Proms row: Johnson calls for end to 'cringing embarrassment' over UK history
Boris Johnson has said the UK should stop “our cringing embarrassment about our history” and sing Rule, Britannia! at the Last Night of the Proms, as BBC insiders fear the broadcaster is being dragged into a divisive culture war issue designed to undermine it.
“If it is correct, which I cannot believe that it really is, but if it is correct, that the BBC is saying that they will not sing the words of Land Of Hope And Glory or Rule, Britannia! as they traditionally do at the end of The Last Night of The Proms,” said the prime minister, “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 row was prompted by a report in the Sunday Times that Rule, Britannia!
and Land of Hope And Glory could be dropped completely from the line-up of the annual classical music event, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests because of concerns about their strong association with imperialism and the lyric “Britons never shall be slaves”.
Amid the backlash, the BBC took the rare step of confirming the planned running order for Last Night of the Proms on Monday, showing that both works would be included in the lineup, albeit in instrumental form and without lyrics. Other patriotic songs, such as Jerusalem and the national anthem, will still be sung in full.
The confirmation that the patriotic songs would be performed in a different form was not enough to satisfy many of BBC’s critics.
Rightwing newspapers seized on the story, which made the front pages
of the Daily Telegraph, Daily Express, Daily Mail, and Sun – with the latter running the story under the headline “Land of woke and glory”.
There is deep concern within the BBC at the abuse targeted at guest conductor Dalia Stasevska, who received tens of thousands of abusive messages of Twitter after it was suggested she was considering dropping Rule, Britannia!
The BBC had insisted that changes to the music were driven by artistic decisions due to physical distancing restrictions limiting the number of musicians who could be present at the Royal Albert Hall.
The lack of an audience waving union flags and singing along gave the Finnish conductor Stasevska a chance to reconsider how the works are performed and the decision was taken to perform the works as instrumentals – as they were in 1905 – rather than attempt singalong anthems without an audience.
The Last Night Of the Proms’ pageantry has given it a symbolic place in the UK’s culture and attracts healthy, though not spectacular, viewing figures. Ratings provided by overnights.tv show that last year’s finale was watched by 3.5 million viewers on BBC One, with three-fifths of those watching aged 65 and over.
The outgoing BBC director general, Tony Hall, said he expected the lyrics to Rule, Britannia! would once again be sung next year: “It’s very, very hard in an Albert Hall that takes over 5,000 people to have the atmosphere of the Last Night of the Proms and to have things where the whole audience normally sing along. It’s quite hard creatively, artistically to make that work.”