The BBC has indicated that it will broadcast Kneecap’s performance at this year’s Glastonbury Festival, despite all the recent controversies surrounding the band. However, an official statement says that all broadcasts from the festival must meet the Beeb’s “editorial guidelines”, which provides wiggle room for the broadcaster to edit their set. It seems certain that whatever it does will piss a lot of people off.
Glastonbury confirmed earlier this week that Kneecap will perform on the Saturday of this year’s festival on the West Holts stage, which is one of the five stages that the BBC livestreams. A BBC spokesperson then told The I Paper, “As the broadcast partner, the BBC will be bringing audiences extensive music coverage from Glastonbury, with artists booked by the festival organisers”.
“Whilst the BBC doesn’t ban artists”, they went on, “our plans will ensure that our programming will meet our editorial guidelines”. Final decisions “about our broadcast output”, they concluded, “will be made in the lead-up to the festival”.
Glastonbury itself has been under considerable pressure to drop Kneecap for its line-up ever since the rap group appeared at Coachella, where they received both acclaim and criticism - from different quarters - for projecting strongly pro-Palestine and anti-Israel messages onto screens during their set.
Calls from within the industry, and political circles, for Kneecap to be dropped from Glastonbury and other festivals gained further momentum after footage emerged of past shows where the group seemed to express support for Hamas and Hezbollah, both proscribed terrorist groups in the UK, and also declared that “the only good Tory is a dead Tory - kill your local MP”.
A police investigation was launched into the apparent support for Hamas and Hezbollah, resulting in band member Liam O'Hanna being charged with a terror offence. He is now due in court a few days before the Glastonbury set.
During a recent performance at London’s Wide Awake festival, he claimed that the police investigation that led to the terror charge had been fast-tracked because “Glastonbury is just around the corner” and “they’re trying to silence us”.
The group has put out a statement insisting they do not support Hamas and Hezbollah, and that they would never actually advocate violence against any politician. But that hasn’t silenced their critics.
And the controversies have resulted in some Kneecap shows being cancelled, including their set at Glasgow’s TRNSMT, where promoters said that local police had advised that the group’s presence would create “safety concerns”.
At the same time, the same controversies are bringing much more mainstream attention to the group, helping them to grow their audience. Illustrating that momentum, earlier this week they announced a Wembley Arena show for September, tickets for which go on sale tomorrow.
For the BBC, Kneecap’s Glastonbury set poses quite the challenge, in that banning or even just slightly censoring the group’s performance will result in strong criticism. As will going ahead with the broadcast and not removing any overtly political elements.
There is a time delay between what’s happening on each Glastonbury stage and the livestream on the BBC iPlayer platform, allowing for edits.
The broadcaster’s editorial guidelines prohibit “unjustifiably offensive language”, so swearing is edited out as standard. The BBC also can’t be seen to overtly support any one political campaign, though editing out that sort of content is where, whatever you do, there’ll be angry criticism.
All of which likely means yet more Kneecap controversies around Glastonbury weekend. Which will add to the band’s legal and logistical challenges. But also possibly help them sell out another arena show.