The idea of spending the weekend at Glastonbury, either during a burning heatwave or a soggy gale, makes me shudder. Thank God I’m somewhere, anywhere, else. Not least because Glastonbury is no longer, assuming it ever was, all about the music, but now includes a whole bunch of odious political posturing and shameless virtue signalling.
And if there’s one thing that makes me break out in hives, it’s being in close proximity to a posturing signaller – let alone two hundred thousand of them all at once, convinced of their own moral superiority. So, if they want to chant “Death, Death, Death to the IDF”, let them get on with it where hardly anybody else can hear them (unless they choose to watch the BBC’s live feed) miles in the middle of the Somerset countryside.
And yes, they should have that right. Many people find them intensely offensive, including, no doubt, Britain’s quarter of a million Jews. Personally, I just think they sound stupid, mindless and immature, and wonder why on earth people might spend good money to go and see them.
But nor do I want to live in a country where offensive, immature, stupid chanting is outlawed. Yes, I know full well that Lucy Connolly is in prison for a ridiculous, nasty tweet. But two wrongs don’t make a right. If we still believe we’re a free society, then Bob Vylan should merely be pitied and ignored, not arrested and sent to jail. And of course, Connolly, horrible though her language was, should be released and compensated.
Too many people in this country fail to understand the importance of free speech, however crass and odious that speech might be. You cannot have a free society, and a true democracy, unless people are free to say what they think without fear of a knock on the door from the boys and girls in blue.
Does that include hate speech, of the sort Bob Vylan, along with Kneecap and others, peddle? Yes. Because I fail to see how some stupid lyric about death to the IDF actually incites anyone.
Nor have I seen one iota of evidence that Kneecap’s pathetic “kill your MP!” encouraged anyone to actually do so. Violence against MPs is on the rise, and any perpetrator must face the full force of the law. But let’s not pretend that they wouldn’t threaten an MP unless some obscure band from Northern Ireland tells them to.
This will come, no doubt, as a great disappointment to the “artists” (is that what they actually call themselves?) concerned, who are currently able to raise their profile no end, and rake in the dosh, by posing as anti-establishment martyrs.
So, let’s not give them the oxygen of publicity they so obviously crave by threatening them with arrest, court cases and jail terms. If there’s one thing that’ll encourage them even more, it’s being frogmarched into some dock.
Meanwhile, let’s remind ourselves that a free society is one where people, whether they be Lucy Connolly or Bob Vylan, must have the right to offend. If we lose that basic understanding, we really are in trouble.
