{"id":231224,"date":"2025-07-02T05:48:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T05:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/231224\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T05:48:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T05:48:15","slug":"kneecap-owe-keir-starmer-the-bbc-and-helen-from-wales-a-thank-you-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/231224\/","title":{"rendered":"Kneecap owe Keir Starmer, the BBC and Helen from Wales a thank you \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Helen from Wales won Glastonbury<\/a>. She didn\u2019t sing or dance or chant a death threat. She held up her phone and live-streamed the whole Kneecap<\/a> show on TikTok, \u201ceven burning her finger on the overheating device\u201d, reported the Sun admiringly, \u201cto bring the music to the masses\u201d. Kneecap hailed her as a \u201clegend\u201d.<\/p>\n

From which you might infer that earning legend status can be nice work. But Helen Wilson is a very modern kind of legend. She surprised herself by thrashing the crusty old BBC<\/a> at its own game \u2013 though it\u2019s arguable if 1.7 million people actually watched or just liked her livestream as opposed to the 7,200 who definitely watched. It also left Keir Starmer<\/a> looking like the infamous 1990s judge who inquired if Gazza<\/a> (the world-famous footballer and also the plaintiff) might be an operetta called La Gazza Ladra. <\/p>\n

The BBC probably workshopped 10 impossible ways to livestream the Kneecap gig, ie to bleep out any recurrences of calls to kill your local Tory MP \u2013 for which the band subsequently apologised to the families of two murdered MPs \u2013 while weighing accusations of censorship alongside the terror-related charges against a band member (for allegedly displaying a flag in support of Hizbullah and saying \u201cup Hamas, up Hizbullah\u201d). It eventually settled on releasing an edited form on iPlayer, saying it was due to fears it would breach \u201ceditorial guidelines\u201d on impartiality. <\/p>\n

The wonder is that the thousands of attendees fulminating about censorship didn\u2019t respond as Helen did with her TikTok stream, which is now being lionised as another near-lethal shot across the BBC\/MSM\u2019s bows. Glastonbury forbids the unauthorised recording and disseminating of live performances but Helen isn\u2019t worried. Some things are too important not to be heard, she says. <\/p>\n

If Kneecap\u2019s pro-Palestine stance is noisy and relentless (reflecting in principle the impotent fury of many people, young and old), it\u2019s right up there with the band\u2019s marketing nous. Among the many stunts designed to \u201cp**s off\u201d just about everyone, they brought a PSNI Land Rover with them to the Sundance film festival last year (where their semi-autobiographical film with a Gerry Adams cameo won the audience award) and found a place called Provo to have their picture taken with it. \u201cIt ended up that we were on the front of all the magazines, because of that jeep,\u201d Liam \u00d3g \u00d3 hAnnaidh (Mo Chara) told The Guardian. The alleged Hizbullah flag-waving incident was preceded by a social media image posted by the band of a member reading the Hizbullah leader\u2019s writings. <\/p>\n

Their official website leads with quotes from the Los Angeles Times \u2013 \u201creminiscent of early Eminem\u201d \u2013 saying the band has \u201cbuilt up a notoriety for themselves which hasn\u2019t been seen in Irish music for many years\u201d.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s fair to say that they\u2019ve leant into the notoriety \u2013 but not without a heap of marketing gifts from British officialdom along the way. The band won a legal action against the UK government when the latter overruled the awarding of a \u00a314,250 grant to them under a scheme that supports UK-based music acts abroad. <\/p>\n

But there\u2019s nothing to beat the clamour around a prime minister\u2019s condemnation \u2013 until you compound it with the agonising decisions faced by a state-funded broadcaster. <\/p>\n

When asked if he thought Kneecap should perform in Glastonbury, Starmer could have refused to comment, on the grounds that there was an ongoing case. <\/p>\n

Instead he pronounced that the band\u2019s performance would not be \u201cappropriate \u2026\u201d. The rest was wildly predictable. <\/p>\n

No edgy band wants to be declared \u201cappropriate\u201d by anyone, never mind a grey prime minister, in a world where the US president uses f**k for emphasis. So naturally the show became the most anticipated set of the weekend. The field around the stage was closed early to prevent a crush. Far from softening its cough, the band heightened the drama by showing a video montage of its enemies, including Sharon Osborne calling them a hate group, then kicked off a chant of \u201cF**k Keir Starmer\u201d in a charged, triumphant gig<\/a>. Hardly original as chants go \u2013 two songs with that title already exist \u2013 but it did the job. <\/p>\n

The sum total of Starmer\u2019s and the BBC\u2019s achievement was to ratchet up the protesting and ensure that any artist worth their inappropriate tag would shout \u201cFree Palestine\u201d (at least) during a set, have a Palestinian flag on stage or be wearing a keffiyeh. And no one sussed that the act just before Kneecap, a self-described \u201cviolent punk\u201d London duo Bob Vylan, hitherto unknown to the masses \u2013 until the hapless BBC streamed them live and failed to pull the plug \u2013 would make the Irish band\u2019s act look almost puppyish. <\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes we have to get our message across with violence\u201d, said frontman Bobby Vylan, who led a chant of \u201cdeath, death to the IDF\u201d.<\/a> British police are investigating both performances, though legal experts believe it\u2019s futile since the accused\u2019s intent at the time \u2013 what he intended to happen or believed might happen as a result of his words \u2013 decides the matter. So legal vindication once again most likely \u2013 although it\u2019s worth noting that Bob Vylan are paying the professional and financial price in terms of being dropped by their management, cancelled shows and revoked US tour visas. <\/p>\n

Long-time music critics writing about Kneecap blend admiration with caution. The Glastonbury lead-up was \u201ca perfect example of how quickly stories can become overheated in 2025\u2033, writes The Guardian\u2019s Alexis Petridis<\/a>. \u201cVastly more people now have an opinion about Kneecap than have ever heard their music, which is, traditionally, a tricky and destructive position for a band to find themselves in.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Kneecap would not face prosecution under new Irish anti-terrorism laws, Minister insistsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

But who loaded fuel on to the stories? Keir Starmer surprised us \u2013 again \u2013 by failing to consider his own contribution while delivering a petty told-you-so to the self-flagellating BBC: \u201cI said that Kneecap should not be given a platform and that goes for any other performers making threats or inciting violence …\u201d<\/p>\n

For Kneecap, the upshot of the weekend is a coveted invitation to take the main stage at Electric Picnic<\/a>. \u201cThis is going to be a special one,\u201d said the festival about its sudden announcement. That\u2019s show business. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Helen from Wales won Glastonbury. She didn\u2019t sing or dance or chant a death threat. She held up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5010],"tags":[192,748,2709,4884,44209,79112,90814,807,28538,1814,12759,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-231224","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wales","8":"tag-bbc","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-glastonbury-festival","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-guardian","13":"tag-hizbullah","14":"tag-kathy-sheridan","15":"tag-keir-starmer","16":"tag-kneecap","17":"tag-palestine","18":"tag-sharon-osbourne","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114782071184273200","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}