01-05-2025
JONATHAN BROCKLEBANK: It's not societal hatred that troubles Kneecap's supporters. No, they just want to be happy with the targets of it
There was a time in the 1950s when a young singer's gyrating hips were deemed too suggestive for television audiences. Elvis Presley was filmed only from the waist up on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Ten years later the same US TV host demanded the Rolling Stones change the lyrics of their song Let's Spend the Night Together. If they were to perform it on his show they would have to sing instead about spending 'some time' together.
In the 1970s the Sex Pistols swore on UK national television. People went nuts. I doubt if Mary Whitehouse ever recovered. Bill Grundy's Today show was axed weeks later and he never worked in prime time TV again.
Looking back from the vantage point of 2025, my lather of moral indignation over the 'corrupting' influence of any of these acts is more of a millpond.
It was the 1980s – the Thatcher years – which brought real toxicity to teenage listening. It pained me that artists I admired failed to appreciate there are lines that even they – cutting-edge youth culture figureheads – must never cross.
The most egregious example is may be Margaret on the Guillotine, a 1988 offering by former Smiths frontman Morrissey.
'When will you die?' went the chorus. Verse one posited that 'kind people' dreamed of the Prime Minister getting her head chopped off. Verse two implored these kind people to 'make the dream real'.
I was a big Smiths fan back in the day and no fan of Thatcher. I was sickened by this song.
We imagine we live in more enlightened times. In the last decade, two MPs have been murdered in public as they went about their duties. The violent deaths of Labour's Jo Cox and the Conservatives' Sir David Amess were horrible crimes which demanded searching questions be asked about hatred in society.
They demanded that we examine the triggers for it, who or what was inciting it and root them out.
None of that happened. In Scotland, we got a Hate Crime Bill which fretted about people making prejudicial remarks about others on the basis of age, disability, religion, sexual orientation or transgender orientation.
An off-colour observation about a trans person, made at the dinner table in your own home, could potentially bring prosecution.
Across the UK we got the rise of no-platforming – a device used by one section of society, typically students, to deny the right of expression of another section of society, typically small c conservative.
We got cancel culture. We got bar workers at entertainment venues bleating about being forced to hear opinions from comedians that they did not share – and we got performers getting their marching orders.
We watched comedy shrivel into itself through terror of causing offence. We got post-woke conversion therapy mea culpas from TV stars such as Ant and Dec who now realised they were quite wrong to wear blackface for a jape in a sketch 20 years ago.
We got trigger warnings for cotton wool-cocooned undergraduates who didn't have to read the scary Beowolf poem with the monsters if they didn't want to.
We got ableism, classism, white savourism …
And, in the midst of all this, we get a hip hop trio from West Belfast who take to the stage in London and declare: 'The only good Tory is a dead Tory, kill your local MP.'
At another gig, they appeared to voice support for banned international terrorist organisations Hamas and Hezbollah – a crime in the UK.
All a bit fruity, wouldn't you say, in the present era of panicked self-censorship?
And the name of this outfit? Kneecap – a chilling reference to the punishment meted out to those who displease the IRA.
Quite rightly, the Eden Project in Cornwall took one look at this horror show and de-platformed the band, who were due to play there in July. The plug was pulled on a string of gigs in Germany too.
But they are also due to play TRSNMT in Glasgow in July. That will never happen, surely. We have already discussed how sensitive we are to offence. Zero tolerance zone here, chaps. We'll have none of your hatred in our Dear Green Place.
Curious, isn't it, that these are not the words we're hearing.
From former Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, now the leader of Alba, we learn that the reaction to clip of the band inciting hatred is 'ludicrous'. It was a 'throwaway remark' and 'taken entirely out of context'.
If there is a context where it is appropriate to tell your audience to murder MPs then I must lack the imagination to conceive of it. Perhaps Mr MacAskill can elucidate.
We have Niall Christie, a Scottish Greens supporting charity worker, responding to calls for Kneecap to be dropped from TRNSMT with this insight: 'Things welcome in Glasgow: Artists standing in solidarity with Palestinians', followed by a tick emoji, and then 'Tories' followed by a cross emoji.
We have Stuart Murdoch, lead singer of Glasgow band Belle and Sebastian, equivocating for all he was worth on BBC Scotland's Debate Night, reminding viewers this is a 'free speech' issue.
Free Speech? Not incitement to murder, then? Where was free speech when the thought police were ushered in to patrol our dinner table conversations in the Hate Crime Bill? Where was free speech when student bodies banned guest speakers such as Germaine Greer for the crime of having an opinion which challenged theirs?
First Minister John Swinney, to his credit, has described the band's remarks as 'beyond the pale' and called for them to be axed from TRNSMT. I didn't hear SNP MSP Fulton MacGregor echoing his stance on Debate Night. What I heard was equivocation.
Why do you suppose this is? Why, on Wednesday evening, did we have a statement signed by some 40 musical acts leaping to the defence of the Belfast trio, citing 'democracy' and 'political repression' and 'artistic freedom'?
Paul Weller, Pulp, Shirley Manson and Massive Attack are among the artists seemingly appalled by the 'clear, concerted attempt to censor and ultimately de-platform ' Kneecap.
There is that word again. And, for Mr MacAskill's sake, let's include the context. This band don't face the ignominy of de-platforming because someone thinks they are transphobic or they have strong views on immigration or Brexit. It's because of the 'kill your local MP' stuff. It's because terror group sympathies are a bad look.
As for the band, they argue they would never seek to incite violence against any MP –or support Hamas or Hezbollah – and that an extract of footage, deliberately taken out of context, has been 'weaponised against them.'
As before, we await the context which will make it all fine to say what they said.
In the meantime, I have been searching my soul here because I enjoy some Paul Weller music just as I used to enjoy The Smiths and Morrissey.
What is it they or I are not seeing? Why were people who wanted a guillotined prime minister 'kind'? What makes a band who say the terrible things Kneecap said 'victims'?
I can conclude only that it's not societal hatred which troubles these musicians. They just want to be happy with the targets of it.
