Kneecap say TfL blocked ‘Fenian’ posters, forcing censored artwork

Kneecap’s manager says promotional posters for the trio’s second album had to be altered after what he describes as a refusal from Transport for London. The record, Fenian, arrived on May 1 as the follow-up to 2024’s Fine Art and leans into the confrontational, joking, and fiercely local lyricism that made the Belfast rappers a cultural headache for some and a rallying cry for others.

The album is threaded with collaborations from Kae Tempest, Radie Peat and Fawzi, and it contains cuts that point left and right: the grieving but angry Irish Goodbye, the kinetic title track, the theatrical Smugglers & Scholars and Liars Tale, which calls out Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Those songs — and the artwork — became collateral when the band tried to buy tube space in London.

Manager Daniel Lambert posted screenshots and comments on X on May 5, saying the first version of the poster was rejected. The original design used the album artwork, a bold red rendering of the word FENIAN and a cluster of four- and five-star blurbs. One of those blurbs, Lambert says, included a quote attributed to the prime minister calling the band “completely intolerable.” According to Lambert, the advertising partner told the band that TfL would not allow the word FENIAN to be displayed, so the team supplied a redacted version with the title and the PM’s name blanked out.

“The company we book London tube ads with confirmed our original artwork was NOT accepted by TFL & ‘FENIAN’ had to be removed,” Lambert wrote. “We then provided a redacted poster — took a week for approval & deadlines missed.”

TfL’s public response, shared with local press, pushed back against Lambert’s framing. A spokesperson told Belfast Telegraph and later NME that TfL only ever received the redacted artwork and did not ask for changes, adding that there is “no blanket ban of the term ‘Fenian’ being used in advertising campaigns on our estate” and that copy is reviewed on a case-by-case basis with guidance from the Committee of Advertising Practice.

“The redacted style of the poster reflects the version that was submitted to us for approval. We did not request any changes to the artwork before the current advertising campaign commenced,” the TfL statement read.

Lambert supplied what he said were the email exchanges to support his account: a reply apparently from the ad-booking company that read, “I can confirm TFL will not allow the word FENIAN to be displayed unfortunately. All ads have to be completely impartial and non-political of any movement.” Whether that message came directly from a TfL moderator or from the private contractor that sells space is at the centre of the dispute. Either way, the public result was the same: the title was blanked on posters running in London, and the band lost days in the campaign window.

Behind the bureaucratic dust is a word with a long history. Fenian originally referred to 19th-century Irish revolutionaries and older mythic warrior figures, and it has also been used as a derogatory slur against Irish nationalists. Kneecap have been deliberate about reclaiming that charged language. In an interview with NME, Móglaí Bap traced the word back through folklore and rebellion, and explained how modern insults like “You Fenian c**t” were used to mark someone as backwards. “We are reclaiming ‘Fenian’ as a synonym for the warrior,” they said. “The most feared weapon in our arsenal is the power of language.”

“It originally came from Irish folklore… Then it was repurposed for several rebellions during the 18th and 19th Century, then in modern times it was used as a derogatory slur for Irish nationalists,” Móglaí Bap told NME.

That attempt to reclaim terminology collides with rules that govern public advertising. TfL’s insistence on impartiality for its estate is understandable in the abstract: the Tube is a civic space with a legal framework around political messaging. But the application here is awkward. The posters did not campaign for a political party or urge direct action. They were marketing a record whose title is itself a historic and contested noun. The result is a small public moment where cultural memory, anti-sectarian sensitivities and platform policy tangle.

NME gave Fenian four and a half stars, noting that once you strip away tabloid-friendly talking points, the record is “a solid, progressive and fearless album” from a group that could have coasted but chose to push. Chart-wise the trio briefly found themselves in a strange kind of mainstream conversation: competing for a high UK chart slot against names like Melanie C and Michael Jackson while arguing on X about whether the transport authority had muzzled their poster.

What matters here is less whether anyone broke a rule than what the exchange says about the policing of language in public. Kneecap made an album that intentionally drags old insults into daylight and retools them. A public agency responded by blanking the word in a crowded advertising environment. Both moves are small and procedural. Put together, they reveal how institutions and artists continue to fight over who gets to name the terms of civic life.

For the band, Fenian extends a trajectory that began with Fine Art: an outwardly abrasive, inwardly affectionate catalogue of local identity, stubborn humour and political impatience. The censoring of a poster is not censorship of a record, yet it is a reminder that the music’s ripples are now asking questions at the level of public policy and media governance. Kneecap have always thrived on that discomfort; whether TfL’s redaction was a miscommunication or a conservative application of rules, the kerfuffle only underlines that their work lands where it hurts, or where it matters.