If the Beeb knew its history, it would understand Rule Britannia ISN’T racist — and is adored across the world
At least, there is still one irredeemably British quality to this year’s Last Night of the Proms: the fudge. Not even the finest dairy herds of Devon and Cornwall could have confected something as thick, rich and clotted as the latest solution served up by the BBC.
Instead of either ignoring the usual half-hearted complaints about ‘jingoism’ – a recurring grumble ahead of every Last Night since the war – or else explaining why such charges are baseless, the BBC management has, this year, just caved in.
the result is a mess that has not merely satisfied no one at all but has now managed to kickstart a national debate about the BBC itself. And it is all so needless.
Come the grand finale of this year’s concert, ‘Rule Britannia’ will be just a shrivelled morsel. A few bars of Arne’s famous anthem will be bolted on to the end of the usual medley of nautical songs – but without any words. Next comes Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 (‘Land of Hope and Glory’) but, again, minus the words.
It would have been easier for the BBC if they had simply said they were removing these pieces on a temporary basis, as indeed they did in 2001. Back then, in those dumbstruck days immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the USA, it was decided that these boisterous crowd-pleasers would hit the wrong note. So out they went, without complaint.
this time around, the BBC is floundering, meekly trying to blame this mess on the coronavirus while not denying that it has something to do with the culture wars raging beyond.
Yesterday, the director-general Lord [tony] Hall claimed it was a ‘creative conclusion’ in response to Covid-19, insisting: ‘It’s very, very hard to have things where the whole audience normally sing along.’
this argument simply falls apart given that the song which has now overtaken Elgar – ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ – is a singalong classic which will be sung by the guest soprano and by the BBC Singers. So, too, will ‘Jerusalem’ and the National Anthem.
In other words, some songs are safe to sing in a pandemic but not others. Pull the other one.
this year’s guest conductor, Finland’s Dalia Stasevska, 35, reportedly regards the virus as a good excuse for pruning a much-loved script. As a BBC source told the Sunday times: ‘Dalia is a big supporter of Black Lives Matter and thinks a ceremony without an audience is the perfect moment to bring change.’
Miss Stasevska has made no comment and has chosen to let this remark stand. With no substantial ethnic minorities beyond a tiny percentage of Swedes and Russians, Finland is among the least diverse societies in Europe. Finns are perhaps not best-placed to lecture the British on multiculturalism.
I suggest that Miss Stasevska has a word with her compatriot, Sakari Oramo. He was the Finnish conductor with a very difficult task – conducting the Last Night of the Proms in 2016 in the toxic aftermath of the Brexit referendum. Back then, the BBC was crippled by the same old anxieties about orgies of jingoism.
Former Proms director Nicholas Kenyon wrote darkly in the Guardian of his ‘sense of foreboding that this most British of occasions might be hijacked to celebrate the triumph of Little England’.
As ever, it was nonsense – as I discovered when I went along myself. the only people who hijacked the event were an enterprising band of Remainers who had purchased a lorry load of EU flags which were given to everyone going through the door. A few Brexiteers tried to do the same with Union flags. Mr Oramo ignored it all.
Perhaps the loudest cheer of the night came when he led on his star vocalist, Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Florez, to sing Rule Britannia. Florez had come not in white tie and tails, nor dressed as Britannia. Instead, he was in the full regalia of the King of the Incas, complete with feathered cloak and Sun God helmet. the audience was ecstatic. Here was a proud Peruvian in ancient native dress, conducted by a proud Finn, leading the entire Albert Hall – plus tens of thousands gathered around the jumbo screens in Hyde Park, Glasgow and elsewhere plus millions more watching on telly – in a bravura rendition of one of Britain’s best-loved tunes.
It was a perfect illustration of a point completely lost on these panicky BBC executives: the Last Night is a global event. It is also one with a healthy sense of irony – an alien concept, of course, to the woke. the thing which most sticks
in my mind about that night in 2016 (like all the other Last Nights, in fact) is the range of nationalities. In addition to the EU and Union flags, the next most popular is usually that of Germany.
People get up at all hours around the world to tune in and hold ‘Last Night’ parties. For many of them, it is a lifelong ambition to get a ticket to the real thing. All those German and Japanese viewers will be just as dismayed as the crustiest British ancient mariner this year when they witness Miss Stasevska’s joyless, truncated snippet of a wordless Rule Britannia.
Sir Henry Wood’s Promenade Concerts (to give them their full name) have always been the greatest festival of world music anywhere. They are anything but a celebration of national music, like so many lesser festivals.
Those eccentrics with their little rituals whom viewers always see at the front of the Last Night crowd are very serious about their music.
I have interviewed a few of them over the years. They are an eclectic bunch but the last thing you can accuse them of is jingoism. They might sing Rule Britannia with gusto but they will have been just as enthusiastic for the French, African, Indian – even
Finnish – music at other concerts over the season.
Besides, Rule Britannia has nothing to do with ‘enslavement’ as its critics claim. Indeed, the words are an exhortation, not a triumphalist boast. Note that the words say ‘Britannia, rule the waves’ – not ‘rules’.
The song was written for an 18th-century royal masque about Alfred the Great defeating the Vikings. It acquired its popularity not as a military marching tune, like, say, France’s unashamedly brutal Marseillaise, but as a catchy musical number sung by barmaidturned-West End star, Kitty Clive. In other words, it’s a Georgian XFactor hit. It then went on to be a favourite tune of the Royal Navy – the same navy, of course, which abolished slavery. S IMILARLy, Elgar’s Land of Hope and Glory was called no such thing when it was first performed at the Proms in 1901 – because Arthur Benson had not yet got round to writing any words. It was just Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1.
These songs have never been imposed on the British public – like a national anthem or school song – but they endure through their universal appeal. The Germans, Brazilians and Japanese whom I have seen singing ‘Rule Britannia’ at the Royal Albert Hall, while waving their EU flags, had no more enthusiasm for British imperialism than Dalia Stasevska, Jeremy Corbyn or Karl Marx’s cat. Like all the other Prommers, they were there for the music and for the occasion.
It is often said that the BBC is far too sensitive to the prevailing wind on Twitter. So the Broadcasting House high-ups must have been mortified to see that the most popular Twitter thread yesterday lunchtime was ‘#DefundtheBBC’ followed closely by ‘#RuleBritannia’. Then, the Prime Minister weighed in for the second day running, accusing the BBC of ‘cringing’ and ‘wetness’.
They need not cringe. Rather, they should point out that it was the BBC which saved the Proms from insolvency in 1927 and which has kept it all going ever since with generations of great musicians, conductors and presenters. Then they should tell their critics on both sides to pipe down and enjoy the music.
But perhaps, we should have seen this coming. For last year’s Last Night, the BBC commissioned a new work to open the concert. It was entitled, simply, ‘Woke’.