Reading Festival 2024: Kneecap denounce anti-immigration riots and “that far-right shite”

nme.com:

Kneecap used their Main Stage appearance at Reading Festival to denounce the recent anti-immigrant riots in the UK.Taking to the main stage for an early afternoon set, the Belfast rap trio also slammed the British Government for “enabling a genocide in Gaza”, as a message on one of their video screens put it.Rapper Móglaí Bap wore a shirt that declared “Refugees welcome” for the performance and gave a speech to the crowd that alluded to recent events in the UK. “The Irish have emigrated all over the world and have been welcome,” he said, explaining that everyone should be similarly welcome in the UK. “Fuck that far-right shite,” he added before referring explicitly to the aforementioned riots.The set was politicised throughout, with Bap describing Belfast as being “still under British occupation”. “But there’s another occupation happening right now,” he continued. “I don’t know if the BBC’s gonna show this, but there’s a worse occupation happening right now in Palestine.

They’re bombing Palestinians from the sky; they’re bombing refugee camps; they’re bombing hospitals.”The group then led a crowd chant of “Free!

Free! Palestine!” before playing their 2019 single ‘Get Your Brits Out’.Although this was a highly charged afternoon show – as indicated by a fan’s Palestinian flag in a prominent place near the front – the overall atmosphere was upbeat, with balaclava-clad DJ Próvaí appearing onstage first to whip up enthusiasm from the crowd.The band opened with ‘IT’S BEEN AGES’, their assault on the tabloids, which sees them mix English and Irish to rap: “Oh it’s been ages since we made the front pages / Sin deireadh linn ar hiatus / Back to annoy ’em cunts that hate us.” The lyrics were bolstered by video screens that.