There was something predictable in the government’s agreement last week to accept defeat in the Belfast High Court. The overtly republican Irish band Kneecap had brought a judicial review over the withdrawal of an offer of a £14,500 state grant to support artists overseas, alleging unlawful political discrimination. The government lawyers caved at the door of the court.
It is going a bit far to expect government to directly fund something so contrary to its own interests and values
Put simply, there were many advantages for the government in acting as it did. The sum at stake was chickenfeed, and blame for the whole affair could be conveniently placed on Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary in the previous government who had vetoed the grant in the first place. Moreover, the government’s stance will also have placated those among its own left wing MPs who have discreet Irish nationalist sympathies, and no doubt pleased a fair number of potential youthful supporters too. (Kneecap are a popular and successful band and, according to the young people I know, very good musicians.)
How should conservatives view the decision? There is a view that they should swallow it. True, Kneecap are Republicans through and through and never lose an opportunity to attack the British state. They drive around in a British Army-style Land Rover covered in suggestive graffiti, and their very name recalls – one suspects deliberately – a brutal practice used by the IRA to torture and maim its victims. But free speech and the freedom to hold political views should cut both ways. If you don’t like, say, the Arts Council disfavouring rightist artists, then you must accept groups like Kneecap should be similarly treated despite their rebarbative political views.
And yet… there is a very respectable argument that Kemi’s original decision was right. Kneecap’s arguments based on free speech and political discrimination are actually remarkably problematic.
First, there was no direct attack on the right of Kneecap or its members to speak their mind. They were merely being denied a small discretionary grant under a system known as the Music Export Growth Scheme operated by the government through the British Phonographic Industry (the organisation that arranges the BRIT awards). Kemi’s view was that Kneecap were free to say what they liked, however unattractive, but could not necessarily expect British taxpayer largesse to be extended to them. To that extent, one might think Kneecap’s claim to have been hard done by relatively weak.
Secondly, there was more to this affair than a simple refusal of an otherwise neutral grant on the basis of the recipient’s politics. It was a fair inference, as Kemi rightly noted, that any money provided was likely to be used to promote a world view that was virulently anti-British. This matters.
While you can expect government to be neutral where matters are otherwise equal – we would rightly query a refusal of an award to a theatre troupe for no better reason than that the leader was personally a communist – it is going a bit far to expect government to directly fund something so contrary to its own interests or values. Imagine the money had been asked for to promote something like Islamist misogyny, or pro-Iranian propaganda against Israel’s existence. Would the complaints have been the same? One doubts it.
Moreover, here there is room for suspicion that the money had been applied for at least partly with a view to political devilment, by a band that did not really need it. Indeed, Kneecap announced after the Belfast proceedings that it would be giving the payment to a couple of local charities. For a group that has promoted Irish republicanism, there would certainly be a strong attraction in the idea of cocking a snook at London and later claiming the British government had to pay for propaganda levelled against itself. This feature may not have affected the legal position, but if right it surely says a good deal about the deservingness of the claim.
For that matter, the legalities themselves may give rise to concern. We do not know whether the government was advised that it would have lost had had the matter not been settled. If they were, then this is itself worrying. Things are coming to a pretty pass when a government cannot set up a scheme to help its musicians make their way in a crowded international market-place without also binding itself to subsidise those who wish to use their art for the purposes of biting the hand that feeds them. If this is indeed so, then whatever this administration may think about the virtues of judicial review, the opposition might do well to say it will look carefully at the extent to which lawfare can upset the understandable decisions of elected politicians.
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