As London’s latest heatwave finally broke on Saturday afternoon, with rain-sodden clouds creeping across Finsbury Park’s horizon, I found myself squirming through a 45,000-person-deep crowd. The event, Kneecap and Fontaines D.C. live, was every North London boy with an earring’s wet dream and every Conservative parent’s nightmare: a chance to role-play as Irish for the night.
Ever since Paul Mescal’s upper lip wobbled on the small screen in 2020, the Irish have seen a steady rise in global popularity. Dubbed “the good Europeans” by New York Magazine last year, we’re in your Hollywood blockbusters, we’re on your bookshelves and you’re drinking our stout. This is the “Craic Pack”: a people with a staunchly pro-Palestinian president, a relatively clean historical record (no genocides, no colonies, no oppression). We even have our own colonial scars: a lingering border that has partitioned the island since 1921.
Concomitantly, it has become less and less cool to descend from the oppressors, and North London’s woke white boys are paying the price. They wouldn’t let us into their clubs, chortling at the poor Paddys – so we made our own. Now our club is starting to look a lot more attractive, and they want in.
These boys hover around London’s Irish like fruit flies to an overripe banana, trying at all times to remind us just how much they hate England too, their eyes desperately pleading for acceptance – and forgiveness. They suck down pints of Guinness in our famous haunts, trying to get our attention with their G-splitting skills. They tell us, unprompted, just how amazing we all are, and how they think it’s about damn time we got those six counties back. (Cheers, Rupert – I’ll let the Irish Republicans know that the battle is over because some 23-year-old from West Hampstead said it should be.)
There could have been no better occasion to witness this than the Irish moment’s most famous face (albeit a balaclava’d one) performing in London’s lefty heartland. The arena filled with niche football jerseys, Nike Shox, Palestine flags and hand-rolled cigarettes. They were ready to feel part of something greater than Englishness. They might also have been there, as it was once put to me, to lose their “Irish virginity”, probably to some innocent girl from Cork who doesn’t know any better (that she will inevitably be ghosted in two weeks).
As Kneecap cruised onstage, the first quarter of the crowd – 99.9 per cent of London’s Irish community – erupted: lurching, swaying, moshing. Brandishing their tricolours and Palestinian flags high in the air, they shouted “Free Palestine” back at the band heartily. “Get Your Brits Out” had my Irish friends levitating with excitement.
The Brits, however, seemed less sure. Kneecap’s usual chants – “Your sniffer dogs are shite,” “Keir Starmer is just a shit Jeremy Corbyn,” “Maggie’s in a box” – met a notably tepid response. It wasn’t the easiest show of Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh and Naoise Ó Cairealláin’s careers. “Where’s the energy, Finsbury Park?” Ó hAnnaidh asked at one point. The culture vultures grimaced back, and weren’t much cheered by Ó hAnnaidh’s reassurance that “It’s the English government we don’t like.”
As Mo Chara detailed the horrors of the recent aid attacks in Gaza, a couple leaned in for a selfie, grinning as the number of children’s deaths was recalled. One over-sauced English lady in front of me chose that moment to loudly complain that her beer was too warm. An Irishman placed a finger to his lips and cautioned her, “Whisht, missus.”
Anglo-Irish relations deteriorated further when a group of Belfast boys decided it was time to mosh. A g&t-drinking East London lady shouted, “That’s too dangerous!” Then, in total disregard of the men clunking their heads together – and in a move that may have single-handedly disintegrated the Good Friday Agreement – she pulled down her trousers and squatted on the grass, relieving herself beside the mosh pit. Take that, Paddys.
The mood healed with the arrival of Grian Chatten, Fontaines D.C.’s frontman, who joined Kneecap for a surprise performance of their song “Better Way to Live”. The crowd drew breath, finally, as the acceptable face of Irish punk took the stage.
Though aligned with Kneecap on Palestine and socialism, Fontaines DC’s messaging is metaphorical and covert. (One of their most popular songs, “I Love You”, is a complex love letter to Ireland: “But this island’s run by sharks with children’s bones stuck in their jaws.”) And the focus of their political criticism is usually Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, allowing London to sing along without feeling too guilty. The Telegraph praised the band for “keeping their muzzles firmly on” throughout the set.
This, you felt, was what London wanted. Radicalism, North London-style, served on small plates: where you can cry “Fuck Keir Starmer” and leave things there. Palatable subcultural images rather than overt calls to political action. Less anger, less mess, less litigation. A flag to wave without any confrontation with the fact that Irish people are moved by the atrocities in Gaza because they’re reminded of their own anger. That many of them, especially those still living under British rule, still deeply resent the English, even if they’ve learned how to split the G.
As the sun settled for the night and the drizzle began to lift, I asked one enthusiastic young Englishman beside me what he thought of the crowd. “Absolutely love the Irish,” he gurgled, hands swaying in the air as the set closed out.
“Would you die for Ireland?” I prodded. “Probably,” he shrugged, eyeing me up and down. “It would be way cooler to die for Ireland than England.”
[See also: Stop taking Glastonbury so seriously]
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