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Land of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia racist yea or nay?

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Seems to be a lot of talk in the UK press about not playing these songs during this year’s audience-free Last Night of The Proms.

Assuming it’s not just Phil Space packing his paper’s pages with rubbish during the traditional summer silly season, I think doing so would be the thin end of a very thick “woke” edge.

Anyone else here have strong feelings either way?

2

Comments

  2. They’re of a piece with the rest of the last night of the Proms, which I’ve always found rather toe-curling with its mix of forced jollity and patriotism. The whole thing certainly isn’t for me, but seems harmless enough. Overall I think more harm might come of making a big issue of it.

    All of that said, I speak as a middle aged white man who has lived in various bits of Britain all my life. There will be other, wider points of view from which I would have much to learn. The only thing of which I can be confident is that I am unlikely to become better disposed to the songs or the evening by any argument.

  3. Interesting one. My late mother in law was German, arriving from Berlin 2 weeks before the airlift as an 18 year old with very limited English.
    Over the years she became very attached to this country and loved the proms and the 2 songs you mention – she didn’t regard them either as imperialistic or racist rather as a proclamation of pride in our Nation.
    I am not entirely sure there is any valid argument for getting rid of things that might stir up the keyboard warriors who stalk everything we do in the hope of finding a bandwagon they can get people to jump on.

  4. I alwyas thought the display of patriotism on the Last Night of the Proms was distasteful and vulgar. With an audience full of “hooray henrys” swigging champagne from the bottle. Just awful.

  5. Press looking for a storm to fit into their teacup? Probably.

    Both songs are definitely Imperialist but not particularly racist. Their sentiments are rather silly in this day and age, dangerous in the wrong hands probably and the way they are used in the Proms, along with the flag-waving etc. is indeed pretty toe-curling.
    Nothing at all wrong with a bit of national pride but the Last Night has become a rather Brits-in-Torremolinas strand of bad-taste patriotism that’s well beyond it’s sell-by date.
    In my opinion.

      • Seconded. I have no problem with the music, but have big problems with the sight of Gammons in Union Jack waistcoats singing it. They’d probably prefer to change the lyrics to something like “Jog on, Johnny Foreigner”.

        Yesterday’s Mail on Sunday headline made this week’s phone call with my mum very short, when I muttered “Oh, FFS” and put the phone down.

      • I’ve never been a big fan either – but if you watched last years finale there were as many EU flags being waved by the crowd as the more traditional Union Jacks. A minor act of rebellion and made me rethink my view of those who attend.

    • Agree it might be bad taste but that ain’t a reason for banning it. Were that the case we would be without half the tv, radio and books in the UK and the likes of Ant and Dec would be on the dole. Second thoughts ……

        • I’m now assuming that a ‘seconded’ vote isn’t a joke. Its bad enough that the national anthem is both royalist and religious. Replacing it with another song with religious overtones is simply barking.

          • Personally I never sing the national anthem – there is nothing in it that resonates at all for me. Similarly, I won’t even stand up for Rule Britannia or ‘Land Of Dopes and Tories’ .
            Jerusalem can be seen as religious if you wish to, & embraces the myth of Joseph of Arimathea & Christ In England, but equally it can seen as revolutionary as anything written by Shelley.
            It advocates building heaven on Earth , rather than waiting for pie in the sky.
            It’s certainly bonkers & why not?
            Let’s have your suggestion.

            • Good tune too. Can’t be a UK national anthem though. Saying that, GSTQ is ignored in Wales and Scotland. Not sure about Northern Ireland.

              • Obviously you are correct Dai, that Jerusalem could not work for the UK – I would genuinely like to see it adopted as the ‘ ‘England song’ for sporting events, like footy, Rugby & Olympic type stuff. At least it wouldn’t be embarrassing like the current dirge is.
                I like Jerusalem precisely because it evokes something non specific but essentially positive & isn’t concerned with knocking others in any way – ‘patriotic’ perhaps but certainly not nationalistic.
                Truth be told, it would delightful if we could dispense with all anthems & just alternate between ‘Love Train’ by The Ojays & ‘What’s So Funny ‘bout Peace Love & Understanding’ by N. Lowe Esq. – I’d happily stand for either of those!

                • Very little irritates me more than the insistence on playing Jurusalem before the start of every day’s play in England cricket matches. An utterly pointless dirge, to which the answer is obviously no to every question it asks.

                  It is only out-dirged in the anthem stakes by the appalling Flower Of Scotland (I never worked out what was wrong with Scotland The Brave, a far more jaunty and satisfying tune).

                  • The answer to the first verse of Jerusalem is No, but the second is “Get it yourself” – I would say “What did your last slave die of?” but that doesn’t seem appropriate.

                    • Perhaps we could also raise awareness of the ongoing slave trade in Libya, for example, the one that’s slightly too inconvenient to discuss in some social circles.

            • Well most suggestions I’ve seen in the past lead me to think we should be starting from scratch rather than choosing an existing piece. Whatever it is, it needs to be secular and politically neutral. I can’t see why an atheist republican shouldn’t be able to get behind a national anthem but you can only go four words into our current one before you’ve failed on both counts which is some going! It has to be inclusive. I’ve a feeling an instrumental may be the best solution.

  8. Not racist, but sizeist?
    Land of Hope and Glory

    Mother of the Free
    How shall we extol thee
    Who are born of thee?
    Wider still, and wider
    Shall thy bounds be set;
    God, who made thee mighty
    Make thee mightier yet!

    Storm in a teacup, but like many national events, it isn’t exclusively gammon – there have been European flags at recent Last Night of the Poms, haven’t there?

  12. I’ve no interest in nationalism and can’t think of a single occasion when I’ve had to sing either of these songs, which is probably just as well as I only know one note and I’m flat on that.

    But this has being doing the rounds on the Internet- American Samoan firefighters helping out in California, and singing a hymn as they go about it. If we have to have a national song, it should be like this. (And did the Welsh reach Samoa or vice versa? Either way, It’s like being in the land of my father)

  13. I thought national anthems were supposed to be jingoistic hokum, a nonsense of rose tinted fauxstalgia. GSTQ has many verses beyond the first that are worse even than LoHaG, which is just a song bigots like, singing. From what I recall La Marseillaise and Deutschland Uber Alles aren’t that different. I like Jerusalem but it is anglocentric to say the least, not least when Jerusalem was really built on the outskirts of Paisley. And don’t start me on Flower of Scotland. (Caledonia would do, mind, by Dougie Maclean)

    • Flower of Scotland is, of course, The Worst Song Ever Written.

      Michael Marra has some wise words on the subject of national anthems and his own marvellous suggestion. I commend it to the house:

      • My apologies for the expletive. I shall request its deletion. I should not have personalised my hair trigger reaction. I am utterly sick and tired of the loathsome BBC and its relentless bias, from its ludicrous woke historical revisionism in the name of ‘diversity’ to its political coverage of Brexit, the US, Covid etc. Whenever it has an opportunity to push its liberal/left agenda, it seizes it, and quite blatantly too. This is not its right, nor its mandate. They are supposed to represent the people as a whole. The sooner it’s self funding and just another competitor in the market the better. It’s crumbling popularity gives me great pleasure. I’ll leave my final words to George Orwell.
        “England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman, and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during God Save The King than of stealing from a poor box”.

    • Can I just point out that, even if you know the Deutschland Über Alles bit, the third verse featuring this line is actually banned in Germany, and references to it are obscured by calling it “the third verse”. Sing these words in public and you identify yourself as a right-wing thug and are liable to be arrested and/or fined. Still is the national anthem however.

      • Get your facts right (from today’s Observer):

        BTW in Germany we had the same discussion. The national anthem (music by Joseph Haydn, an Austrian) is traditional, but the lyrics dated from a different era and were outdated. (“Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt.”). Germans didn’t think that resembled our values very well. On top of that a fourth paragraph had been added to the original lyrics by Hoffmann von Fallersleben, which was even more controversial. Solution: Only the third paragraph has been made the official national anthem. No 1 and 4 not. They are still out there, you can read them up with their history, some people may still sing them privately (sure Nazis will) but they are not what our country stands for.

        That’s me told!

  14. I love the Proms but hate the last night with a vengeance. That whole flag waving self indulgent ‘Britannia rules the waves’ stuff just feels completely dated to me and I am all for changing it. There is absolutely no reason why it should be preserved in aspic just because it’s been done like this for years.

    And, incidentally, nobody is talking about ‘banning’ anything. Just a possible artistic decision to do one concert a year differently, without one or two pieces of music it has had in the past. No-one is stopping anyone else performing those pieces of music on as many other occasions as they want to.

      • Yes, I tend to agree. If a concert is guaranteed to include shit songs I don’t like, I’m not about to get them to play something else, I’m going to go to another concert.

          • @dai why should the BBC choose to not broadcast it when it is hugely popular? I would prefer them not to broadcast Strictly which to my mind is a pile of shit but hundreds of thousands disagree with me. I dont think we yet live in a society where a minority can determine what should or shouldn’t be shown but sadly we are getting closer to that date.

            • I’ve just looked at the next 7 days of programmes on bbc1. On that selection, I’d be quite happy to shut the station down. The only thing there’s an outside chance of me watching is the odd repeat of pointless. The rest looks like fairly unmitigated shite. Do I want to close it down? No, of course not.

      • Absolutely if the Proms decide not to include Rule Britannia they’ll be doing it because they feel it isn’t the right thing to do in these times – it will be a policy decision as much as an artistic one. We can agree or disagree with that but it isn’t ‘banning’ it, is it?

        This isn’t the first time this has come up; in fact it’s a perennial. I remember in the year of the Falklands War the conductor of the Last Night mildly suggesting in an interview that it might be an idea to tone down the jingoism that year given the circumstances. You can imagine the reaction that got from the usual suspects.

  15. The story seems to have originated in the Sunday Times, in which case it may be no more than their daily smearing of the BBC. All the usual suspects up in arms. Oliver Dowden – “Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory are highlights of the Last Night of the Proms. Share concerns of many about their potential removal and have raised this with @BBC. Confident forward-looking nations don’t erase their history, they add to it”. What a bell-end.

  16. Look out for my Guardian column – “Is ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ Brexit Britain’s ‘Agadoo’ ?”.

    There will be a picture of me giving a sideways glance to the camera, with a knowing, half-smile.

    Aside from the piece’s title there will be very little, if any, insight and after exactly 500 words it will be over.

  18. I quite like the idea of something like this as an international anthem.
    Just a few words, between which you can sing anything you like, plus extemporise any sort of instrumentation.

      • It very much is the point. If you asked a victim of racial discrimination to list 100 things they would like changing, banning LOHAG would not be on that list. It’s an easy thing to do that achieves nothing but salving the embarrassment of some liberals in the arts. Whilst, probably, annoying non Liberals more.

        • Of course it will change very little for the oppressed minorities, but you can only do the things that you individually have power over. If it is my habit of making racist gestures to people and I stop then that won’t change much for people in general but it could make a difference to my family members and people around me that could eventually reap dividends. Every journey begins with a single step.

          Not saying the songs are intrinsically racist but singing stuff about ruling the waves and never being slaves is pretty embarrassing these days.

          • I’m probably just being disagreeable but by only doing the things that you individually have power to do, people are not going to change anything in people’s lifetimes. Not singing an old, pompous song really won’t change anything other than the running order at the last night of the proms. People do it to feel less guilty. White people do it to feel less guilty. And then you have white people making racism about how they feel not what actually improves a racially disadvantaged persons life better.

            • Well, kinda.

              But there is signal value in these things. If one says that they support these songs and what they represent to historically under represented communities, the signal is that I don’t care about you.

              If one pays attention and does something that is low cost and low effort, the signal is that I am listening and you are being heard.

              Not to be devalued, that.

  21. Meanwhile the gammons are cancelling their National Trust memberships in droves because the NT are planning to go into much greater detail about how their properties and their contents are linked to slavery. This seems to me to be not so much erasing history as expanding it.

  22. I think the world needs to collectively recalibrate itself about the definition of racism.

    Believing that a person is inferior or incapable due to their genetic makeup is racist. Acknowledging differences between cultures, or even expressing a dislike for some elements of a culture or a preference for your own culture, is not racist. I will throw my hand up and say that there are many elements of many cultures that I find abhorrent, particularly regarding views on women, children, the environment, bribery, religion etc. I may be guilty of cultural relativism, but not racism.

    If you have ever witnessed genuine cases of the former, then you realise how insulting it is to its victims to dilute this term by applying it to the latter.

      • If Godwin’s Law was a racehorse, the poor thing would only be fit for the knacker’s yard. Cries of ‘nazi’ and ‘fascist’ only serve to highlight the utter stupidity of those saying it, and are a great insult to those who suffered and died at the hands of such an evil ideology, and those who gave their all combating it. Indeed, these very same morons show a level of hatred and intolerance of any deviation of opinion that is strikingly similar to it.

          • I agree. In my own experience the intolerance and aggression is more prevalent from the supposedly tolerant and liberal left. Not at all, of course, but a large percentage seem unable to accept or discuss a different perspective. I have not found this attitude so much with this on the centre right.

            • This of course is bollocks, the RNC last night shows this. But me saying this proves your point doesn’t it? Or is it a way the right itself tries to shut down debate?

            • Intolerance more prevalent on the left? I really don’t think that is true. The extremes are as bad as each other. The right has shown that in its reaction to this non story – I haven’t seen Farage et al take a moment to reflect that there may be a point worth debating here. No, it’s just political correctness gone mad, unpatriotic hatred of Great Britain, self indulgent wokeness, loony left arts types etc etc. The left are as bad but no worse (incidentally terms like ‘gammon’ and ‘Karen’ are examples of that, invariably used by some people on the left). On both sides it’s just a means of shutting down any debate or any scintilla of self-doubt. They’re wrong and if I say it vehemently enough I’ll prove it to be so.

              • As a fairly frequent visitor to Twitter I agree the lefties are far nastier and remorseless. The treatment meted out to Jo Swinson in the last election for, example, was disgusting.

                • I’m not sure. I mean, yes the hard left can be hideous (witness the recent Twitter pile-in on Owen Jones of all people for daring to suggest that a tweet from the editor of the Canary was anti-Semitic). And women (like Swinson, but as lp says also like Abbott are particularly subject to this. But I do think the right is as bad – it’s just that we expect them to be awful whilst the left likes to think of and present itself as utterly decent and above such things. Which it manifestly isn’t.

                  • Oh I don’t know – that idea the right = nasty, left = kind is pretty much redundant, as you point out correctly. The problem is every one of us is fighting to be heard, social media and so the rage gets amped up and round and round it goes.
                    I had a hello trees, hello sky moment of idealism the other day. So, what if Twitter, FB etc altered their algorithms so that the famous social media bubble no longer existed. Your feed would no longer be close friends – you would have to interact with others. There was more to my wonderful idea to expand on this point but I’m off my tits on codeine atm (toothache) so can’t recall what exactly

                    . And Twitter introduced a five minute Edith function rather like the one we have here, so people could rethink their more hideous brain farts? You may say I’m a dreamer, etc etc.

                    • Thete’s this conformity to a tribe that overrides other considerations. Follow your party line, dehumanise the opposition. This isn’t most people. Most of us don’t occupy such fanatical groupings.

  23. We all know that these Brexit, bigoted, racist wassocks on social media never watch any other night of the Proms, are not interested in it, don’t even listen to classical music. In fact they make a virtue of not watching the BBC, so why are they up in arms about this?

        • Come on. To state that everyone that voted brexit and uses social media is a thick racist is nonsense, and plenty of them do watch the BBC, and pay the licence fee too, unbelievably.

          • I never said that. I was talking about the ones bleating about this particular issue. They make a virtue of never watching the BBC, saying how it should be defunded (but how would that work?) so why are they concerned about this?

            It’s another non-issue to bash the Libs/BBC/BLM etc. Perhaps they could grow up?

            • Advertising, that’s how, like Sky, Channel 4, ITV etc. ‘They’ have every right to be concerned about it because they are required to pay for it, whether they watch it or not. Quite a logical and justifiable gripe, especially when it was a politically motivated move by the BBC.

              • Where’s the evidence that the BBC ever suggested such a thing? The Sunday Times, owned by News Corp, “reported” that a conductor had suggested such a change might be an idea. The froth came from Oliver Dowden, reacting to the Sunday Times story. The BBC never confirmed or denied any plans one way or the other.

                The whole thing is made up to get Toby Young types in a culture war lather, of which this thread is a good example.

                It’s all a load of bollocks. A non story.

              • There was no “move by the BBC”, Rob.
                You are presenting hype as fact.

                The entire thing is an invented story from the shit-stirrers in the press, deliberately inflated into a bandwagon, from an unofficial comment that toning the jingoism down this year might be a good idea. Boris & co. have siezed on it as a handy diversion from their woeful incompetence and shady dealings. Farage has leapt onto the bus too. Hoping to grab a little taste of the limelight once more.

  24. Just look at the lyrics to both of them: exhortation to military aggression and territorial expansion claiming that it’s a right bestowed by God. I bet most of the people who love to sing them would listen to that from any other nation and reckon it was tasteless and threatening, but reckon it doesn’t apply to us because we’re British.

    • I think most open minded and educated people, dare I say ‘liberal’ in the proper sense that is no longer in fashion, would be capable of seeing the wider traditional and cultural context of any such anthem without attaching an unduly alarmed response to any historic military connotations in the modern era.

      • I just checked global arms exporters, and interestingly the UK is in 8th position for 2018 – slipping a bit when, over the last 60 years cumulatively, it’s been in 2nd place behind the USA.

        Admittedly, that 2nd place is only just in front of Russia, and all placeholders 2-10 together don’t add up to the US military expenditure. But I’d say the external picture of the UK remains one with a militaristic attitude to the rest of the world. And, like it or not, we still have the songs to match.

  26. You get the impression from some of the coverage that the Last Night of the Proms is simply nationalistic songs. In fact, there are more serious pieces in the first half and always a new commission, this year by the Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi. I think most people go for the music, and the flag waving is mainly drunken music students (although I have never been to the Last Night).

    It’s hard for a series of classical concerts to be particularly nationalistic for the British, because most of the tradition comes from elsewhere in Europe. And the proms has been extending its reach – the last proms concert I went to a couple of years ago was of Indian and Pakistani music.

    The other thing that strikes me about the proms and classical music on the radio, is that it’s becoming more diverse in its range of composers and musicians, which is probably more significant in the longer term than this made-up row. At this year’s last night concert, the conductor and both soloists are women, one of whom is also black. The new arrangements of two of the pieces are also by women, again one of them also black. I don’t think you would have had this even ten years ago.

    https://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/proms/bbc-proms-2020/last-night-of-the-proms/

  31. Just read this version which I had never heard before.

    Rule Britannia
    Marmalade and jam
    Five Chinese crackers up your arsehole
    Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang ?

    We could adopt either this or the monkey version.

  32. This is a longer piece than you may wish to read, written a few years back, but for anyone interested it is an excellent essay on the history of the Last Night, which, amongst other things, shows that the hard and fast ‘tradition’ was only created over 60 years after the Proms had started, after the war by then then lead conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent, and that great unease about it has existed pretty much since then, and certainly since his death in the late 60s. It also shows that the culture wars around it are nothing new.

    The real point for me is that these things should never be hard baked into unchangeable form – something like the Proms has always evolved, as it needs to, to stay fresh and interesting.

    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1468-2281.2008.00466.x

  33. Haven’t read whole thread but wasn’t idea to do it without words since no audience to sing a long and that was kind of the whole point of it being there all these years. Be kind of flat and empty without anyone to join in.

    • Just so. But it strikes me that the Beeb could have spared themselves a whole load of grief from the Twats’ Chorus (which they really don’t need right now) if they’d simply got Kathleen Jenkins or some other can belto warhorse to sing it solo, then the tiny percentage of the Twats who actually watch it could have joined in at home.

      Instead the poor Finnish woman who’s conducting LNOTP has been getting death threats and reminders that Finland was on the same side as the Nazis in WW2.

  34. Thanks for those wise words, Blue Boy, Diddley and Mike (what a great band name!).

    It is frightening how many unthinking idiots there are out there who will start yapping at the slightest motivation-

    Pavlov’s Dog seems a model of canine common sense by comparison.

    • One of the greatest political branding exercises in modern history is allowing dimwitted cookie-cutter Tories to think of themselves as fearless non-partisan free-thinkers. “I’m no Tory,” they splutter, while insisting how independent-minded they are. And then that’s followed by slavish repetition of every Toby Young talking point you care to name, furious umbrage at posts which they clearly haven’t read or understood, and swallowing bullshit Spiked clickbait unquestioningly whole. Rebranding terrified conservatism as rebellious counterculture was smart as hell, especially when the vocal extremes on the other side are so unattractive.

      That’s how you get to wildly embellish some bollocks about Land of Hope and Glory and get a week of rage out of it from people who wouldn’t know Elgar from a hole in the ground.

  35. I will not rest until Schoolly D’s I Don’t Like Rock’n’Roll is the climax (hur) of Last Night of the Proms:

    “Rock’n’roll music is a thing of the past,
    And all you long-haired faggots can kiss my ass”

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