Gig will go ahead but campaigners will still stage a protest
Glasgow comedian Frankie Boyle has confirmed his appearance at a community festival after disability activists backed down from a planned protest.
The decision to go ahead with his act was taken after talks between the festival organisers and local disability campaigners.
Camapigners object to Boyle’s various jokes about children with Down’s syndrome and disabled people, demanding he was dropped from the Feile an Phobail festival in West Belfast – one of the biggest community festivals in the UK.
Northern Irish campaign group Feile For All led the protests and included families with children who have Down’s syndrome.
Attacks on the disabled, either verbal or physical, will always be wrong
Furore around Boyle's appearance at the festival next week put the event's organisers under more pressure than at any time during its 27 year history.
A Change.org petition signed by 1,500 people said: “By allowing Frankie Boyle to be a part of the Feile, this is suggesting that those most vulnerable in our society do not deserve the same equality as the rest of the community.”
A spokesperson for Feile for All, said that while the gig would continue they “remain firmly opposed to this act appearing at our festival”.
He said: “The group was aggrieved by the comments made by Frankie Boyle which was further compounded by Feile's decision to invite him to appear at our festival.
“The Feile for All group felt real and deep hurt by the comments and felt that Feile (the festival), by extension were condoning the same, contrary to their ethos of inclusivity. Attacks on the disabled, either verbal or physical, will always be wrong.
“We have raised the issue of attacks on the most vulnerable within society as being unacceptable and created awareness of disability issues generally.”
Over 2,000 tickets for Boyle’s appearance have been sold and Feile an Phobail warned that it would face bankruptcy if it cancelled and had to hand the money back.
A spokesman for the festival said: “Feile an Phobail finds the mocking of the disabled totally unacceptable. Going forward, a number of ideas were jointly posited by us and the Feile For All group, which included a range of effective measures we would put in place to avoid a situation like this arising in the future.”
