The Glastonbury Kerfuffle
Thanks to the presence of Kneecap and the British government’s open hostility towards them, this year’s Glastonbury festival was a decidedly political affair. But is it the right place for politics?
Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage
The current iteration of the British government, led by the gray, dreary figure of Keir Starmer, is not especially known for its sense of humor. It is a self-conscious, boring thing—a political entity that promises only moderate improvements to the United Kingdom’s lot by, essentially, not doing anything too crazy. Its very dullness is the point. We, the public, are meant to equate that dullness with competence, because how could a government led by such uninteresting people really be bad at governance? Starmer, we are encouraged to perceive, is a bit like a school principal: drab, strict, and a little bit cruel. The public are his troublesome students: unruly, excitable, and work-shy. They are to be disciplined, starved of anything too fun or too stimulating, and, in time, they will fall into line as pliable, grateful members of a society in the midst of reasonable GDP growth and sky-high military spending. There won’t be many laughs in Starmer’s utopia, but there’ll maybe be more jobs, more nukes, and more runways at London’s Heathrow Airport.
The irony is that, in their effort to present themselves as resolutely devoid of humor and joy, Starmer and his acolytes have inadvertently achieved one of the funniest fucking things a British government has ever done: They have helped to transform Kneecap, who rap in an Irish language that the Irish themselves tend not to speak, into one of the biggest bands in the world. They have helped to elevate the popularity of this trio of Irish republicans to such heights that crowds of English people at this year’s Glastonbury festival could be heard chanting, under their encouragement, “Tiocfaidh ár lá,” a slogan of Irish republicanism that envisions an end to British rule of Northern Ireland. It is difficult to express to anyone unfamiliar with Ireland quite how funny that is.
A quick recap for those unaware of what’s happened of late: Kneecap, during their performance at Coachella earlier this year, displayed pro-Palestine messaging on stage, as they always do. Among the messages were, “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. It is being enabled by the US government, who arm and fund Israel despite their war crimes. Fuck Israel. Free Palestine.” The backlash to this came swiftly, with, of all people, Sharon Osbourne hauling herself out of obscurity to lead the choir of condemnation, which quickly gathered energy and led to reactionary political types, who quite obviously have never listened to the band, developing very firm opinions about them. Before long, there were shadowy people trawling through the online archives, looking for dirt on Kneecap and duly finding it.
Footage from a past Kneecap gig surfaced online, and it allegedly showed Mo Chara, one of the rappers, expressing support for Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are considered to be terrorist organizations in the UK. He now faces a terrorism-related charge in a British court—and, as a consequence of that, many of the festivals Kneecap had been due to play this summer sought to distance themselves from the group. But one that did not do that was Glastonbury. Despite immense political pressure, including comments from the gray prime minister himself, the festival’s organizers committed to allowing Kneecap their slot.
To the left, to the left
Glastonbury, unquestionably, leans leftward, and it is proud to make that clear. Woke messaging is found everywhere throughout the festival site, but more substantive are the tents and arenas explicitly built for facilitating progressive politics. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has long been a fixture of the festival. And, given the reemergence of nuclear war as a distinct possibility, its presence this year felt especially apt. Greenpeace runs an entire area of its own, filled with fun installations, a kids’ area complete with a skate park, bouldering wall, and a steep slide I so badly wanted to thunder myself down, and a main stage hosting talks and gigs by musicians such as Peter Doherty. And at the heart of the Glastonbury site stands the Left Field tent, run by a team including Billy Bragg, England’s answer to Woody Guthrie, his partner Juliet Wills, and Greenpeace activist Rosie Rogers.
The earlier hours at Left Field are dedicated to political panels and debates, this year on subjects including the manosphere, the far right, the environmental crisis and workers, and the British government’s ongoing attacks on disabled people’s rights. The evenings and nights, meanwhile, are for the funner stuff, with gigs this year from the likes of Lambrini Girls, Antony Szmierek, and Kate Nash—not to mention Bragg himself. Whenever I caught sight of Bragg during the festival, he was either setting up the stage, performing on it, or chatting with groups of people around it, so it is not for nothing that he calls himself “kind of like the mayor of Left Field—I go around shaking people’s hands and saying thank you very much for coming, and jumping up on stage in case anybody doesn’t turn up,” but, luckily, before Glastonbury took place, I got the chance to speak with him properly on a call.
I asked him about the role he sees Left Field as playing within the wider Glastonbury ecosystem, and his answer implied that he is attempting to keep alive a tradition of culture and politics that he would have once known himself during his younger years. “In the—I don’t want to say, ‘In the olden days,’” he explains sheepishly, “but… in the past, in the ’80s, you’d be playing on a demo somewhere, and you’d be hanging around backstage, waiting to play, and there would be [the late former Labour Party leader] Michael Foot, or [another former Labour leader] Neil Kinnock, or [the late socialist Labour MP] Tony Benn. I don’t think young bands get much opportunity to meet with those sorts of people today. So, what we’re trying to do at Left Field is make an atmosphere that’s conducive to that exchange, without grabbing people by the scruff of the neck.”
Bragg’s fellow Left Field organizer, Rosie Rogers, meanwhile emphasizes the project’s effort to bolster unrepresented voices. “A big part of it,” she says, “is making sure that we’re giving a platform to groups that might not have lots of profile, or people who would never get to go to Glastonbury [because of it being] completely out of their price zone. They’re there, day in, day out, doing community organizing, doing those thankless tasks that make the world a better place. I like to make sure that we have a space for people like that to have a platform, as well as some interesting big hitters that people will recognize and who might inspire them.”
It’s also about reaching out to people who might not ordinarily get the opportunity to engage with politics in this way. “People want to hear some inspiring stuff when the world’s going to shit,” Rogers continues. “They want to hear from some cool people that are doing cool things. But sometimes people just wander in [the Left Field tent] because they’re a bit hungover and they want to sit in the shade. That’s cool, too. It’s fine if people come and eat their halloumi wrap in the shade, and listen to something that sparks a conversation, an idea. It’s nice to get random people who maybe wouldn’t usually go.”
There is critique of Glastonbury, especially online, which comes across as both reasonable and disingenuous at the same time. It asserts, in essence, that Glasto has “sold its soul”—that it has become too big and too elitist to be truly radical. It is a perspective not entirely without merit. It is true that Glastonbury is extremely expensive, so lots of poor people are priced out of pursuing a ticket—but poor people are priced out of everything in Britain these days. They’re literally priced out of food and housing, and there are very few public-facing cultural institutions left that offer the space to talk seriously about that fact. Glastonbury, for all its faults, does offer that space.
When I attended a Left Field panel about the government’s attacks on disabled people’s rights, I heard from disabled people themselves and from people with disabled loved ones. A woman in the crowd, for example, was allowed to speak during the Q&A, and she told us of how she, as a single mother to a disabled child, barely receives enough support from the government to feed herself. Her perspective—the single parent to a disabled child—is not one I had previously considered. But there are many people like her, and, usually, their voices are not heard. It is not nothing that Left Field afforded her a moment to share her story. The lesson I take from that is not that we should shit on the elitism of Glasto. It is that we need more Glastos. Cheaper Glastos. More accessible Glastos. Better Glastos. More places to establish connections, have fun, and learn from other people we don’t usually get to interact with. That is too rare a thing.