Renowned muralist Banksy targeted British Home Secretary James Cleverly on Wednesday, responding to Cleverly’s earlier criticism of an artwork displayed at the recent Glastonbury Music Festival. The piece in question featured an inflatable raft.
The politician called the Banksy work “vile and unacceptable.” On Instagram, Banksy fired back, saying that that response seemed “a bit over the top.”
“The real boat I fund, the MV Louise Michel, rescued 17 unaccompanied children from the central Med on Monday night,” Banksy wrote. “As punishment the Italian authorities have detained it – which seems vile and unacceptable to me.”
Cleverly claimed in an interview that the Banksy piece was “a celebration of loss of life in the Channel.” When the secretary was asked whether it was possible that Banksy, “who makes political commentary on all sorts of things,” could have been criticizing the conservative government’s inability to confront the human trafficking industry, Cleverly dodged the question.
Instead, Cleverly railed against the UKs Labour party, which he said “aspires to run border control” and has hindered Conservative efforts to tighten the influx of migrants into Great Britain.
According to the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, the influx of migrants reaching Great Britain via small boats crossing the English Channel has significantly increased since 2018. In the first half of 2024, 12,646 arrivals were recorded, marking a 16 percent rise from the corresponding period in the previous year.
In May, three men were arrested and charged with causing the deaths of five migrants, including a 7-year-old girl, who were fatally crushed while attempting to enter the UK illegally via a small boat. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak informed reporters that these voyages across the channel were a consequence of “criminal gangs are exploiting vulnerable people; they are packing more and more people into these unseaworthy dinghies.”
Migration featured prominently at Glastonbury this year, highlighted by a dedicated festival area named Terminal 1 focusing on the issue.
The Louise Michel, a 98-foot ex-French Navy vessel funded by Banksy through the proceeds of his artwork sales, conducts search and rescue operations along the European coastline. Launched in August 2019, the ship rescued 350 individuals during its inaugural week at sea. Italian authorities impounded the vessel after it attempted to rescue 37 migrants from the central Mediterranean.
