BBC Radio 4 2016-02-06

BBC Radio 4 2016-02-06

Good Morning,

It’s the start of the 6-Nations rugby tournament and throughout these lands people will be digging out their team colours, dusting off their sense of national identity and arguing about who’s got the best chance of winning (Wales, of course). For rugby fans the 6-Nations is part of the rhythm of the year, getting them through the short, dull days of late winter, the banter between fans generating a bit of extra heat at weekends. The singing of your country’s anthem, as though your life depends on it, getting the blood and passions flowing.

Some think that a well-sung anthem is worth a 7-point head-start to the home side. When I was growing up this was more like 14 points if you were Welsh because the they already had the best anthem, the best singers and – back then – the best players playing in the best stadium. And that was before they put in a retractable roof so that God could watch. That said, being an English-speaking Welsh boy I had to learn the anthem using the memory prompt of ‘A hen laid a haddock on oily old me.’ An image that has, over the years, reinforced my belief that anthems are both wonderful and absurd.

Indeed, all six of the anthems sung this weekend contain elements of the sublime and the ridiculous. They are by turns sentimental, militaristic, hubristic, fanciful and down right cut throat. The Welsh anthem claims we are ‘a land of poets and singers’ (fair dos) but ‘a people of great stature’? That’s a stretch unless you’re Alan-Wyn Jones. The Scots sing a song, composed in 1967, about sending an invader homeward to think again, that invader being the English army in 1314. The brilliant but unhinged French anthem has pedigree but don’t dwell too long on the sentiments. The Irish, admirably seeking to cross national lines, sing an anthem that sounds like it was hastily composed in a pub. Meanwhile, some English, claiming they don’t have their own anthem because they have to share it with the rest of the UK, want to replace God Save the Queen with Jerusalem.

Mo matter. Nae bother. De rien. Non importa! If the English want to sing Jerusalem, let them. It’s got a banging tune by Parry and great words by Blake. No one will mind that this piece of Christian eschatology both satirises English nationalism - indeed all nationalism – whilst envisaging a future where national boundaries no longer matter. It’s a spiritual vision that’s worth hoping for.

But, whilst we wait for the fulfilment of this ideal, it’s fine – and healthy - to sing an anthem wholeheartedly whilst secretly thinking it a load of twaddle. Or praise your nation’s virtues whilst knowing its limitations. These anthems are glorious bits of cheerleading, not war cries. They prove a shared heritage as much as nationalistic difference. And I’d argue that most people singing their anthems so fervently this weekend already know this.

As for the rugby: feed me till I want no more.