Monday 31 August 2020

Land of Hopeless Tories

 

According to an article in today's Guardian by Nesrine Malik the  "plot " to drop "Land of Hope and Glory" (LOHAG) et al from the Last Night of the Proms was a piece of "fake news" created by right-wing propagandist to stir up among their followers the idea that our  "glorious heritage" was under threat from we woke liberals and Liberals.  

The article is worth reading, and explains how the technique is  being used in the US to create a debate about the totally false idea that Joe Biden will empty the prisons and defund the police.

M/s Malik argues that by creating a debate the right achieves its objective by highlighting the imaginary "danger."

However, I've found the "Last Night" shenanigans an embarrassment for years, and when choirs of which I've been a member have put on "Last Night" tributes I've always refused to wave a Union Jack (although on the last such occasion I manage to stick a small EU flag on the conductor's rostrum).  So I'll take the risk.


LOHAG and "Rule Britannia" are stirring tunes and good fun to sing along to.  I'm sure that a large proportion of participants, (is 80% to generous a guess?) think they are just that: "good fun."  But for a minority, and for many of the watchers, they legitimise and perpetuate the myth of British exceptionalism: that we are superior, better than others, others can be slaves but not us.  

It's  a tradition that goes back a long way.  Shakespeare was good at it, as in Richard II, Act 2 Scene 1, for example,  in which the "Silver sea...." serves us 

". . .in the offcie of a wall,/ Or as a moat defensive to a house/ Against the envy of less happier lands."


It's time we grew out of it.  

 We didn't "win the war" single-handedly, certainly haven't done all that well economically since, and plenty of "less happier lands" are making a far better fist of dealing with the coronavirus that we are.

There are plenty of other rousing tunes:  "Men of Harlech" for the Welsh, "Scotland the Brave" for the Scots,  "Ilkla Moor Bah't at" for Yorkshire (though that's not good to sing along with: too great a range). 

 And of course, Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" to the words of the EU anthem

It's said  that, at an event in honour of Lord Beaverbrook, then owner of the Daily Express with its  Empire Crusader on the masthead, when guests were invited to sing LOHAG most journalists present knew only the parodied version, some say written by the conservative politician R A Butler, which began:


Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free;

Keep in voting Tory till eternity.

I don't know if there was any more

I've tried to put together an up-to-date parody and got as far as:


Land of hopeless Tories,

Governing by their seats:

World beaters at U-turns

And ignominious retreats.

There my muse, such as it it, gets stuck. If any of them read this, I invite the authors of Yorkshire's Remain Voice Choir's lyrics  to have a go: they're far more gifted than I am.




12 comments:

  1. According to an article in today's Guardian by Nesrine Malik the "plot " to drop "Land of Hope and Glory" (LOHAG) et al from the Last Night of the Proms was a piece of "fake news" created by right-wing propagandist to stir up among their followers the idea that our "glorious heritage" was under threat from we woke liberals and Liberals

    Did they also bribe the executive producer of Songs of Praise to put this on the Tweeter then?

    https://twitter.com/catrionalewis/status/1298150530418704385

    The idea that the BBC is full of exactly the kind of patriotism-hating intellectuals that Orwell wrote about, who would if they could get rid of anything which showed a shred of pride in Britain or its history, is pretty clearly not made up by anyone on the right; it just is the case, as that executive producer exemplifies.

    (The Guardian's story doesn't hold water, either: it claims that 'There will be an orchestral version online this year because there’s a pandemic on, and there will be no audience to sing along', but apparently there will be other sung pieces during the evening, so there was clearly nothing stopping them having a version with a solo singer — except that they don't like the words.)

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  2. Thanks for the link. I'm not a regular Twitter user but it's interesting to read the different opinions: some better informed than others, but we each believe our own.

    Orwell was not the first to criticise the unpatriotic: W S Gilbert got there in the 19th century, with Koko's "little list" which included:

    "The idiot who praises with enthusiastic tone
    Every century but this and every country but his own."

    Criticism of one's country's actions does not make us unpatriotic. You're not surely proud, for example, of the Amritsar Massacre or the failure to deal with the Irish Famine? A mature and confident country is one prepared to take a realistic and honest view of both its past and its present.

    I suggest you read John Kampfner's "Why the Germans do it Better", subtitled "Notes from a grown-up country." By contrast our own government's behaviour is more akin to that of an egocentric infant throwing its toys out of its pram.

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    Replies
    1. Criticism of one's country's actions does not make us unpatriotic.

      No, but ridiculous comparisons to the Holocaust absolutely do.

      I am proud, for example, of the Royal Navy's campaign against slavery. I think that's something we can legitimately be proud of. But try saying that to the kind of people who staff the BBC, and all you'll get back is things like, 'you don't get to be proud of stopping slavery when you invented the trans-Atlantic slave trade' (we didn't, by the way, that was the Portugese).

      Anyway, the point was not to get into an argument about the rights and wrong of patriotism, or what patriotism constitutes, but simply to demonstrate that the idea that the BBC is staffed almost entirely by people who are fundamentally anti-patriotic and regard any pride in any aspects of Britain or its history as at best in bad taste and at worst dangerous proto-fascism is not '"fake news" created by right-wing propagandist[s]' but is simply the truth.

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    2. What an extraordinary statement that last sentence is. The BBC has a word-wide reputation for impartiality. Of course nobody can please everyone is such a situation, and, if anything the BBC is biassed towards the "establishment" with an excess of deference to Labour when in power as well as to the Tory governments. Maybe the would defer to we liberal Democrats if ever we were in power, rather than ignoring us as they (almost) do at the moment.

      I suspect your strong statement is actually an example of the "fake views" that the original post is trying to highlight, (and that you know that very well.)

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    3. Oh look. The pandemic must have ended.

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-53998584

      Or… maybe the was never the reason.

      The BBC has a word-wide reputation for impartiality

      Among people who agree with its world-view, yes, it does. But that's not hard.

      And to be fair it's not deliberate propaganda like Pravda or something. It's… what do they call it… unconscious bias. They just never meet anyone who thinks differently to them.

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  3. Thanks for yet another link. To me it's a sh me they've U-turned but, as I said they tend to be pro the current establishment, and that's currently headed by Johnson

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  4. as I said they tend to be pro the current establishment

    You've clearly never seen or heard any of what passed for their 'satire' programmes, then. Or seen Emily Maitlis's rant, for which she actually had to apologise as it was so blatantly anti-government (but that nobody working on the programme had seen the problem with before it was broadcast).

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  5. I didn't hear Maitlis's "rant" but by all accounts I've heard it could be classed as fair comment.

    As for satire, It says in today's paper that they do try to find right wing comedians but they tend to be not very good.

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    Replies
    1. I didn't hear Maitlis's "rant" but by all accounts I've heard it could be classed as fair comment.


      Well, you would think that: you agree with it. Which is exactly the problem in a nutshell.

      As for satire, It says in today's paper that they do try to find right wing comedians but they tend to be not very good.

      Funny, not being very good doesn't seem to hold back left-wing comedians. Discrimination?

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  6. It depends on what you find funny: Ken Dodd's "Let's bomb Russia" at a Tory Party rally?

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    1. It depends on what you find funny: Ken Dodd's "Let's bomb Russia" at a Tory Party rally?

      Ken Dodd was pretty funny, yes. I bet if they put repeats of Ken Dodd on the BBC it would get higher ratings than just about any comedy the Corporation has made in the last ten years.

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    2. Or Bob Monkhouse, for that matter.

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