Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap under fire for British MP and anti-Israel comments

Irish hip-hop group Kneecap apologized on Tuesday to the families of two British MPs slain in the past decade, after footage emerged of one of the trio's members appearing to say "Kill your local MP" during a performance in 2023.

But the group's statement is already being panned by several lawmakers and former colleagues of David Amess and Jo Cox, as Kneecap's problems pile up after a controversial performance earlier this month at Coachella.

Kneecap apologized to the families of Amess, a Conservative lawmaker stabbed to death in 2021, and also to relatives of Jo Cox, a Labour lawmaker fatally shot and stabbed in 2016.

"To the Amess and Cox families, we send our heartfelt apologies, we never intended to cause you hurt," the group said.

In the video footage, from a London concert more than two years after Amess's murder, a band member appears to say: "The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP."

Yvette Cooper, interior minister for the Labour government, said that police were examining the footage.

"It's dangerous to make these sorts of comments, whether it is terrorist organizations or whether it is about the safety of MPs, when we have seen two MPs killed in recent years," she told Times Radio.

The group's apology was part of a larger statement that lashed out at a "smear campaign."

"Establishment figures, desperate to silence us, have combed through hundreds of hours of footage and interviews extracting, a handful of words from months or years ago to manufacture moral hysteria," Kneecap said.

The group said "an extract of footage" was "deliberately taken out of context," without elaborating.

The spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the apology "half-hearted," according to multiple British news outlets.

Brendan Cox, widower of Jo Cox, told a BBC radio network the apology "doesn't come across as, unfortunately, particularly genuine." He said he was disappointed to hear the group "suggest that it's a conspiracy, that they have been targeted unfairly."

Kate Amess, daughter of the slain Conservative legislator, has called the footage "heartbreaking," though she told Sky News she'd be willing to meet with the the group "to explain why people in their position should not be inciting this kind of violence."

Kneecap had already been under scrutiny for its performance earlier this month at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California, where pro-Palestinian messages projected on a screen ended with: "F--k Israel. Free Palestine."

Some observers were outraged, including talk show host and music manager Sharon Osbourne.

"Coachella 2025 will be remembered as a festival that compromised its moral and spiritual integrity," Osbourne said in a social media post, calling for the group's work visa in the U.S. to be revoked.

Booking agency Independent Artist Group parted ways with Kneecap as a result, according to the Hollywood Reporter, and organizers of a German festival in June dropped the act from the lineup.

The group released a statement in the wake of that U.S. performance, which it said had given rise to "deliberate distortions and falsehoods."

"Our only concern is the Palestinian people — the 20,000 murdered children and counting," the statement read. "The young people at our gigs see through the lies. They stand on the side of humanity and justice."

But social media users unearthed a video clip from a different concert in 2024, which appears to show a group member saying: "Up Hamas, up Hezbollah."

Both Hamas and Hezbollah are on the U.K. list of proscribed terrorist organizations.

"Let us be unequivocal: we do not, and have never, supported Hamas or Hezbollah," Kneecap said on X. "We condemn all attacks on civilians, always. It is never OK."

Kneecap is made up of Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin and JJ Ó Dochartaigh, though they each have stage names.

Kneecap rap about Irish identity and support the republican cause of uniting British-run Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland. Its name comes from a punishment meted out by paramilitary gunmen during decades of confrontation between Irish nationalist militants, pro-British "loyalist" paramilitaries and the British security services, when victims were shot in the kneecaps.

Opposition Leader Kemi Badenoch:

In addition to the group's rise in the music industry since releasing its first single in 2017, the Belfast natives helped write the screenplay and appeared on screen in a 2024 biopic, Kneecap, which was nominated for six BAFTA awards.

The stakes are high for the group, which is scheduled to appear at Glastonbury Festival in England in June, a subject that came up in House of Commons questioning on Tuesday from the opposition Conservatives.

"It's not for government ministers to say who's going to appear at Glastonbury, it's for the organizers and the festival," said Security Minister Dan Jarvis.

But, Jarvis said, "the government would urge the organizers of Glastonbury Festival to think very carefully about who is invited to perform there later this year."

As well, the Coachella performance was to be a teaser for a North American tour later this year. Two shows at Toronto's History on Oct. 14-15, and an Oct. 23 date at Vancouver's Vogue Theatre are already sold out, according to the group's website.

But Democratic Unionist Party MP Carla Lockhart said in a Facebook post Monday that she had "written to authorities in the U.S. and Canada urging them to deny entry to Kneecap in light of the ongoing counter-terrorism investigation."

This month's controversies aren't the first for Kneecap. The group won a case against the previous Conservative government, which tried to rescind an arts grant worth about $26,000 Cdn. The group said it was donating the proceeds to a pair of charities that help at-risk youth.