Funding cut for Belfast festivals that book Kneecap should be on table, says MP - including city's massive Feile and Vital events
Belfast Council should consider cutting the funding of festivals that book Kneecap to play – including the city’s massive Feile an Phobail and Vital events, an MP says.
Independent unionist Alex Easton was speaking as controversy continues with the scandal-hit trio, and questions grow over their planned appearance at a major Belfast event on council-owned land this summer.
Kneecap are due to support Dublin band Fontaines DC at a sold-out show in Boucher Road Playing Fields near the end of August.
The gig’s part of the city’s annual Vital festival; in 2022 and 2023, Kneecap played headline shows at another festival, the Feile an Phobail in west Belfast.
Mr Easton now calls for Belfast Council to “urgently review its support and funding” for the festivals – and any other events that stage the group.
Pointing to the now infamous video from a November 2023 show in which a member of Kneecap appears to tell the audience “the only good Tory is a dead Tory, kill your local MP”, Mr Easton says the band are “not art, not culture, [but] the glorification of political violence”.
"That has no place in a democratic society,” the North Down MP said. “For any group to incite hatred and call for the murder of elected representatives is utterly reprehensible.
“I have raised this matter directly with the government, who have made it clear that all public bodies have a duty to ensure taxpayers’ money is spent appropriately. Belfast City Council must now urgently reconsider its position.
"It is completely unacceptable for ratepayer money to be used, directly or indirectly, to promote such messages of hate and division.
“I am calling on Belfast Council to immediately review its funding of Feile an Phobail, its support for Belfast Vital, and to ensure that no public endorsement is given to groups that incite violence or promote sectarianism.”
The council has stated that the use of Boucher Road Playing Fields is “managed via a legal agreement between the council and the promoter”, and Vital’s organisers were last year given permission to stage the festival there in 2025, 2026 and 2027.
"Events programming remains a matter for the organisers,” state council spokespeople. “Any matter that [a councillor] wishes to raise would be considered by the relevant committee and full council.”
Kneecap have apologised to the families of murdered MPs Jo Cox and Sir David Amess over the “kill your MP” video, though the families have rejected the apology as “half-hearted” and “excuses and gaslighting”.
The band say they weren’t inciting violence and insist the video was taken out of context – though they’re also under fire for another clip in which one member, draped in the Hezbollah flag, tells a crowd “tiocfaidh ar la, up Hamas, up Hezbollah”. Hamas and Hezbollah are both proscribed organisations, making expressing support for them illegal.
Kneecap have said they “do not and have never” supported either organisation, though both clips are currently being examined by the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terror squad to check if they could be evidence of law-breaking.
The band’s manager recently insisted the continuing scandal is “nothing to do with Kneecap or something that Kneecap may or may not have said”, but instead an attempt to silence any up and coming musicians who want to speak about Palestine.