Journalists and visitors usually view sittings of the House of Commons from the galleries high above, looking down on the pates of MPs below. On non-sitting days, however, we can enter the empty debating chamber floor.
You see details at ground floor level that you cannot see from above. You notice the speaker’s green velvet bag into which MPs traditionally stuffed motions accepted for debate – it’s where the phrase “it’s in the bag” comes from.
You also notice the little speakers discreetly built into the MPs’ green benches. If you watch on television, you may see MPs leaning back with their heads rested behind. I used to think they were nodding off. In fact, one MP told me, they have their ear pressed to the bench speaker trying to hear the debate above the din.
From the floor, you also notice the coats of arms on plaques on the walls above the backbenches. These cannot be seen from the overhanging galleries above. When the chamber is sitting, only MPs and the ushers have a view of them.
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Each coat of arms commemorates a different MP killed while in office. Most of these heraldic plaques are faded and old – some, for example, commemorate MPs who died during the second World War.
Two stand out with shining prominence. On the back wall of the opposition side, one is for Labour MP Jo Cox, the member of parliament for Batley and Spen in West Yorkshire, murdered by a far-right extremist, Thomas Mair, in June 2016. He shot her three times and then stabbed her as he shouted “Britain first”. Her coat of arms includes red roses for Labour and white for Yorkshire.
On the other side, behind the government backbenches, the shiniest plaque of all commemorates David Amess, the Tory MP for Southend West who was stabbed to death at a constituency clinic by Islamist Ali Harbi Ali in October 2021. His coat of arms includes five roses for his children.
Since the killings, the Tories have been ousted and Labour MPs have taken their place on the government side. That means Labour MPs now sit directly facing Cox’s plaque and Tories face the one commemorating Amess. If an MP’s attention wanders, chances are their gaze will be drawn to the shiny plaque of their fallen comrade opposite.
The memory of what so recently befell Cox and Amess hangs ominously over British parliamentary politics in a way that is not often fully appreciated in Ireland, including on the streets of west Belfast, which spawned the Irish language republican rap trio, Kneecap.
The potency of that memory is why Kneecap was destined to lose the recent publicity war in Britain once the Daily Mail dug up footage of one of the group’s members apparently shouting at a November 2023 gig in London: “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.”
The band’s supporters may say the exhortation was ironic and not meant to be taken seriously, but such nuance matters little in a publicity firestorm, even if some of the Tory criticism of Kneecap was as performative as the band’s raps.
The previous five heraldic plaques were for MPs who were all killed in the Troubles by Irish republicans, another factor that didn’t help Kneecap this week.
In February 2024, then business secretary Kemi Badenoch tried to deny Kneecap a £14,250 UK government grant it had been awarded by an independent committee. Her department said it wouldn’t give cash to “people who oppose the United Kingdom itself”, a ludicrous position given the legitimacy of Irish unification as a political aim, as enshrined in the Belfast Agreement. Badenoch, then and now, also shared the Commons chamber with MPs from Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party, both of which have the effective end of the UK as their aim.
Since before the band’s Badenoch clash, the Daily Mail, one of the most powerful forces on the political right wing of British society, has had it in for Kneecap. It helped to stir up the campaign against the group in recent weeks, which began after its anti-Israel antics at Coachella festival in the US over Easter. The discovery by the Mail of the “kill your MP” video saw the controversy spiral out of Kneecap’s control, leading to its apology on Monday to the families of Cox and Amess.
An hour-long debate over Kneecap’s comments was held in the Commons on Tuesday, during which the group took criticism from all sides.
Perhaps the most crucial political condemnation this week, however, came not from Badenoch’s Tories or Keir Starmer’s Labour. John Swinney, the SNP first minister of Scotland, described the band’s comments as “completely and utterly unacceptable” as he called for them to be banned from a Glasgow concert. Kneecap united not only the English political establishment against them, but also the separatist Scots – a truly unusual feat. There was no coming back from that.
The band should get a breather this Thursday when England goes to the polls in crucial local elections on Thursday and the political news agenda moves on.
