All that remains of the Glastonbury festival now is quite staggering piles of debris across the fields, much of it, from the looks of it, non-compostable. That and an almighty row over the Bob Vylan debacle.
There we all were thinking that the incendiary political material would be coming from Kneecap, only for the boys in the tricolour balaclava to be put in the shade by Bobby Vylan – a pseudonym for one of a duo from Ipswich – who got the crowd going with chants of Palestine Will be Free (“Inshallah”) before moving on to an even more problematic chant: “How about this then?...Death, Death to the IDF”. And dutifully, the crowd joined in.
I don’t think we need bother ourselves unduly that they did. In a festival like this, a crowd will chant absolutely anything. If Bob Vylan had called out, a la Kneecap, “Tiocfaidh ár lá", the old IRA slogan, (“our day will come”), the crowd would have chanted that too if they’d been able to pronounce it. Anyone expecting ratiocination from a festival crowd isn’t there.
A little ratiocination from the BBC might have been in order though…given that there seems to have been about 400 of them at the festival, was there no one who thought to pull the plug on this particular act when it started to go in an entirely predictable direction? I don’t think that’s asking too much.
Still, talk of prosecuting BBC executives or indeed B Vylan himself is just silly. Somerset and Avon police are investigating whether there may have been criminal offences committed; Ofcom is calling for a full investigation from the BBC.
It’s a waste of time and money. When it comes to the stupid performer, prosecution would gratify his self-regard enormously; as for the BBC it would be dignifying incompetence as malice. Someone should have stopped the livestream; someone didn’t. Some named person should take responsibility for that, ideally by being demoted.
Should Bob Vylan get away with their escapades? Well, they won’t
If we believe in free speech, we must defend the right of people to say provocative and asinine things. Talking of which, there has been rather less fuss about their other bid to rouse the audience: “‘Heard you want your country back’, ran one line. ‘ha! – shut the f*** up’. That came with an onstage backdrop of the line, “This country was built on the backs of immigrants.’ Well, it certainly wasn’t built on the backs of grandstanding dolts. Nigel Farage didn’t lose this opportunity: “Vote Reform if you want your country back from these lunatics”, he observed.
So, should Bob Vylan (and I think apologies are due from them to Bob Dylan) get away with their escapades? Well, they won’t. Other festivals will consider whether it’s wise to book a duo whose genius lies in incendiary self-aggrandisement rather than, say, music. Potential supporters should make that clear to the organisers. More to the point, the US authorities are alert to this kind of activism and they’re not terribly amused. Bob V’s chances of a US visa for potentially lucrative gigs over there aren’t looking good. It’s the same situation as with Kneecap, whose noses must be very much out of joint at this point. Talk of prosecution is good publicity; pulling bookings is an altogether different matter.
As for Glastonbury, Emily Eavis, daughter of the festival’s founder Michael Eavis, observed that "As a festival, we stand against all forms of war and terrorism”. "We will always believe in – and actively campaign for – hope, unity, peace and love,” her statement continued.
Yes, yes, Emily. But really, for the more superannuated festival-goers, all this will all be wonderfully reminiscent of the Seventies and Eighties when the Sex Pistols were stirring things up. Cue one of those heated debates, which I go out of my way to avoid, about whether pop is always going to be about politics.
Glastonbury is that wonderful oxymoron, an exclusive hangout of would-be rebels. Is it possible to call for open borders in a walled-off enclave for people who can pay £400 for a ticket (in the Seventies tickets cost a pound)? Presumably Bob Vylan knew what strings needed to be pulled in that gathering. Meanwhile, he has issued a meandering message today about how his primary school daughter is filling in a form about her school dinners calling for them more healthy and more global. “Listening to her voice her opinions on a matter that she cares about and affects her daily, reminds me that we may not be doomed after all,” her father writes. Intifada one day, school dinners the next. Hardly worth shutting him down, is it?
Melanie McDonagh is a London Standard columnist