… why that culture should be applauded

30/06/2025.  I watched Glastonbury’s closing Sunday night performance by Olivia Rodrigo last night on the BBC. It was surprisingly good – I say surprising because I’m of an age to remember Glasto when it was a small west country folk festival inspired by support for CND (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament). So (almost) old enough to have forgotten teenage dreams.

Glastonbury has grown enormously since. Even from the early 2000s, when for eight years I looked forward to early summers living in a field and working at the festival, all for a few days of anarchy and music.

It is now, I think, the pre-eminent music festival in the world. I might be too old to cope with the sun, the mud and the organised chaos that it represents in real life, but I still enjoy hearing the music, and watching the life and the rebellious culture that the festival embodies.

Glastonbury is still about dissent, about protest, about breaking the barriers that are erected around controversial areas of discussion in this country. At Glasto, artists will say the things that everybody is thinking but too afraid, or inhibited, to say. In that way it remains true to its past, and it is why I love the festival still. For so many of us, each with our individual stories to attach, Glastonbury is special.

Which is why I get so angry with hearing rather stupid pronouncements from UK government ministers that certain BBC broadcasts from the festival should be censored. I thought we lived the free world, and that government censorship of unapproved opinion was for countries run by dictators. Was I wrong?

To hear such pronouncements from members of the government of the day only confirms many people in their opinions of that government – nothing but a bunch of idiots. To say that they have the musical sensibility of mushrooms is probably insulting – to the fungii.

And what is this upsetting incident about anyway? It is about support for Palestian Action – a protest group that the government wants to proscribe as expressing support for terrorism. Which everyone knows is code for an attempt by government to cover up what it really fears – the rising support for Palestine and utter contempt for the present Israeli government and the bullying, thuggery and now outright murder that public broadcasts show every day.

In this respect, I beg to suggest, this government is out of touch with vast numbers of the UK population, who are increasingiy horrified about what Israel is doing in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and now Iran. On almost any sensible analysis, here is a country that is warmongering on a grand scale.

We are so far beyond past Israeli government attempts to categorise any criticism of its neanderthal behaviour as anti-semitic. Far beyond. Many people now regard that government as a nothing but a bunch of monsters in human form. The issue that the UK now has to face is whether Israel should be labelled a pariah state, and the members of its right-wing government reclassified as wanted by the international court for crimes against humanity.

I have kept silent for many years about what I see as the growing aggression of the Israeli state and its more subversive elements deeply buried in western society. I am sorry to say that it is for the same reason as for many in British politics and the press, a fear of the power and influence that is exercised against those who offend the present Israeli right wing, witness the harassment of certain unfortunates in British and American academia, not to mention previous members of the Labour party in the UK.

Now I see clearly that the whole fuss about anti-semitism in the UK is really the classic behaviour of the bully – the one who cannot abide criticislm and will shout, scream and do almost anything to stamp it out. Doubtless I will be labelled as anti-semitic for saying so, but frankly, I am past caring. The evidence of monstrous behaviour every night on TV is simply too overwhelming.

So I say to those government ministers who are upset with what is being broadcast from Glastonbury – put your own house in order. The sentiments being expressed at the festival are directly in tune with large-scale changes in opinion about Israel within the UK, and most probably around the world.

This government, this government of Britain, needs to think seriously about its support for a foreign country that is clearly intent on eradicating a large part of the population of Palestine – all to serve one of the largest land grabs in modern history. The behaviour is biblical, or as some would say simply barbaric.

It needs to stop. And whether it does or not, this government should have no part in supporting such a regime. No part at all. I hope that the Labour party comes to see that, because if it does not, then the next election will have been decided before it even takes place.

© Philip Hunt 2025

See also:
Observer: Having a Bad Glasto? That’s even harder than getting in