The British establishment have ramped up their witch hunt against Kneecap. Band member Mo Chara was charged with a terror offence for arousing “reasonable suspicion that he is a supporter of a proscribed organisation, namely Hezbollah.”
These spurious charges are a blatant attack on artistic expression and the Palestine movement in particular. Their “crime” is not supporting a proscribed organisation, but opposing Britain’s role in facilitating the genocide in Gaza.
As the band explained in their statement:
“We are not the story. Genocide is. As they profit from genocide, they use an ‘anti-terror law’ against us for displaying a flag thrown on stage.
“Instead of defending innocent people, or principles of international law they claim to uphold, the powerful in Britain have abetted slaughter and famine in Gaza, just as they did in Ireland for centuries. Then, like now, they claim justification.
“The IDF units they arm and fly spy plane missions for are the real terrorists, the whole world can see it.”
Who supports terrorism?
The staggering hypocrisy of the British establishment accusing 3 musicians of supporting terrorism has been lost on no one. Across social media the band has received a shower of support. As one comment under Kneecap’s post put it:
“If the PSNI want terrorist flags we can show them hundreds of lampposts in the north.”
Judging from how scrutinous the government has been with Kneecap one would imagine that there have been thousands of similar cases in the North alone. But since its introduction in 2001, just 13 people have been arrested in Northern Ireland under the section of the Terrorism Act used against Mo Chara.
While cracking down on Kneecap, actual terrorist organisations have been treated very leniently by the government. Just last year government officials made a deal to get the UDA and UVF to fly less of their flags on bonfire night. The deal saw the government pay out £80,500 to community organisations, many of which having direct ties to the UDA and UVF!
So while the band are being threatened with jail time and fines for picking up someone else’s flag, actual terrorist organisations are being paid to continue flying theirs!
And Britain isn’t just making deals with these terrorists, they have collaborated with them too and British forces have carried out a regime of terror in Ireland for centuries.
From the infamous Bloody Sunday where paratroopers murdered 14 Irish people or the Dublin-Monaghan bombings where the state ‘allegedly’ worked hand in hand with the UVF in orchestrating bombings which killed 34. British imperialism has always been the biggest terrorist organisation in Ireland. And all around the world they play the same vicious role.
A carnival of distraction
Both the Tories and Starmer’s Labour party have been happy to back Israel’s genocidal slaughter in Palestine. Only now, after 20 brutal months with more than 60,000 Palestinians slaughtered and Netanyahu remaining hellbent on occupying Gaza, the government have been moved to sanction a number of settlers in the West Bank, a move surely calculated to do as little harm to Israel’s war effort as possible.
Sir ‘Kid Starver’ and his cronies, who have been happy to cut payments to poor families, are the last people in Britain to care about the tens of thousands starving to death in Gaza or the hundreds of thousands the Israeli government is now openly planning to ethnically cleanse.
These fresh sanctions actually play the same role for these imperialists as their legal offensive against Kneecap. They want to cut across the growing anger against them which is finding an expression through the Palestine movement.
What is becoming clear to millions in Britain and Ireland, and what the ruling class cannot tolerate, is that the fight for a free Palestine is the fight against British imperialism at home and abroad. They have been complicit in Israel’s war while cracking down on pro-Palestine protests. Meanwhile, they are constantly attacking the most vulnerable at home to increase profits for billionaires.
It’s no wonder then that 47 percent of gen z in Britain want a revolution! While the media focus on Kneecap they ignore the half a million people in London and tens of thousands in Dublin who turned out to protest against Israel’s genocide last weekend.
Kneecap are right to fight these scandalous and baseless charges. They will not have the intended effect of intimidating Palestinian activists, but will only embolden us to stand against our own bankrupt ruling classes and drive us to topple the sick capitalist system they defend.
