By Amanda Ferguson
BELFAST (Reuters) – The Belfast Irish-language rap group Kneecap won a legal challenge against the British government on Friday over a decision by the previous Conservative administration to refuse it an arts grant.
Britain’s Department for Business and Trade, now overseen by a Labour minister, said it would no longer contest the challenge as it was not in the public interest.
Belfast’s High Court awarded Kneecap 14,250 pounds ($18,074), the same amount as the original grant, which the group said it would donate to two Belfast youth charities.
In 2023, then-business minister Kemi Badenoch, now leader of the Conservatives in opposition, blocked the band from receiving the funding, which aims to support British-based artists to grow internationally.
At the time she said London did not want to hand taxpayers’ money “to people that oppose the United Kingdom itself”.
Kneecap rap about Irish identity and are supporters of uniting British-run Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland. Their name comes from a punishment meted out by paramilitary gunmen during the Troubles, when victims were shot in the kneecaps.
“This was an attack on artistic culture, an attack on the Good Friday (peace) Agreement itself and an attack on Kneecap and our way of expressing ourselves,” band member JJ Ó Dochartaigh, known by the stage name DJ Próvaí, said in a statement outside Belfast’s High Court on Friday.
Ó Dochartaigh, who arrived at the court in a repurposed old Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police vehicle flying the Irish and Palestinian flags, said the government did not like the fact that the band oppose British rule.
He mentioned a 2019 Kneecap tour poster featuring former British prime minister Boris Johnson on a rocket.
Kneecap’s critically acclaimed debut album “Fine Art” reached number two in Ireland, and their semi-fictionalised film of their rise to fame, which stars Irish actor Michael Fassbender, won the audience award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
The film is Ireland’s entry for best international feature film at the Oscars and tipped by prediction website Gold Derby as a potential nominee. ($1 = 0.7884 pounds)
(Editing by Padraic Halpin and Angus MacSwan)
