On Friday 23rd Could, the Irish-language rap trio Kneecap headlined London’s Broad Awake music pageant at Brixton’s Broxwell Park. Attended by 20,000 followers, this marked the Belfast group’s first stage efficiency for the reason that announcement that the Metropolitan police charged one of many group’s members with terrorism offences. Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh (stage identify Mo Chara), is scheduled to seem at Westminster Justice of the Peace’s Courtroom on Wednesday 18 June after allegedly displaying a flag in assist of proscribed Lebanese group Hezbollah at a Kentish city occasion in November 2024. Ó hAnnaidh’s court docket look will happen one week earlier than the Belfast group’s scheduled—though now unsure—look on the Glastonbury 2025 pageant.
Kneecap’s vociferous rhetoric on Israel’s alleged genocide in Gaza. and the ensuing fees introduced by the Metropolitan police, have unsurprisingly spurred debates concerning the place traces have to be drawn on the correct to freedom of expression. Substantively, many supporters of the Belfast group have probed whether or not Ó hAnnaidh—as a controversial musical artist—is an appropriate goal for potential prosecution below part 13 of the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000. Over 100 artists have signed an open letter to assist Kneecap’s freedom of expression and ‘register opposition to any political repression of inventive freedom.’ The rap group have themselves labelled the fees a type of ‘political policing’ and ‘a carnival of distraction’ away from their substantive protestations in opposition to Israeli atrocities.
