BBC faces chorus of criticism
BORIS Johnson yesterday accused the BBC of ‘wetness’ over Last Night of the Proms.
He expressed disbelief at the broadcaster’s decision to perform Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory without lyrics.
Demanding an end to ‘selfrecrimination’ over the past, the Prime Minister said that the BBC harboured a ‘cringing embarrassment’ about Britain’s traditions. The BBC
announced on Monday that the anthems will feature only as ‘new orchestral versions’ next month – without the usual singing.
The compromise, which followed a racism row, was drawn up after incoming director general Tim Davie intervened to insist both pieces were performed in some form.
The former Tory council candidate is thought to want to reset the BBC’s relationship with No 10 when he takes over next week. The broadcaster vowed last night that the patriotic lyrics would return in 2021 – when the concert season finale is again performed before an audience.
But MPs from both parties and Trevor Phillips, the former head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, condemned this year’s decision.
Almost 30,000 people have signed a change.org petition demanding that the lyrics be reinstated.
Another, on MailOnline, ‘urging the BBC to immediately reinstate Land of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia’ also attracted thousands of supporters.
Mr Johnson said yesterday he was so passionate about the issue that his advisers had sought to ‘restrain’ his remarks.
Saying he could barely believe the BBC’s decision, he added: ‘It’s time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history, about our traditions, and about our culture, and we stopped this general fight of self-recrimination and wetness, I wanted to get that off my chest.’
Mr Phillips accused BBC bosses of being ‘rooms full of white men panicking that someone is going to think they are racist’.
He said: ‘The real problem the corporation has is that it is always in a panic about race, and one of the reasons it is always in a panic is that it has no confidence.
‘The principle reason it has no confidence ... is that there is no ethnic diversity at the top of its decision-making tree.’
But Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer sat on the fence – refusing to make clear whether he believed the BBC should back down.
The row over this year’s Proms began at the weekend when it was first reported that Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory could be ditched entirely. Critics have claimed the songs are inappropriate due to associations with colonialism and slavery.
The lyrics to Rule Britannia include the line ‘Britons never, never, never shall be slaves’, while the 1902 words to Land of Hope and Glory were reputedly inspired by Cecil Rhodes, an imperialist whose statue is being removed from an Oxford college.
It was suggested that the Finnish Proms conductor, Dalia Stasevska, was keen to limit patriotic elements, and that this year – without an audience due to coronavirus – was the perfect moment for change.
Late on Monday, BBC bosses finally confirmed that the two anthems would be performed, but without the lyrics.
Government officials held talks with BBC executives to urge them to rethink the decision but to no avail. David Mellor, the Tory former culture secretary, said: ‘This is a disgraceful cock-up at every level. What we get is a whole lot of woke claptrap and the BBC don’t know what to do about it.’
A senior BBC source hinted at internal tensions yesterday, saying: ‘This is another example of the BBC walking into a completely unnecessary and absurd row about culture. It makes a lot of us despair when this kind of thing happens again and again.
‘There’s lots of things you can say about both of the songs and they are not up to the minute. But that’s the case with 99 per cent of our culture one way or the other.’
Tony Hall, the BBC’s outgoing director general, tried to blame the Covid crisis for the decision, pointing out that fewer performers are allowed on stage. He said the issue had been determined by David Pickard, director of the BBC Proms. Asked whether there had been a discussion about dropping songs because of their link with imperialism, Lord Hall replied: ‘The whole thing has been discussed by David and his colleagues.’
A BBC spokesman said: ‘For the avoidance of doubt, these songs will be sung next year. We share the disappointment of everyone that the Proms will have to be different but we believe this is the best solution in the circumstances.’