Glastonbury Festival has long had a reputation for platforming progressive ideas and left-leaning politics, but the 2025 festival is where a rift began to develop, symptomatic of a wider gulf between the establishment and the people in the UK (and in other countries), that has become truly stark in recent months.
“Now it’s fucking weird. The left and right politicians don’t believe in anything at all, between the two of them, they believe in nothing.
I’m thinking about the people in Palestine. All of our governments, we’re from Australia, we ain’t doing jackshit, I know your government isn’t doing jackshit, and I think about schooling and I think about media, and I think we don’t learn nothing about colonisation, we don’t learn nothing about sexual education, we don’t learn any of the right things, we don’t see any of the right things in the media, and of course most people don’t know anything about this shit, and that’s what’s so fucked up cos they don’t want us to know, and they want us to shut the fuck up, because if we think about Palestine, then back home in Australia, we think about the indigenous people there, and we think about the fact that us as whiteys, we’re the colonisers and that’s fucking disgusting and it’s so much to hold but that’s the truth.”
Amy Taylor, Amyl & The Sniffers at Glastonbury 2025.
If music itself isn’t as political as it once was, the musicians who make it have become more politically aware and outspoken out of empathic necessity, in the face of abhorrent inaction by governments and a lack of real accountability from media and news organisations. Those who are supposed to be doing that job are not, so the artists are speaking up in their place.
Kneecap’s “inappropriate” Glastonbury set
Kneecap’s Glastonbury set became international news in the weeks leading up to the festival, after the swift charging of Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh aka Mo Chara with a terrorism offence for hoisting a Hezbollah flag and saying “Up Hamas” at a gig in late 2024.
The prosecution charge has only added to the band’s notoriety coming into the festival with Prime Minister Keir Starmer even saying it was “not appropriate” for the band to be playing Glastonbury, agreeing with his direct opposition Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch who said BBC shouldn’t show their set.
The Eavis family did not bow to this pressure, or the private letter sent from a cabal of music industry booking agents calling on the festival to cancel the band’s set at Glastonbury.
The BBC establishment however relented to the pressure, and did not broadcast Kneecap’s set live on iPlayer as it happened, effectively waiting to edit and censor the Kneecap set until uploading it later on Saturday evening.
Of course, as we now know, but politicians seem to easily forget, attempts to ban music or silence artists (the Sex Pistols, NWA) in recent history usually backfires, and the establishment is going to have a hard time silencing all the artists who spoke up at Glastonbury this past weekend.
Bob Vylan’s chants
While the BBC were hovering over the censor button, Bob Vylan playing before Kneecap went further and started the chant “Death Death To The IDF” and said “we are the violent punks, because sometimes you gotta get your message across with violence because that is the only language some people speak, unfortunately,” which was indeed broadcast by the BBC live.
During their energetic set on Saturday afternoon at West Holts, Kneecap member Móglaí Bap clarified an earlier comment in the set to start a riot outside the Westminster Magistrates court on August 20th, with a disclaimer that “I don’t want anyone to riot – just love and support. And more importantly, support for Palestine.”
Police are already investigating these bands at Glastonbury
Both Kneecap and Bob Vylan’s sets are being investigated by the UK police, and the speed at which the UK state is looking to prosecute these artists for speaking out is stark when it is contrasted with the complete inaction of the UK government or acknowledgement of Israel’s genocidal acts, which are also being carried out by British members of the IDF, which the country welcomes back with open arms.
In the current UK climate, words are speaking louder than inactions. The words of artists are being taken more seriously than the bombing of hospitals, the killing of at least 56,000 people, displacement and starving of the Palestinian population, soldiers admitting to shooting the unarmed, unprovoked at Israeli-run aid sites to name just a sliver of the litany of war crimes and horrors taking place in Gaza at the behest of Israel for nearly twenty months.
Many of us are feeling like our brains are breaking from the mindflips taking place to justify a genocide.
Reactions to Bob Vylan
The BBC were regretful for not pulling the livestream quicker.
The Prime Minister said it was “appalling hate speech”.
Glastonbury, with its anti-establishment charity-driven ethos clearly listened to loud pro-Israel lobbies like the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), by issuing a statement that went further than even Starmer, saying of Bob Vylan’s set “there is no place for antisemitism, hate speech or incitement to violence.”
One Bezos burrito, please
Like “Defund the Police” or “Eat The Rich”, the intended meaning of “Death Death To The IDF” is that the occupying military force that is killing thousands of Palestinians should be disbanded or shut down.
The same way that “Eat The Rich” doesn’t literally mean slathering up Bezos in a billionaire burrito, and defunding the police actually means channelling resources and responsibilities of mental health and community issues to another organisation so that the police can focus on more serious crimes rather than fill the gaps of authority when needed.
The same way that “from the river to sea, Palestine will be free”, is a chant of freedom and self-determination for the Palestinians to own their land and be in control of it, rather than a violent threat to the Israeli state.
Like Kneecap having to clarify that “Brits Out” refers to “getting the British State out of Ireland,” slogans and chants lack nuance that misunderstanding fills.
It’s the same reason Kneecap have learned to clarify, like on stage at Glastonbury on Saturday “We fucking love the English people, it’s the English government we can’t stand.”
It is not antisemitic to want Israel’s military to stop existing or killing people, and labelling of such chants as antisemitic falls into the carefully laid out word trap that says any criticism of Zionism or Israel’s actions is antisemitic or stems from hate of Jewish people, which of course, is nonsense. It’s a very, very disappointing statement and reach for Glastonbury to make.
And if that chant wasn’t the antisemitic bit of Bob Vylan’s set according to Glastonbury, then conflating the incitement to violence part of his speech to a targeting of Jewish people is also a wildly, intentionally reductive take, that only adds to the sense of people feeling unmoored from a society which is doing little for people who are actually being killed every day.
Change is slow but occurring
Artists have been increasingly talking about what is happening in Palestine not only because our collective brains are breaking or warping from the inertia in politics and world organisations, but because there’s a reckoning happening. A shift of the tectonic plates of society. A breakthrough of collective understanding.
October 7th has become a flashpoint for many to understand the historical origins of the Israel / Palestinian conflict, and those with moral resilience are using their voice to speak up for people long oppressed, and to see the iniquities and injustices of our world with more of an understanding of how history of conflict and colonisation has shaped the modern world.
Palestine was a Glastonbury headliner
Elsewhere at Glastonbury, CMAT, Gurriers and Turnstile were among the acts who said “Free Palestine” on stage while Bono’s son Eli Hewson didn’t maintain the silence of his father when his band Inhaler played their set dedicating a song “to innocent people starved, bombed, or genocided.”
Countless other acts including Nilufer Yanya and Jordan Stephens’ mother either displayed a flag, wore a keffiyeh or showed solidarity with Palestine in their stage backdrop or clothing. It was not an isolated incident of a few bands.
Ex Little Mix pop star Jade lead her crowd in chants of “Fuck You!” in response to Reform, state cuts, transphobia, silencing protest, selling arms and justifying genocide.
It was nearly everywhere at Worthy Farm.
Well, apart from the 1975’s headliner set.
The band that previously put Greta Thunberg on their album to speak about climate change chose this moment to do an about face.
Matty Healy is not a man known for shying away from political or controversial statements so making a “conscious decision” for “no politics” during The 1975’s most prestigious festival headline set (and future sets as suggested) they’ve ever played at this time in history in 2025, when it matters most, is fairly dumbfounding but likely an act of self-preservation for a man who courts controversy.
“Use your platform, that’s what people say. People watching this, they might be disappointed at the lack of politics in this show, and our future shows.”
Matty Healy at Glastonbury, 2025
He’d have been better off not addressing it. In the end, Healy reduces himself to a contrarian above all else.
Change is coming, artists lead the way
On Dublin Pride weekend, trans rights were affirmed by the likes of Sprints, with Kate Nash chastising JK Rowling’s transphobia, Rod Stewart’s endorsement of Farage and Reform UK.
But Palestine headlined the festival in terms of political speeches.
Nadine Shah’s set wasn’t shown by the BBC as she elected to show photos of Palestinian reporter Bisan and children in Gaza, alongside a mural of Starmer serving drinks to Netanyahu and Trump on a beach.
We’ve seen over the months that words and marches are not enough, more direct action is needed, yet when UK direct action group Palestine Action are criminalised as a terrorist organisation for daubing some red paint on military planes, it’s clear the people are breaking with the will of their representative politicians.
You don’t know what you really want
It seems like the politicians don’t know what they want either or what’s next.
A recent New Statesmen profile on Starmer suggests he doesn’t know how to articulate two decades of political failure, and “seems reluctant to poke at the reasons the country is so tense and angry and poor, to analyse the cause of the country’s malaise.”
Adam Curtis’ new documentary series Shifty just released this month, airing like Glastonbury coverage on the BBC iPlayer, agrees with this assessment, and posits that the UK is coming to the end of a period of understanding its own society, and that it doesn’t have the language, or fortitude yet to see the next phase of how society operates and thinks.
A reckoning with the colonial history of Palestine, and our collective governments’ inaction around what’s happening in Gaza speaks to that idea. The politicians are scared and frightened of what comes next. They have run out of ideas.
As Amyl and The Sniffers pointed out – the left and right don’t believe in anything but getting or staying in power, of being in control.
Continuously calling out of their complicity with Israel’s actions and support of the genocide through military aid threatens the status quo, and if that falls then the fear of what comes next, what may happen if the people relent, leaves the UK state (and many others) operating out of fear, they’ve lost control of the narrative so they begin arresting their own citizens, calling them terrorists, shutting down protest and free speech to try and silence the voices who do have something to say.
Bob Vylan and Kneecap are not the story as the latter consistently contend, but applying the tagging of their on-stage words as terrorism, incitement and hate speech only amplifies their message, bringing notoriety and with it highlights that those in power are in the last death throes of their own making, without the requisite moral fortitude or vision to do anything meaningful.
The BBC might have censored Kneecap’s Glastonbury set but Helen From Wales livestreamed their entire set on Tik Tok to over 1.9 million people anyway. Direct action. The BBC couldn’t stop people tuning in after all. You can’t stem the tide of change. Silencing only makes the thing stronger. The people always have the power, and the artists are reminding us of that fact.
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005 . He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Cara Magazine, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, founder of Lumo Club, club promoter, event curator and producer of gigs, listening parties & events in Dublin.
The only word Hamas was ““Up Hamas”. This is a pro-islamic, pro Hamas and Pro- kalifat media. What are you doing? You really want that shit in you backyard? Guess not. Question, got any good music from Afghanistan lately? Cause that is what you will get with Hamas. At the minimum..