Last Night of the Proms becomes part of the culture wars

The BBC is universally regarded as one of the great broadcasters in the world – except by a growing section of the British public.

In Ireland we are unabashed fans of Britain’s largest cultural export and its world-class programming funded by a generous licence-fee settlement. The BBC World Service is an example of British soft power and an institution which has done so much worldwide to aid free expression in countries where such a privilege cannot be taken for granted.

Yet in Britain the BBC is accumulating a long list of detractors from left and right – but mostly from the right. Allegations of bias are an occupational hazard for public broadcasters, but allegations of being arrogant, elitist and out-of-touch are harder to refute.

The corporation’s decision to ban the singing of the words of Land of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia from the Last Night of the Proms is a gift to those who believe the BBC is a metropolitan, left-wing and, worst of all, unpatriotic broadcaster. These include, of course, most Brexiteers and the right wing media, but distain for this decision goes beyond the usual suspects. Just 9 per cent of respondents to a YouGov poll last Tuesday supported the BBC and only 8 per cent said the two songs should not be played at all.

Pat Leahy: Anger over old farts’ convention shows what Government could face

---

Don’t expect an Irish commissioner to wave the national flag

---

‘Lady Muck’ – An Irishwoman’s Diary on flaunting it

---

Newton Emerson: Ireland, North and South, will miss Phil Hogan’s voice on Brexit

---

Like the Shelbourne Hotel statues most people did not notice until they were taken down, few gave much thought to finale of the Last Night of the Proms until the songs were banned.

In his famous essay The Lion and the Unicorn, George Orwell concluded that the type of flag waving exemplified by Rule Britannia is done by “small minorities”. The average English person ’s heart may not leap at the sight of the Union Jack but their patriotism is “profound” and not to be taken for granted.

In comments that find their echo in regular criticisms of BBC management, Orwell opined: “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.”

The Sunday Times reported that this year’s Last Night of the Proms conductor Dalia Stasevska, who is from Finland, wanted the songs dropped because of their association with slavery and colonialism, and in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

BBC management decided on a compromise. The two songs will be played as instrumentals when the last night takes place on September 12th without an audience because of Covid-19. Next year they will be restored in full to the programme. It is a compromise which has satisfied nobody.

The Last Night of the Proms usually culminates every year in the singing of these two songs accompanied by flag-waving. You could, if you were literal minded enough, conclude that the two songs, with their echoes of British Victorian colonial triumphalism, have no place in the modern world.

It is unlikely though that those attending the proms really believe that Britons “never, ever, ever will be slaves” seeing as they were not slaves in the first place – nor that Britain really is the “mother of the free” which would have been news to the millions who were enslaved when Britain really did rule the waves.

These songs have endured long after the sentiments that inspired them have vanished because great tunes have a life of their own.

After their All-Ireland success two years ago, the Limerick hurlers and supporters were criticised in unionist circles for singing Sean South, about a Limerick man killed in raid during the counterproductive IRA Border Campaign in 1957.As far as the team were concerned Sean South was a Limerick man from Garryowen (he was from Henry Street, but that’s a different matter) and the song is a belter.

Nobody takes the French literally when their national anthem speaks of watering the fields with the impure blood of foreigners.

Not many of us intend to man the “Bearna Baoil (the gap of danger) in defence of our “ancient Sireland”, yet we sing the national anthem without demure.

The songwriter Pete St John likened great songs to “magic carpets”. When he wrote The Fields of Athenry he never envisaged the lyrics would be sung in the Aviva Stadium, Thomond Park or Anfield. Its famine sentiments only have tangential association with sport, but The Fields of Athenry is now accepted as an authentic part of the Irish sporting experience.

By singling out these two songs, the BBC has contrived to make it more difficult to begin an overdue and honest debate about the unsavoury aspects of Britain’s past.

As we saw with Brexit and the Border, British ignorance about its own history can consume its own domestic politics.

The “global Britain” project vaunted by the Brexiteers envisages trade deals with former colonies like India and Pakistan where the British have a troubled history.

The portents are not good. Prime minister Boris Johnson, never one to miss a populist opportunity, pitched into the debate on the Last Night of the Proms.

He once again pedalled the false narrative that critically examining Britain’s past is a form of national self-loathing to be avoided.

“I think 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.”

The BBC’s decision is likely in this instance to be counterproductive. It will be harder in the future to make the case for a reckoning with Britain’s colonial legacy without being accused of being woke and unpatriotic.

As the owners of the Shelbourne Hotel have discovered, small gestures can turn out to have big consequences.The Last Night of the Proms has become part of the culture wars and there are no winners.