Britain’s national anthem has inspired the name of the Lutetian villain Navishtrix in the English edition of Asterix and the Golden Sickle. It’s hard to come up with any greater cultural distinction for God Save the Queen, combining as it does a plodding melody and bombastic lyrics. For this reason if for no other, proposals by the Labour MP Toby Perkins to replace it with a specifically English anthem to be sung at sporting events deserve serious consideration.
Mr Perkins will present a bill for second reading to parliament today to advance this idea. It is in no sense disrespectful to the Queen to recognise both the artistic limitations and the inappropriateness of the national anthem for English sports teams. Scotland’s rugby and football teams sing Flower of Scotland, a celebration of their victory at Bannockburn. Their Welsh counterparts sing the rousing Land of My Fathers. The French hammer out the Marseillaise with blood-curdling lyrics against counter-revolution. The Italians have the uplifting Inno di Mameli with exhortations to death. All this is useful before a rugby match, which is another form of brutal conflict. The British national anthem belongs to the constituent nations of the United Kingdom. England should find its own rather than appropriate what belongs to all. The organisations that run the England rugby and football teams want to retain the status quo, but it should really be up to the supporters of the sporting teams. Hence it is entirely proper for the bill to propose a public consultation to settle on an English anthem.
So far, suggested candidates include Jerusalem,Land of Hope and Glory,There’ll Always be an England and I Vow to Thee, My Country. All have an essential advantage over the dirge-like national anthem: they can be sung. They can, indeed, be belted out by players and crowds.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Conservative MP and an opponent of Mr Perkins’s bill, has asked rhetorically: “What greater pleasure can there be for a true-born Englishman or true-born Englishwoman to listen to our own national anthem?” It is perfectly possible to share Mr Rees-Moggs’s patriotism while doubting that anyone feels a rush of blood when hearing God Save the Queen.
Two of the candidates to replace it have the additional merit that most people know the words. The lyrics of Land of Hope and Glory are famous from the Last Night of the Proms. They were written by AC Benson to the tune of Pomp and Circumstance March No 1, composed by Sir Edward Elgar. The centrality of these words and music to the English soul was demonstrated a few years ago when Proms audiences were outraged at a mere rumour that a conductor proposed to perform the piece without the customary lush vibrato.
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The words of Jerusalem by William Blake imagined the journey of Jesus of Nazareth as a child with Joseph of Arimathea to the hills of Glastonbury. Though the poem takes the form of a series of magnificently implausible speculative hypotheses about ancient history, it is undeniably stirring. It was set to music by Sir Hubert Parry to become a patriotic hymn in the First World War.
No one could interpret Jerusalem as anything but a celebration of English eccentricity through the medium of invented history. It is the most fitting choice to rouse the crowds and propel the quest for sporting triumph of England’s national teams.