After BBC's latest anti-Semitic storm, LEO MCKINSTRY on why free speech has never implied the right to incite violence

Daily Mail​

13 hours ago

The BBC has reached a disgraceful new low in its accelerating ethical decline.
In an astonishing dereliction of duty, the BBC did not pull the plug on punk duo Bob Vylan as they embarked on an anti-Semitic rant before a Palestinian flag-waving crowd. Instead, it continued to live-stream the performance, effectively treating the glorification of anti-Israeli violence as a casual dose of Saturday afternoon entertainment.
A BBC spokesman said yesterday that they had issued an on-screen warning 'about the very strong and discriminatory language' during Bob Vylan's performance and it was later removed from iPlayer. But that limp response is utterly inadequate.
Why was the live feed not immediately cut? Does anyone seriously believe the BBC would have shown such spineless inertia if a performer had dared to voice hardline anti-Islamic or anti-immigration rhetoric?
Equally unconvincing was the stance of organiser Emily Eavis, whose father Michael co-founded the festival. She released a mealy-mouthed statement insisting that she doesn't necessarily share the political views of performers, and insisted the real themes of Glastonbury are 'hope, unity, peace and love'. After Saturday's spectacle, those words ring hollow.
The trouble at Glastonbury on Saturday was caused not just by Vylan but also by the radical Belfast rap trio Kneecap, which has gained notoriety for its endorsement of Irish paramilitaries and the pro-Palestinian cause. And in November 2023, they released a video that stated: 'The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your MP.'
So incendiary is their message that many had called for their Glastonbury set to be axed. Eavis refused. Even the enfeebled BBC was sufficiently chary of livestreaming its Saturday performance at Glastonbury.
But the baton of intolerance was taken up by Bob Vylan with chilling enthusiasm. The Kneecap warmup act lead the 30,000-strong crowd in a chant of 'Free Palestine' - an aggressive anthem widely loathed by Jews for its anti-Semitic overtones - before the band's frontman, who goes by the moniker Bobby Vylan, then started to rant, 'Death to the IDF ' – the Israeli Defence Force.
Let's be clear: in practice, these morbid words amount to a call for the destruction of the Jewish people's homeland, since the IDF is the only effective barrier between the survival of Israel or the triumph of its enemies. Vylan and Kneecap like to wail about the supposed genocide of the Palestinians, but the emasculation of Israel would result in mass slaughter on an epic scale.
Some purists might argue that, in a democracy, free speech must be protected and therefore these voices should be heard. But freedom of expression has never implied the right to incite violence or murder. Both those actions have always been serious criminal offences – and should be handled with the full rigour of the law.
The broadcaster's own editorial guidelines state the following: 'Material that contains hate speech should not be included in output unless it is justified by the context. Broadcasting hate speech can constitute a criminal offence if it is intended or likely to stir up hatred relating to race, or intended to stir up hatred relating to religious belief.'
Rightly, Lord Carlile – crossbench peer and former independent government reviewer of terrorism legislation – has warned that BBC executives could now face charges, as police investigate their handling of Vylan's performance.
Meanwhile, the Left's sudden pious wailing about free speech reeks of hypocrisy, given that these are the very campaigners who are often at the forefront of cancel culture.
Trying to silence their opponents is a favourite tactic, particularly through accusations of Islamophobia and racism. It was that same ideological suppression that allowed predatory grooming gangs to operate with impunity across towns in the North and Midlands. But then this whole saga is riddled with double standards and contradictions.
Yesterday, the Metropolitan Police announced that they are not going to take any action against Kneecap over the trio's call to kill Conservative MPs, a decision that stands in stark contrast to the harsh sentence handed to Lucy Connolly, the wife of a West Northamptonshire Conservative councillor. She was jailed for more than two years for sending an inflammatory tweet about migrants during last summer's riots.
To many, Connolly is a symbol of the two-tier justice system that has developed in Britain, where people from certain Left-wing groups – like pro-Palestinian demonstrators - are treated more leniently than those who express conservative views.
But it is the BBC who made the greatest misjudgement in this case - and it is because its perspective has undoubtably been warped by its obsession with Glastonbury as an enormously significant cultural landmark, with the result that it treats the festival with uncritical reverence.
No expense was spared. Hundreds of BBC staffers descended on Worthy Farm - all at licence fee-payers' cost. Every act was breathlessly praised. The broadcaster was less a neutral observer, more a cheerleader.
Yet for all its resources, the BBC failed to conduct even basic checks on Bob Vylan -or to intervene when their set descended into an anti-semitic rant.