Michael Hann has narrated this article for you to listen to.
It was Irish week in London, with one group from the north and one from the south. Guinness was sold in unusual amounts; green football shirts were plentiful; and so, at both shows, was a genuine
sense of joyful triumph – these were the biggest London venues either group had headlined.
The Irishness was much more visible onstage at Kneecap, not least because, as a proudly Republican group, they can’t really not make a big deal of being from west Belfast. Their statements have prompted the inevitable fury from some quarters: Kemi Badenoch (as business secretary) refused them a £15,000 grant to help them tour, on the grounds that the British state should not be aiding those who despise it. That seemed to be a faintly pointless gesture, given that Northern Ireland Screen and the National Lottery had already spent nearly £1.6 million on helping get a sort-of biopic of them made.
Kneecap are part hip-hop group, part political statement, part druggy city kids and part comedy act
It’s also exactly the response they wanted – they sued, claiming Badenoch had breached the Good Friday Agreement. Kneecap are provocateurs, not terrorists. Their film spends just as much time mocking puritan Republicanism and the folly of encouraging the spread of the Irish language by teaching kids how to discuss turf-cutting in their native tongue as it does on anything notably nationalist. The trio play themselves in the movie, and one of the running jokes is that one of them has a hardline loyalist girlfriend who requires him to shout IRA slogans at the moment of orgasm.
They’re also in a very curious place, because they’re part hip-hop group, part political statement, part druggy city kids and part comedy act (the film is very funny).
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