Should the Proms be stripped of its favourite vocals?
Orchestral versions of Rule Britannia! and Land Of Hope And Glory will be played at the famous Last Night of the Proms concert on September 12.
The BBC risked a fresh row after announcing that traditional favourites such as Land Of Hope And Glory will be performed without lyrics at the Proms.
The broadcaster revealed details of the Last Night after reports that anthems Rule Britannia! and Land Of Hope And Glory could face the axe over their perceived association with colonialism and slavery.
On Monday night, after Downing Street waded into the controversy, the BBC issued a statement saying Land Of Hope And Glory and Rule Britannia! will be performed at the Last Night Of The Proms, but without singing.
Father Marcus Walker, rector at Great St Bartholomew’s in London, wrote on Twitter: “Hilarious that people are dressing the BBC promising ‘orchestral versions’ of Land Of Hope And Glory and Rule Britannia as a retreat.
“It’s nothing of the sort, it’s gutting the songs of their words – of their meaning. You may think that’s a good thing or not, but it’s no retreat.”
The BBC said there had been “unjustified personal attacks” on social media on Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska, who will be at the helm of the Last Night this year.
“Decisions about the Proms are made by the BBC, in consultation with all artists involved,” it said.
There will be no live audience to sing along because of coronavirus restrictions.
The national anthem will be sung at the event, which will air on BBC Radio 3 and on BBC One and feature soprano Golda Schultz and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
The BBC said: “The Proms will reinvent the Last Night in this extraordinary year so that it respects the traditions and spirit of the event whilst adapting to very different circumstances at this moment in time.
“With much reduced musical forces and no live audience, the Proms will curate a concert that includes familiar, patriotic elements such as Jerusalem and the national anthem, and bring in new moments capturing the mood of this unique time, including You’ll Never Walk Alone, presenting a poignant and inclusive event for 2020.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called for an end to “self-recrimination and wetness” as the BBC’s chief said it was “right” to remove lyrics from some traditional anthems at the Last Night of the Proms.
The BBC’s director-general Lord Hall said the decision to perform new, orchestral versions of Rule, Britannia! and Land Of Hope And Glory was a “creative” one.
But he confirmed that the issue of dropping songs because of their association with Britain’s imperial history had been discussed.
His interview aired after the Prime Minister voiced his concern over the issue, saying he wanted to get his thoughts “off my chest”.
“But the PM previously has set out his position on like issues and has been clear that, while he understands the strong emotions involved in these discussions, we need to tackle the substance of problems, not the symbols.”
Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said that “confident, forward-looking nations don’t erase their history”.
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We don't tolerate swearing, and reserve the right to remove any posts which we feel may offend others... let's keep it friendly!
We’re getting too sensitive, we’re so frightened that we offend!
I expect that you think it's right to go on demonstrations
and smash thing up. just because you are offended.
Well, grow up and get a real life, the country isn't going to
stand still and wait for the likes of you to be unoffended!
.
And surely nobody this side of sanity believes that statues of those with connections to slavery were put up to celebrate that fact. Was the statue of Nelson Mandela in parliament Square erected to celebrate his acts of and encouragement of terrorism? Probably not...
Don't forget at one stage even Amnesty international wouldn't represent him - a fact conveniently forgotten by many who revere that individual.
Schoolchildren are being battered into submission to stay on message, to question the message is racist, backward or both. There is no room for free expression, no room for expressing concern or dislike for anything that makes one uncomfortable, unless it’s the leftists who have concerns.
You only have to objectively watch the BBC for a day or two to pick up the way things are going, its journalistic standards are increasingly on message. ITV isn’t much better, adverts are increasingly biased towards that which - it has to be said - not the norm.
I could go on, and be more blunt and to the point, but in today’s climate one has to be careful about how much to say. How sad and pathetic is that?
I’m not a racist, even saying that is perceived as the opposite by many, but I am getting fed up with being told that by having some of the views I have, by expressing certain opinions, that I am. I’m fed up with being told that I have ‘white privilege’...
Movements such as BLM, and the constant braying that everything is ‘institutionally racist’, the seemingly enforced and increased flow of non British culture and practices is divisive. It’s polarising our country and will only serve the extremists.
Feel free to call me whatever you like, racist, gammon, Islamophobe etc etc...but I know that I’m not. I just want to express my opinion, my right to free speech and air my frustrations with what is happening in our society today. I’m not a stranger in my own country yet (forget the fact that I live in Germany for the purpose of this rant) but I’ve never been so far removed from it, and I’m genuinely scared for the future.
Whew!
I travel (or did pre Covid) to London on a semi regular basis and have noted these past few years many changes and not just the obvious demographic ones. Changes that are slowly but surely erasing Britishness (for loss of a better word) for a way of life that is regulated by political correctness and conformity to the message.
You may disagree with what I say or feel, and of course that’s your prerogative, and you’re right, I haven’t been shouted down - on here at least.
However, I do contribute, if you will, to several other online forums, and it is revealing (and disappointing) at the scope of censorship some of them apply. In short it is a case of leftist liberal views and opinion good - non leftist views bad. Criticism, questioning and lampooning of British culture, institutions and dare I say it, even Christianity good, criticism, questioning and lampooning of minority culture, institutions and religion (one in particular) bad.
You may laugh at me, disagree with me, shake your head in despair at me - but the fascism of the left is very evident. One day we’ll all wake up in another country...and then it will be too late.
Please feel free to reply, I welcome your comments.
Your cause would be helped by less overstatement and less use of extreme and emotive language (e.g. "fascism of the left"), which serves only to turn people away from bothering to listen to what you have to say.
I could also say that many, many people agree with what I am saying, what I am trying to get over. Take the Brexit vote for example, that was a pointer if anything was, and those who voted for it are slurred by many politicians as little Englanders, racists, dinosaurs and so on and so forth.
I can take offence as well as the next person, but what I can’t take is this constant battering of my country, the guilt I am meant to feel for parts of our history and the fact that I am meant to keep quiet and just go along with it all for fear of being labelled.
I make no apology for using phrases such as the ‘fascism of the left’. It may be emotive, but it certainly isn’t extreme. It exists. Question what is fast becoming the norm, and you’re pilloried for it. Our children are being educated - if you can call it that - to be all accepting, and to question nothing that is perceived as sacred. I hate to say it, and you may again use the words ‘emotive’ and ‘extreme’, but there are distinct similarities with the policies of a certain long dead Austrian - children are being programmed.
Take the BBC News for instance, only the other day two items followed in quick succession, the first about the awful mosque attacks in New Zealand carried out by ‘a white supremacist’. The next item was about the Manchester Arena attack, which was ‘a terrori attack’...what kind of ‘terrorist’? Surely it isn’t a crime or racism to tell the uncomfortable truth, that it was an attack carried out by an Islamist? What can be wrong with reporting the whole truth? Why does it appear that some sections of our community are wrapped in political cotton wool? And that’s just one example.
You mention ‘we give little credence to those who sloganise and use extreme and emotive language to slur us’. Have you missed the mass coverage of the BLM ‘demonstrations’, the ‘extreme and emotive language (used) to slur us’?
Did you miss the anti Brexit demonstrations? Ignore comments made by the likes of David Lammy, Diane Abbott, Len McCluskey made in this last year? Two of those individuals could have been making UK government policy had Corbyn won the election, and the other one pulling Corbyn’s strings.
Did you miss comments made by Doreen Lawrence regarding the Grenfell fire? Comments regularly made on BBC’s QT (before Covid interrupted studio participation) about such emotive nonsense as ‘white privilege’?
As for the younger generation thinking for themselves, I really would question that. They think and make judgement calls on what they are told, what they are ‘hectored’ with and what they are told is ‘wrong’. They are being programmed, like it or not. Just google Glenthorne High School in Sutton, Surrey - ‘the school that tried to end racism’.
So if the Right is being, as you suggest, Shelfside, systematically suppressed, its a strange way to go about it.
And it matters not if I currently live in the UK or not - and you don’t know why I’m based in Germany either. My views are formed by seeing the way things are going, questioning without blind nodding dog obedience, both of which seem to be ‘right wing’ and not ‘considering (other) points of view’.
You again have proven that particular point too, if I disagree with your leftist way of thinking, then I’m wrong, I ‘hector’ and am blind. I’d suggest the opposite and say quite openly that it is you and those like you are the ones missing vision. Open your eyes, see what is happening for yourself and ignore the constant preaching that unless you conform you’re ‘right wing’ (so what?), a racist or just stuck in the past. They’re laughing at you.
Moving on to our young people, I pity them. They have to fit in, they cannot question why things are the way they are, they’re led by the nose by leftist, modern teaching and constant insistence on towing the party line.
Murdoch’s press reigning supreme? Not in the UK, where unless I’m mistaken his group own just two of the UK’s 10 or 11 daily newspapers, or less than 20%. Reach plc, owners of the left leaning ‘Daily Mirror’ own three, or just under 30%.
Moving on to the BBC and it’s appointment of a Conservative DG, well Tim Davie (who has been with the corporation since 2005) was a Conservative councillor in London back in the ‘90’s. Is that all you have?
Finally, you do yourself no favours with your comment about ‘patriotic ditties’ being ‘sung in all their imperialist glory’. That’s just embarrassingly cheap or embarrassingly ‘right on’. Not clever.
I for one have had enough.
I would suggest something rather different in that you have lost the argument. You cannot take retorts that call into question your overdosed on left-wing propaganda woke mind, and as such you reply with the all too common response you and your ilk arrogantly and ignorantly are so fond of.
Insult? Behave yourself!
Not all of us - young or old - are happy with ‘modern Britain’, we don’t all worship at the altar of a teenage Swede, take a knee with the thugs of BLM, wish to eradicate our past in favour of some airbrushed melting pot...we don’t all think our history is clothed in negativity or ‘white supremacy’ (as one on here has alluded to), we don’t all want to follow the message...
The way I see it - and have done since my university days - is that Britain is a great place to live in (as evidenced by the immigration figures, especially from the third world), but to live in it is to buy into it. Keep your culture, your beliefs and your nuances - but do not try and impose them on the country and the people you have chosen to live in/with.
Our country may have a shady past in many respects (which country does not?), but the past is another country. Let is stay that way.
Not sure of the meaning in this context.
Cop= Slang word for a police person.
Out= Extinguished, in error, away from the inside.
Is it perhaps from the German word Kaputt= broken, finished ?
As Angela Merkel herself said back in 2010, ‘...the multicultural approach has failed, utterly failed’. She also said the idea of people from different cultural backgrounds living happily ‘side by side’ did not work.
How she could go back on her words just a few years ago is truly staggering.
Let's grow up and face the reality of now and stop looking backwards to the "glory" years of Empire.
It is over!
I find it pathetic.
We are a middle-sized European nation, who, until recently, punched above our weight.
Let's get back to making this a decent country to live in now, rather than hark back to the days of privilege, dominance and slavery.
Whilst I deplore racism, sexism, homophobia and any type of prejudice, I'm concerned that history is not re-written or obliterated. We live in more enlightened times and should use our history to ensure that the mistakes of the past are not repeated.
Patronising BBC says we can all sing along at home.
A small victory at least.
At the same time that the indigenous people of Africa were being sold to white slave owners, little boys were being shoved up chimneys in this country, women were being married off to men they didn't know, little girls were being put into service in houses or on the land. Romany Gypsies, although they travelled from farm to farm doing essential seasonal work, were being vilified, all in slavery of one sort or another. In the West Country there were more white men and women taken from the coast to be slaves in North Africa than there were Black slaves in the same district. Now in our times, if you are black, white yellow or sky blue pink, you get free health service, free education, social services and support. What are all these people griping about? I no longer know if I can say in a description, he was black! I cannot wear my hair in tight curls in case I am accused of racial misappropriation! Much of this rubbish is pushed at us by the BBC, which we have to pay for! Something wrong there I think! I will not be tuning in to the Last Night of the Proms for the first time in many years. Shame on you BBC
On the other hand, Proms attendees could just sing along whether or not the orchestra is "instructed" to stop playing, if indeed they have the guts..
I for one am proud to be an Englishman as are Scots, to be Scots and Welsh and Irish etc and anybody else that whats to be proud (I'm sure someone will pick holes in that statement) but I am also of the opinion that if people don't like it here they have 2 options .... shut up or move on . History cant be changed whether people like it or not. How dare people with minority thoughts dictate to the majority and end up winning.
If this was the norm when we have an election the majority party would be in opposition
But presumably the Corporation is run by intelligent people? How could they get it all so wrong?
In their eyes they have not. It's hard for us to conceive how insular the North London politics and media "elite" are. They clearly believe they are right, the rest of the country is wrong, and needs to be educated. They despise the ageing population they rely upon for for their funding.
A few years ago I would have laughed at the idea of a Marxist/Communist plot to overthrow our country. But after the rise of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonald, and our close escape from disaster in the election, I realised things had definitely changed. I found a good explanation of how subversive plots work in one of Akkad Daily's videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWEmvQmndI8
It is very familiar. A twenty year plan to infiltrate the education system and shape the minds of children and young people. The demoralising of the population, spreading doubt and distrust of it's institutions, e.g. the police.
The closing down of free speech.
It's not a secret, and unfortunately it's not paranoia.
Defunding the BBC would be a great start, but we'll probably continue to pay for it through income tax rather than the licence. The younger generation would have eventually refused to shell out for something they never use.
Well, adapt or die they say. Long live the comrades!
Will they be out with the mobs to remove statues of W W ?? Don't really know on that one as they are determined to cause controvasy on any subject they feel could cause maximum trouble .
These athems are part of britush tradition
I am not responsible for what my ancestors did
But we need to remember them so it does nothappen again
As a nation we now accept that what happened was wrong but to ban music for its perceived association to slavery is ridiculous
Also a Royalist and would dread the thought of a President Blair, Cameron or anyone else of that ilk.
However........ I have always disagreed with "God Save the Queen" being the English National Anthem. The 'NATIONAL' anthem should reflect the country and not a person. GSTQ - in my humble opinion - should only be played when Her Majesty is present.
There should have been a public survey for the English to choose their own National Anthem donkeys years ago. " I VOW TO THEE MY COUNTRY " maybe !!!!!
Rule Brittania and Land of Hope & Glory should be used as battle songs against today’s forms of slavery.
I, for one, will not watch Last Night at the Proms if our favourite and patriotic final songs are not played.
BLM has been hijacked by a bunch of leftist activists who play the race and slave card at every opportunity. Even they cannot pinpoint actual events in history accurately.
Yet, we bend over like masochists, to receive a caning from them, wearing our guilt like sackcoloth.
Why??
Slavery and abuse of humans is thousands of years old, and is still being perpetrated today, it is not the property of black slaves ancestors alone.
God forbid all races, including white races rise up to decry their slavery and ban everything, pull down every damn statue and airbrush our history out of existence.
When and where is it going to stop? Do we now remove Elgar and Vera Lynn's headstone??
No more apologising,..BLM message has been delivered, understood and we are reminded of the horrors of the past, now let it go.!
As far as I'm concerned, as the descendant of European migrants, one either accepts Great Britain - not the UK - and all its strengths and weaknesses or one departs these shores for a paradise in one's own image. Preferably as far from these shore as it is possible to get.
It will serve this nation ill to give in to pressures from outside. A sovereign people must evolve steadily and naturally; be held accountable for mistakes while glorying in successes.
The Proms are but a visible symptom of outside interference which the BBC has embraced royally. Their management is as treacherous to Great Britain as Lord Haw Haw. That traitor was not paid by enforced public subscription and the bullying of over 75's.
Recalling the Carry On films, one had a title befitting what ought to be our national stance today: Carry On Regardless.
When the world sees the Emperor has no clothes, they will be as mad as hell.
You say you are from immigrant stock?
If you look at the population of these Isles going back hundreds or maybe thousands of years, we are all pretty much made up of immigrants from countries around the world. We would be quite happy to live with our differences if it were not for the media whipping up a devisive onslaught.
Once again I say,.. look behind the curtain to see what is really going on in the "theatre of distraction"
While we are kept busy with the daily show of disaster, plague and rioting, plans are being put into place. When the majority of the population wake up, it will be too late to change what most of us will be horrified by.
The demise of fiat money, Bitcoin and other digital currencies will remove our privacy and freedoms
They will be able to track EVERYTHING you do.
The RFID chip is next.
Mass enforced immunisation with an untried vaccine that could have serious repercussions. Prophylactic interventions have not worked in the past due to a clever virus whose sole survival instinct is to mutate.
Anyway, the row about singing age-old lyrics at the Proms is yet another smokescreen.