Billy Bragg calls out Ukrainian band who covered The Clash over far-right imagery

21.03.2022 - 16:55 / nme.com

Billy Bragg has criticised Ukrainian band Beton for their supposed far-right links, after they released a cover of The Clash’s ‘London’s Calling’.Last week, the Ukrainian punk band reworked The Clash’s iconic track to create ‘Kyiv Calling’, a protest song against the Russian invasion.Ukraine has officially severed diplomatic ties with Russia, and declared martial law, after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an attack on the neighbouring nation on February 24. Since then, The United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has estimated that the conflict has claimed 1,900 civilian casualties.

The UN (via BBC) also estimates that there are nearly 1.85million internally displaced people within Ukraine.Beton’s song was mixed and mastered by Danny Saber, who worked with Clash frontman Joe Strummer prior to his death in 2002, with all proceeds from the song going to the citizen-led organisation FURM (Free Ukraine Resistance Movement), which you can donate to directly here.However, after sharing the track on his Facebook page, Billy Bragg was reportedly made aware of photographs of the band wearing t-shirts that seemed to celebrate far-right leaders.The image in question sees members of Beton wearing Ramones-inspired t-shirts, with the word ‘Ramones’ at the top of the logo replaced with the word ‘Banderas’. “Although all of the names within the circle were not visible, there was one that clearly read ‘Stepan’,” explained Bragg.“This is deeply troubling.

Stepan Bandera was a far-right Ukrainian politician who collaborated with the Nazis during the occupation of Ukraine and whose followers were complicit in the Holocaust. That he did these things in the name of Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union