirious about freedom of speech for a decade now, particularly in university debating chambers (as if such had genuine legislative powers). This coincided with an incredibly lax attitude to incendiary comments made by their members and supporters about the Muslim community. It is rather stunning how easy it has been for three fellas from Belfast to make them lose the absolute run of themselves. But moreso than any other issue here, there is the blatant hypocrisy of pearl-clutchers gasping at the rowdy performance of a purposefully provocative rap trio, while simultaneously turning a blind eye to the massacre of children in the Levant by which said rappers were rightfully horrified and to which they were obviously alluding.
Fionnbharr Rodgers has written articles, poems, and a short story for History Ireland, Northern Slant, Slugger O’Toole; A New Ulster, Blackbird, Blackbox Manifold; and Stoneboat Literary Journal.
Discover more from Slugger O'Toole
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
