On Kneecap and knee jerks

Literalism makes fools of us all

If you spend a Saturday night in an old-school London Irish pub (we’re talking about say, the Hercules on Holloway Road, rather than the Devonshire Arms here) there’s a good chance you’ll be treated to a rendition of a few rebel songs, in among the country-and-Irish classics belted out with brio by one of the many guitar-and-keyboard duos who criss-cross the city, playing for a mostly middle-aged and elderly audience.

There may be “Come Out Ye Black And Tans”, Dominic Behan’s semi-satirical anthem, recently made famous once more by Alan Partridge’s Martin Brennan character, and also a recent Irish TV advert for Brady Family Ham (“Come out ye other hams/Come out and face me ham to ham”.) You may get the jaunty republican anthem On The One Road. And you’ll probably get Sean South, a singalong classic about a disastrously failed IRA operation in which the eponymous “hero”, a crank who wrote letters to his local paper fulminating about the evil influence of Jews and Freemasons, was killed.

These songs, and songs like these, could be said to praise a terrorist organisation. Whether or not the Irish Republican Army listed as banned by the UK government is the same Irish Republican Army that Sean South went out to fight for is another intricate debate for another day, ( the modern Provisional IRA/Sinn Fein certainly claims lineage). But the semantics of republicanism are very much secondary to considerations when they are played and sung at half past 10 on a Saturday night in bars from Cricklewood to Croydon. The point is that rebel songs are, largely, fun to sing along to, and even for the middle-aged and elderly, offer a little frisson of transgression.

Which, as you guessed, leads us to Kneecap. “Guess who’s back on the news/

It’s your favorite Republican hoods”, as the band proclaim on party anthem Get Your Brits Out.

Let’s skip the rundown of what’s happened and assume we all know why we’re here (if you really need it, Sarah Ditum’s Observer article outlines the controversy).

The rap sheet against the Belfast group is pretty serious - if you choose to take it seriously. The videos showing them shouting “Up Hamas, Up Hezbollah” and “Kill your local MP” at different gigs are unequivocal and undenied. Their manager Daniel Lambert, who has fielded most of the media since it all kicked off, has said the band were misrepresented and taken out of context, and they have apologised to the families of murdered MPs Jo Cox and David Ammess, and said they do not support either of the aforementioned Islamist groups.

And yet here we are, with news breaking that Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, (stage name Mo Chara - “my friend”) has been charged with glorifying terrorism for shouting “Up Hezbollah” and “Up Hamas” while wearing a Hezbollah flag onstage in London in 2023.

The temptation, for many, will be to shrug in a very mildly gloating way. Kneecap are not the most sympathetic of free speech martyrs. Though they have clearly stated they do not support Hamas or Hezbollah, one can’t help suspect that they would absolutely corner you at a party and give you a lengthy and slightly patronising lecture on the nature of legitimate resistance to colonialism. The republican posturing is seen by some as picking at scabs that haven’t really healed in the first place - they are peace process babies revelling in the old imagery of petrol bombed RUC trucks, balaclavas, and, yes, punishment beatings.

This could all be ignored if it weren’t for the fact that they make quite good music and starred in a quite good film that has won awards. Culturally, they matter. One shouldn’t have to matter to have one’s rights upheld or championed, but it adds urgency and consequence to the discussion.

What’s dispiriting about the decision to prosecute is the pettiness of it. This, quite simply, did not have to happen. There is little public interest in prosecuting Ó hAnnaidh, and there is potential for real damage - both to free expression itself and to the idea that the British state has any interest in defending free expression as a human right. They will be rubbing their hands with glee in Moscow and Tehran and South Beirut, for a start, as they rev up the narrative that a member of an oppressed ethno-religious, linguistic minority in the UK has been prosecuted for declaring solidarity with the global anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist struggle. That’s the practical, political reason not to do this.

But the main reason not to do this is that it is pathetic and squalid, and diminishes everyone involved. It is an absurd act of official censorship that comes with no real purpose apart from ticking a box. It is unfeasible that there is any real public interest in this prosecution apart from being able to point at the relevant legislation and say “we have followed the letter of the law” - the very definition of unthinking officiousness.

About once a day I think of Joseph Roth’s cabbie in the novelist’s sketch “In The Bistro After Midnight”, who bemoans the fact that “authorisation kills conscience”. Literalism when it comes to the law allows people to suspend judgement, and ignore principle. It’s the same literalist approach that was seen in the infamous “Twitter Joke Trial” when the DPP (K Starmer) prosecuted an innocent man for a not very funny tweet. Everyone at every point in the process knew that Chambers wasn’t seriously threatening to blow up Doncaster airport, yet no one at any point called a halt to the prosecution process.

This case is different - if this comes to trial, the actual level of Kneecap’s love for Hamas or Hezbollah will be interrogated at length, but does anyone involved here actually think that remarks at a comedy hip-hop gig in north London are really going to make a material difference to the support for either groups among fans at the gig? Can they not imagine that cheering a rapper in a Hezbollah flag is of a piece with laughing at infantile lines like “Get your Brits out/We’re on a mad one”, or yes, wearing a balaclava on stage? The central problem with legal literalism is that it assumes everyone in the country is a literalist too - that the only possible reaction to a man on a stage shouting crass slogans is to believe everything he says is gospel and must be followed. It’s not just about whether Kneecap believe what they say, it’s about whether you do.

Regardless of whether you like Kneecap or not, or whether you find them funny or offensive, it’s worth remembering Christopher Hitchens description of the Satanic Verses row as “an all-out confrontation between the literal and the ironic mind.” We now have another micro-manifestation of that struggle. Which side are you on?