The Rooster #24

Glastonbury, Gaza and an IRL brainstorm...

I started to write this newsletter and picked up my phone and watched a video on Instagram of bloodied ashen-faced sibling children in Gaza screaming for their mother and suddenly everything I wanted to write seemed stupid, facile and irrelevant.

Israel just keep bombing Gaza. Another eighty two people were murdered overnight. Almost half of them shot whilst trying to access food for their families. The other half bombed from above by Israeli airstrikes. And the British government watches on. Shame on them. Shame on every Government minister who is not doing everything in their power to campaign for the UK’s divestment from Israel. To stop trade and imports. To move investments. To stop selling weapons of war to the IDF. Shame on Keir Starmer.

If you subscribe to me on here you might have read my article on Gaza and despair. In it I talked about this feeling of being pulled along by history repeating itself, like the terrifying panicky feeling of being caught in a rip tide. Except in this iteration of history it’s live streamed on our phones. I talked about how the only thing that makes sense to me at the moment is using our freedom and agency to DO something. As Afua Hirsch wrote in an article for Elle this week on how not to be paralysed by inaction,

“Disobedience, speaking out and protest isn’t optional. It’s the only way to use the miracle of being born.”

There was a fair amount of speaking out at Glastonbury festival this year. It was interesting to come back and see the disconnect between the media’s portrayal of the festival and how it actually felt on the ground. The general vibe from where I stood and walked was one of love and togetherness. It felt like a collective outpouring of grief and frustration from artists and punters alike about what’s happening in Gaza. The sheer amount of headlines that Kneecap and Bob Vylan garnered was interesting when so many other artists spoke out in support of Palestine as well; Wolf Alice, Lambrini Girls, Amyl And The Sniffers, Inhaler, Turnstile, Sorry, Big Pig, Maccabees, Jade, the Libertines..and so much more.. not forgetting my absolute favourite, Cmat.

Cmat played at lunchtime on Friday. It was scorching hot. She walked on stage, pretended to faint and delivered the first verse of the first song while lying face down on her belly. That set the tone. Her performance was an absolute masterclass; a career making, life affirming, soul nourishing hour of riotous hilarious heartbreaking brilliant country pop songs. She’s the only artist I’ve ever witnessed lead sixty thousand people in a choreographed line dance, do a synchronised stripper twirl with her ma and throw herself into the crowd in one gig. She is a fucking STAR. She has received five star reviews in every music press from Rolling Stone to the Guardian but for the love of God if you have not seen this performance do everything you can to watch it HERE.

Ciara Mary Alice Thompson - future Glastonbury headliner.

I spent the gig laughing, dancing, just rapt. All the way through I wondered would she say something about Palestine. I thought she would. I know her. I know she is brave enough. It was more about how would it fit. The seriousness of the message was incongruous with the tone of her set. But at the end as she walked off she shouted free Palestine and then led everyone in a chant. And I went for it then. Crying me eyes out. It meant so much.

Afterwards I was trying to figure out why. It’s easy for the right wing press to dismiss and deride the same group of people who shout about the genocide. According to them, Kneecap are pantomime villains, and Paloma Faith, Annie Lennox, Owen Jones are all deemed leftie lunatics. But the impact of a person speaking out on a big stage ( the biggest of stages! ) that hasn’t spoken out on that level before is absolutely huge. Everyone Irish knows where Cmat stands on Gaza but a lot of new fans will have witnessed her shouting out those words and will have felt emboldened or invigorated to say something themselves off the back of it. Watching her made me realise that change has to come from every corner of our society to really make a difference. But there are still so many factions of our society that are silent and inactive. And silence is in this case, is literally deadly.

I’ve been chatting about it with my partner T. Going somewhere like Glastonbury is a reminder of how pervasive the feelings of frustration are for Starmer’s government at the moment. There’s got to be some way to harness all this frustration into something constructive. What can we all do together to create real tangible change? When regular marches attended by hundreds of thousands of people are ignored, and countless letters from esteemed authors, journalists, lawyers, human rights charities, doctors are ignored, how do we make an impact big enough to actually sway the government into action?

Okay brainstorm time. Do you remember Greta Thunberg’s School Strike for climate in 2018 when she protested outside the Swedish parliament to demand action on climate change? This became bigger. A global movement, Fridays For Future it was called. Millions of kids all over the world participated in Fridays off school worldwide. Is there something in trying to galvanise a whole generation of UK citizens to not go to work for the day as a protest against the UK Government’s complicity in the genocide? Money talks. Surely when the economy is affected the Government has to act?

Am I sounding like a privileged arsehole here? Assuming people can eschew a day’s pay in aid of Palestine? But there is something I Am Spartacus about it which feels like it could be so effective across the board. Employees of the civil service. The media. The organisations who have a direct impact on public perception and policy. It would have to be a hugely peace orientated mission with a simple directive that didn’t ostracise the people who have been silent up to now.

Strike if you stand against the bombing of innocent people.

Do you think it could work? And if not what COULD work? There has to be a way. There has to be some way….