The WI jingoists? Oh put an (expertly darned) sock in it!
ON Sunday, down on the local green for the Queen’s Birthday, I heartily sang Land Of Hope And Glory, Jerusalem, and the national anthem. Around me, old and young represented the mildest of modern types: liberalminded in the main, many of them charitable donors and workers; probably a fair few superkeen euro remainiacs, though it was too jolly an event to discuss such matters.
But none of us had any problem roaring ‘wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set!’ any more than all the thousands at the Proms do. We understand about these old imperial blusterings; we’re not stupid, we all know the reality of today.
Indeed, at the Queen’s Golden Jubilee celebrations I remember being squashed among all ethnicities in a million-plus crowd on the Mall belting out Land Of Hope And Glory, and reflecting that as we sang that wider-and-wider line, not one of us actually wanted India back in a British empire. Or even felt particularly aggrieved about the loss of Hong Kong.
We just liked a good hearty tune and that vague but important sense which says: ‘Hey, this is us . . .’
We are a dryly resigned nation, but we do love our rousing songs; and when singing rule, Britannia! we are aware (especially right now, with the border crisis) that we don’t actually rule very many waves.
And, in any case, note that the words of that song don’t claim that Britannia rules the waves. There’s no ‘s’ on the word, so they are just urging her to have a go: it’s an order or a wish. And we are perfectly comfortable with the idea of never, never, never being slaves. That cheers us up.
As for the national anthem, it may be monarchist and therefore disliked by some, but hark at that brilliant second verse affirming the primacy of parliamentary democracy. ‘May she defend our laws, and ever give us cause to sing with heart and voice, God save our Queen!’
In other words: Monarch, know your place! The people make the laws, so give us reason to support you. Charles had better remember that when it’s his turn . . .
Anyway, our ancestors and compatriots wrote us some grand rousing songs, so who are we to sneer at them? And what’s wrong with sometimes singing them with a dash of amused irony?
ATHeISTS sing Christmas carols, after all (even the most famous, Professor richard Dawkins, has admitted to it). Such tradition is good. It’s fun. It’s harmless.
But what is this? Oh dear. Another catastrophic, politically correct sense of humour failure has struck. In, of all places, the Women’s Institute.
As 4,500 delegates met in Brighton, the organisers got into a last-night-of-the-Proms mood for the Queen’s 90th, and sang Land Of Hope And Glory and rule, Britannia! Some wore Union Jack outfits.
But a few, gripped by a kind of pious illogicality which is getting too common, said it was ‘inappropriate’ and even racist, and refused to join in.
Someone called Jag Picknett wrote on social media that, as an educated second-generation immigrant, she felt offended.
Teresa Murray, spoke of ‘racism, jingoism, elitism, colonialism’ (what a fine mixed soup of issues), while Natice Duncan whined that the WI should embrace ‘the world as it is today, not 50 years ago’.
Well, she should do her homework. The modern Women’s Institute is nothing like the way it was portrayed — disgracefully and unfunnily — in the TV comedy series Little Britain, as a kind of homophobic, racist coven. It never was.
It has been one of the most progressive, determined forces of liberalism in Britain.
Founded during wartime in 1915 to encourage thrifty food production at home (hardly an elitist idea), the British WI movement remained firmly non- political and non-denominational.
In 1921, it lobbied for women to be allowed to serve on juries alongside men; in 1943, for equal pay; in 1972, for family planning services.
At the peak of the eighties HIV/ Aids panic, when even some hospital staff were scared to handle patients, the WI held public meetings to support sufferers and give solid information.
Its causes have been relentless and benign — not riotous, but firm as steel.
It campaigned on food labelling regulation, nature conservation, women’s health issues including sexually transmitted disease, on the right to visit your children in hospital, on smoking in public places, libraries, domestic violence, FGM.
WI members are often young (groups called Hel’s Belles and the Social Lites were at its centenary). Some looked after festivalgoers at Glastonbury.
recently, WI Life magazine refused to print an advertisement which it considered discriminatory against gay people because ‘we welcome all women to the WI’.
It’s not just jam and Jerusalem; but beyond all those tough, modern liberal causes, it is definitely happy to include both. It isn’t ashamed of its history, or its mothers and grandmothers. That is its secret.
But now we have this pious, self- righteous little group threatening to leave because of a couple of songs, anxious to find offence, hostility and racism wherever they can. And they are not alone.
For this is part of an outbreak — very noticeable at the moment due to the divisive referendum campaign — of ferocious anti-traditionalism: of contempt for harmless bits of englishness.
And, absurdly, the more unreasonable remainers pretend that these little cultural quirks of ours are not only toxic, but the only possible motive for wanting to disentangle Britain from an administrative and commercial agreement less than half a century old.
Sunday Times columnist A .A. Gill accused Brexiteers of wanting to ‘shuffle back to yesterday’ because of ‘dry stone walls and country lanes and church bells and warm beer and skittles and football rattles and cheery banter . . . elgar and fudge and proper weather and herbaceous borders and cars called Morris’.
Meanwhile, in the Guardian I found an essay so hilarious that I keep re-tweeting it.
It pronounced that the street parties at the weekend — ‘tea, cupcakes, flags upon flags’ were pure nationalism, ‘sadomasochistic Toryism’, and were allied to racism and a desire to get the empire back.
And there we were, just thinking it was an excuse for a party, a bit of bunting, a chance to say hello to neighbours of all colours and classes.
Personally, where europe is concerned I teeter on the edge of indecision, but when I do cast my vote it will be about economics, administrative efficiency and political practicality.
I will not be swayed either way by cupcakes, flags, herbaceous borders, jolly heritage songs, or church bells, because they’ll all still be there whatever happens.
There is a dreary cast of thinking today, evident in the university ‘safe space’ nonsense — which decrees that no one whose views might offend anyone should be heard — and in too many arguments about sexuality, language, and politics in general.
It’s the idea not only that anyone who takes offence at something is absolutely right, but that anyone who disagrees with them is actively malicious.
yet when it comes to culture and songs and events, the curious thing is that people who sneer at street parties, have a neurotic fear of Morris Dancers and purse their lips rather than rollick along with elgar are not intellectually consistent.
BeCAUSe they are usually exactly the same people who fawn on other cultures’ historic gewgaws and leftovers. If they see a picturesque Basque dance, they are charmed. If they’re caught up in a Breton procession with banners of Notre Dame des Marins, they walk alongside.
They will hotly defend the customs and costumes of remote peoples and unfamiliar religions. Show them a Bollywood-esque wedding, or a Masai warrior ritually scarred, and they are full of respect.
yet show them an english folk dance, tall ship mast-manning, or Trooping the Colour, and they shudder.
The hideous bloodthirstiness of The Marseillaise (hoping that ‘ an impure blood’ will fertilise French farmland) is no problem to them, yet they flinch at rule, Britannia!
They are fuelled by self-satisfied guilt about an empire long finished, and a deeply odd rejection of anything inherited.
As Molesworth 2 said in the famous schoolboy books: ‘I diskard them.’ God Save The Queen — and three cheers for the Women’s Institute!