The Irish band The Mary Wallopers recently greeted their audience at Victorious Festival in Portsmouth with a call of “Free Palestine”. Their sound was immediately cut, and a festival crew member tried to wrestle their Palestine flag off the stage. The uproar was immediate and visceral. For many fans looking on, it was not an isolated incident, but part of a pattern of artists being shut down.
These are charged times. The position many Irish artists are holding on Palestine is lauded at home and abroad. In Europe, it has led to occasional gig cancellations, boycotts, opportunistic political condemnation and so on.
But when expressions of Irishness – and Palestinian solidarity is part of that expression – start to butt up against Britain, what we collectively experience is an old feeling with a contemporary edge. This is occurring at a time when Irish popular culture is in the ascendant globally, a popular culture that often expresses, not shirks, its Irishness.
When attempts at silencing or threats of consequences for Irish artists over expressions of Palestinian solidarity emerge from Britain, perhaps it’s less about what that signals, and more about how the message is received. These gestures and actions are seen as thematic, the continuation of a legacy. They are met with frustration, ire and a hefty dose of anti-British sentiment. There’s also a righteous defiance. “Never not at it” is often the response when Kneecap are in the dock, The Mary Wallopers are cut off, or media builds scenarios about potential consequences for Sally Rooney’s support of Palestine Action.
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In a report in the London Times about the supposed impact on the BBC of Rooney’s comments, a line jumped out that will stick in many an Irish craw: “Several BBC staff members said they were disappointed but not surprised by Rooney’s comments. Some remarked that she ‘had form’ for courting controversy.” What “form” does Rooney have here, exactly? The only “form” I can think of in relation to the BBC is the fact that she was behind one of their biggest hits this century, Normal People. Rooney is a writer and thinker of astonishing intelligence, a master of her craft, a novelist of huge standing and ability, who very clearly chooses her moments to speak out. She is respected not from a position of superficial public flattery or deferential awe, but because she is someone of obvious integrity; creatively, politically and intellectually.
I think this perception of “coming for” Irish artists – the feeling that some British cultural gatekeepers, politicians and media commentators are criticising, patronising, and urging the deplatforming of certain Irish artists for standing up against genocide – will stay with the generation of Irish people who are their fan base. That Irish artists are framed as troublesome (or having “form”), is highly irritating to those who hold them in reverence. When people rub up against the bristle of “back in your box” snideness, old forces are awakened, but within a new context.
There has been a generational shift in Irish identity among emigrants and those in Ireland. This is a generation for whom the most profound gap between them and their their older Irish siblings and parents is an often unremarked-upon characteristic: confidence. In the past, the version of Irish identity transmitted back was seen as “plastic”, particularly in relation to Irish-American culture, which held a version of Irishness stuck in aspic. In the second half of the 20th century, the emigrant identity became more “elastic”. Now, it is greening again.
Irish emigrants leaning into Irish identity is not a new phenomenon. But if generation X emigration led to identity reinvention, for Irish millennials and Gen Z, it involves identity reclamation. This is in tune with what’s happening culturally on the island, rather than something warped by distance.
It would be more than a bit much to suggest there is a co-ordinated anti-Irish conspiracy at play regarding the tellings-off some Irish artists are experiencing in Britain, especially when many British people also support their stance. It is happening because Irish artists are at the forefront of Palestinian solidarity in culture and Irish culture is thrilling audiences across music, literature, fashion, cinema, television, and activism. Irish creativity generates huge enthusiasm throughout British press, festivals, awards ceremonies, broadcasters, and so on.
Calling out “the Brits” – a briefly relegated term that has bounded back into contemporary Irish discourse, especially since Brexit – for attempts at taking Irish artists to task, is becoming more common. It was in Ireland where so many of our radical creative thinkers were once censored. But that Ireland is gone. What ultimately “has form” is a very British refusal to address their own state’s complicity in unforgivable violence.
