British Politician Misses the Point of Banksy’s Glastonbury Boat Artwork

A mysterious event that took place on Friday at the Glastonbury Festival saw an inflatable boat crowdsurfing as it carried several masked dummy figures in orange lifesaving vests. In an age when massive numbers of refugees and immigrants are flowing into Western countries, often driving their politicians and publics into anti-immigrant right-wing policies, the reference wasn’t hard to discern. 

In fact, the small craft embarked on its short voyage during a song by the band Idles, and one that expresses sympathy with immigrants, no less. “Danny Nedelko” opens with the lyrics, “My blood brother is an immigrant / a beautiful immigrant,” going on to refer to Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar to Parsi-Indian parents. People even thought it was part of the show.

But the band revealed the next day that the boat was an intervention by anonymous British street artist Banksy, and that it wasn’t in on the act, as reported by the Guardian, which noted that migration was a theme of this year’s festival.

Banksy confirmed the piece in his typical fashion, posting a video to Instagram on Sunday.

Now, Conservative Home Secretary James Cleverly has objected to the work in the most strenuous of terms, but he doesn’t seem to be in the slightest familiar with who he’s criticizing, even though the artist was voted his country’s favorite artist of all time in 2019 (beating out Van Gogh, Monet, and Leonardo da Vinci), and his positions aren’t hard to find out about. 

Cleverly took to Sky News yesterday to voice his complaints. 

“How do you know what that is commentary about?” asked host Matt Barbet. 

Cleverly doesn’t address the question, saying only: “There are a bunch of people there joking about and celebrating about criminal actions which cost lives. People die. People die in the Mediterranean. They die in the Channel. This is not funny. It is vile. This is a celebration of the loss of life in the Channel.”

Cleverly’s response is wildly off the mark. Whether one enjoys Banksy’s brand of (perhaps obvious) wit or not, the artist is known for works that express sympathy with the plight of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants, and even support them with actual money.

Let’s look at a few examples.

His mammoth 2015 installation Dismaland, a downbeat Disney-style amusement park, included the installation Refugee Pond, which featured remote-control boats filled with migrants; a mass exodus from war-torn Syria was underway at the time. At show’s end, Banksy sold the boats and donated the proceeds to a refugee camp in Calais, France, where Syrians were taking shelter. The park’s building materials, moreover, were converted into housing for refugees.

Another work from that year at that same camp depicted Apple founder Steve Jobs, himself the son of a Syrian immigrant, highlighting the contributions of immigrants to their adoptive nations. 

During the Venice Biennale in 2019, Banksy created Migrant Child, showing a child wearing a life jacket and carrying a flare, who seems to drown during high tide. 

In 2014, in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, meanwhile, the anonymous artist revealed Anti-immigration birds, in which a quintet of gray pigeons carry signs with messages like “Go back to Africa” and “Keep off our worms,” as a bright green bird, apparently the target of their anger, perches nearby. 

More recently, in 2020, the artist himself financed a refugee ship that roamed the Mediterranean in a search for refugees in need of aid.

In the Sky News interview, Barbett asked, “How do you know it’s not a commentary on your inability to handle the situation?” later challenging Cleverly, “You don’t know that’s a joke. Banksy makes political commentary on all sorts of things. Do you accept that it could be commentary on the Conservatives’ inability to sort that problem out?”

In response, in classical politician fashion, Cleverly ignores the question and strikes out at the Labour Party, who, he argued, have stood in the way of his party’s attempts to address the situation. 

The Conservatives’ policies on immigration have focused on boats, but as Barbett indicated, they have been ineffective. 

Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced five promises to the British people in 2023, one of them a pledge to “stop the boats,” as the Guardian reported yesterday, adding that the boats have continued to arrive in only greater numbers.

One Tory backbencher, Jacob Rees-Mogg, even echoed American ex-President Donald Trump, saying that he wants to “build a wall in the English Channel” in a leaked recording published in the Guardian. 

Banksy did not immediately respond to a request for comment, directed to his studio.

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