Kneecap declare 'they are trying to silence us' as rapper faces terror charge
Kneecap received a wildly positive reception as they arrived on stage at the Wide Awake festival at Brockwell Park in south London tonight.
Ahead of their entrance, videos of the Irish rap trio being condemned were shown on a screen.
The message 'Free Palestine' was also displayed and was met with cheers from the crowd.
It comes as member Liam O'Hanna, who performs in the band along with Naoise O Caireallain and JJ O Dochartaigh, faces charges of a terror offence over the alleged display of a Hezbollah flag.
Stepping out tonight, the performer declared that he is being 'silenced'.
He told the audience: 'I went for an interview with the counter-terror police, and within days they came to a verdict that they were going to charge me; never has it been that quick.
'And the reason it was that quick was because Glastonbury is just around the corner; they're trying to silence us.'
We've teamed up with SXSW London to give away two pairs of Music Festival Wristbands valid for 2-7 June 2025.
Headliners include Grammy-winning Nigerian singer Tems, Brit Award-winning artist Mabel, Crystal Castles's Alice Glass, and East London-based R&B artist NAO, plus emerging talent set to perform at showcase acts around Shoreditch.
Click here to find out more about SXSW London's incredible events and how to enter to be in with a chance to win, or simply enter your details using the form below. *T&Cs apply.
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* Open to legal residents of Great Britain (excluding Northern Ireland) aged 18 or over. Promotion opens at 06:01 BST on 13 May 2025 and closes at 23:59 BST on 25 May 2025. The promotion is free to enter; however internet access is required. Entrant must visit https://metro.co.uk/2025/05/02/win-a-pair-of-music-festival-wristbands-worth-99-to-sxsw-london-23014181/ and when prompted by the form, submit their name, email, telephone number, date of birth and postcode. Acceptance of the terms and conditions (by ticking the relevant checkbox) is necessary to enter the promotion. 1 entry per person. 1 prize available per person. There will be two (2) winners. Each winner will win two (2) Full Week (6 days) Music Festival Wristbands (each such wristband worth £99) granting secondary access to Official SXSW London Music Festival showcases valid from 2 until 7 June 2025. Proof of age and photographic ID is required for entry (18+). The prize, including entry and attendance at SXSW, is subject to and governed by the SXSW's full ticket terms and conditions here. Full T&Cs apply, see here.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch recently called for Kneecap to be banned and suggested they should be dropped from the Glastonbury Festival bill this June, with a number of other politicians making the same demand.
The 27-year-old rap star, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, said he believes the group are 'being made an example of'.
O'Hanna continued: 'We are being made an example of; the Israeli lobbyists are trying to prove to other artists that if you speak out, we're going to hit you where it hurts most.
'They're trying to cancel gigs; they're trying to cancel my freedom of travel.
'And the fact that I'm speaking to this amount of people, and I assume the majority of you will agree, shows that we're on the right side of history.'
Echoing his remarks, another member of the group said: 'Thank you very much. They tried to stop this gig.'
Another was heard saying: 'Honestly, lads, you have no idea how close we were to being pulled off this gig.'
Members of the trio later urged their fans to gather outside court for the first hearing of their bandmate.
'If anybody's about on June 18… we're all going to gather outside the Westminster court to show support.
'Anybody who's free on June 18, get a big bag of Ket, and we'll go on the steps of Westminster.'
The incident that led to O'Hanna's charges is alleged to have happened at a concert last November.
However, the Metropolitan Police said it was only made aware of video footage the following April.
He is alleged to have displayed the flag of Lebanese Shia Islamist political party Hezbollah, a proscribed organisation in the UK, 'in such a way or in such circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a supporter of a proscribed organisation.'
O'Hanna will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on June 18.
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MORE: Police crash Kneecap's surprise gig after rapper is charged with terror offence over 'Hezbollah flag'
MORE: Kneecap vow to 'fight back' after rapper is charged with terror offence over 'Hezbollah flag'
MORE: Kneecap axed from festival after footage calling for deaths of MPs resurfaces
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The epic of James Joyce
To attempt a biography of a biography is a fresh venture. James Joyce, a life of the innovative Irish novelist who died in 1941, was published to international acclaim in 1959. The validity of its findings, and the prestige of its author, Richard Ellmann, have lasted. In Ellmann's Joyce, Zachary Leader follows the making of James Joyce with empathy for Ellmann, as well as his book and its subject. Above all, Leader, himself the biographer of Saul Bellow, does justice to Ellmann's feats of research, most strikingly by persuading a Joyce contact, Maria Jolas, not to divulge her suitcase of papers to Joyce's son, Giorgio, who would have taken possession and shut the door. Leader devotes the second half of the book to the 'masterpiece' itself, with chapters on tracking material, the trials of publication, and rivals who raced Ellmann to his finish line. The first half of the book is the run-up: the life of the biographer up to the time he took on Joyce. 'Dick' was born in 1918 in Highland Park, Michigan, north of Detroit, to Jewish immigrants. His father, James, from Romania, was a successful lawyer. His wife, Jean Barsook, came from Kyiv. She loved books and learning, and was a prolific writer of reviews and talks for Jewish organisations. Leader captures Ellmann's personal qualities, his gentleness and unassertive tact, especially in his relations with Mrs Yeats, while gathering vital material for an earlier book on an Irish writer, Yeats: The Man and the Masks. As a biographer, Leader is as unobtrusive and faithful as Ellmann himself, moving step by step through Ellmann's awards as a student at Yale, his wartime naval service in Charleston, South Carolina, his academic rise at Northwestern in Chicago, and in 1949 his elopement to Paris to marry Mary Donahue, a highly intelligent woman from an Irish-American background. They settled in Evanston, Illinois. Ellmann said that he first became keen on writing a biography of Joyce in 1952 when invited by a local lawyer, James F Spoerri, to look at his collection of 900 Joyce items. At that time, the only biography available was a lifeless one by Herbert Gorman from 1939, with restricted access to material. It was Mary Ellmann's lot to mind small children at home while her husband prolonged his weeks in Europe, chasing up Joyce papers and numerous contacts. Her touching letters cry out that her life has shut down. Pregnant with a third child in April 1956, she writes, 'I live in a constant horrified contemplation of my own life… alone and burdened with stupid, monotonous work.' For the seven years between 1952 and 1959, there's the research Ellmann put first. His success ensured the dominance of monumental biography for the rest of the century and well into ours. 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