Kneecap at Glastonbury: Less than 24 hours before band hit stage and still no word on BBC showing controversy-hit Belfast rappers
With just hours to go before Kneecap are due on at the UK’s biggest music festival, the BBC is still tight-lipped about whether or not the rap trio will appear on TV, radio or iPlayer.
The band are on the Glastonbury Festival’s third-largest stage at 4pm Saturday afternoon. BBC TV coverage doesn’t start until 5pm, so Kneecap definitely won’t appear live on the nation’s screens – but there’s no word on whether they’ll be on radio or iPlayer, or if they’ll show up in edited highlights packages.
For the past three and a half weeks, the BBC has maintained it hasn’t made up its mind about the controversy-courting act, and that decisions would be made “in the lead-up to the festival”.
On Friday evening, with less than 24 hours to go before Kneecap are on stage and Glastonbury well under way, the broadcaster told the News Letter that was still the case.
One of the group is facing a terror charge stemming from remarks and actions he allegedly made during a London show seven months ago, though Kneecap have claimed that controversies in recent months about provocative things band members were apparently recorded saying and doing on stage are attempts to silence them for their stance on Israel.
Their fans have been arguing all week that if the BBC doesn’t splurge the band across TV and iPlayer, then it amounts to deliberate censorship – echoing a situation last year in which fans concocted a conspiracy theory that the broadcaster was silencing them for being republicans.
In fact, last year Kneecap were so low down the bill the BBC had no reason to record them. This year they’re higher in the line-up, though still far from headlining the stage they’re on and the BBC only shows a proportion of the hundreds of acts playing Glastonbury every year.
For TUV leader Jim Allister MP, however, the decision should be an easy one – putting Kneecap on any of its platforms would be “an insult to many who are required by law to contribute to the funding” of the BBC, and would mean the broadcaster is undermining its “clear responsibility to uphold impartiality, editorial integrity, and sensitivity to victims”.
“This issue is not about censorship, but principle,” he told the News Letter. “Glorifying paramilitary violence isn’t edgy, it’s reckless.”
Describing Kneecap as having a history of “romanticising or trivialising the darkest parts of our history”, he added: “There is a clear difference between pushing artistic limits and sanitising – or, worse, making a joke of – terror. Public funding should not be used to give implicit endorsement to those who mock victims or glorify violence.
“Providing Kneecap with a licence fee funded platform shouldn’t even be up for debate. The fact that it is merely illustrates how far the BBC have departed from where they need to be.”
The BBC has indicated Kneecap’s Glastonbury set could appear on a delayed broadcast, which would allow it to trim contentious language.
The group could also be relegated to one or two numbers in a highlights round-up – for example ‘Sick In The Head’, a wry look at mental health, features little explicit language, no real politics and no provocative statements, making it a safe choice.