The Welsh Sports Minister, Rhodri Glyn Thomas (Plaid Cymru), wants “common sense” to prevail so that the Welsh national anthem can be played alongside God Save The Queen when Cardiff City play in the FA Cup final.

In the absence of an English Sports Minister to call for an English anthem, common sense comes in the form of Cardiff City supporter Gwyn Davies:

“There’s no prouder Welshman than me but this is not the time and the place.

“It’s not Wales v England, it’s two teams in the English FA Cup final”.

Presumably both sets of fans will join together in singing Abide with Me.

Wayne Rooney has been criticised by Bob Peedle, Vice Chairman for Royal Society of St George, for not singing the British national anthem:

“The England footballer does not show the patriotism that I see from other players.

“I can only assume that he does not know the words to the anthem and is just not prepared to learn them.<

“He just stands there stern faced. He sticks-out like a saw thumb and he is setting a bad example to the young people who idolise him.

“In America, every morning in school assembly they stand with the hand on their hearts and sing their anthem, The Star Spangled Banner.

“It is about time we started doing that in this country and then people like Wayne Rooney would know the anthem as second nature.

“I imagine Rooney has never been taught the words and does not know their significance.

“He can’t be embarrassed about his singing voice. He could take a leaf out of the book of the England Rugby team who really sing the anthem with a passion.

“He should learn the anthem and not just because he represents English football but because it is the duty of every Englishman to sing the anthem.

“I’d like to see him know the word of God Save The Queen by St George’s day and I would be very happy to teach him.”

Meanwhile the Dean of Southwark Cathederal has banned the hymn Jerusalem for being ‘too nationalistic’. If Wayne Rooney and the lads sang it instead of remaining silent during God Save the Queen I might well agree.

Astonishingly the Telegraph informs us that Jerusalem is the favourite hymn of Gordon Brown.

Alfie managed to ask James Purnell, Culture Secretary for England, the following question:

‘Can you ask Mr Purnell when England is going to be allowed her own National Anthem?
God Save the Queen is not the English Anthem, it is the British one – England doesn’t have one and it’s about time we did. I suggest ‘Jerusalem’.
Scotland and Wales have their own anthems – and it is plainly bizarre to hear the Welsh and the Scots booing ‘God Save the Queen’ as the anthems are played prior to England playing them in the 6 nations tournament.
Mr Purnell is the culture secretary for England – he should start to champion our country by promoting our culture. Our own unique national anthem would be a start’.

You can read his pathetic reply here.

Writing in the Sunday Times Jeremy Clarkson muses over the state of the nation:

I looked at our players mumbling their way through the national anthem and realised they didn’t really care about playing for England. Because they don’t really know what England is. And truth be told, neither do I….
This is the only country in the world where the national flag is deemed offensive. Small wonder the England players were disinclined to sing the national anthem with any gusto. It’s in English and that’s offensive too.

I recently received some interesting feedback via our contact form:

How can you use quotes from that communist lackey Billy Bragg, it is him and his ilk that have managed to bring England to the sad and sorry state it is at the moment, and quotes from the Daily Mirror, mouthpiece of New Labour who sold us out to Europe and allowed our Parliament to be constantly over ruled by a group of un-elected European federalists. Shame on you.

Andy, some of my best friends are communist lackeys and EU-federalists.

Actually I don’t know any but as it happens I did just read Billy Bragg’s new book ‘The Progressive Patriot’. In it Billy writes:

There is a simple reason why so many ordinary people have recently turned to the St George’s Cross as a means of displaying their support for our national team. It’s the only thing we English have that belongs to us alone. Of the thirty-two countries that competed in the 2006 World Cup there was only one which didn’t have its own parliament or passports or national anthem: England.

Of these three it’s the last which rankles most. It’s been years since our Welsh and Scottish neighbours stopped singing the British national anthem, ‘God Save the Queen’, at sporting events. It didn’t take an Act of Parliament, or the United Kingdom to crumble or the monarchy to collapse, to make the change. When the Welsh sing ‘Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau’ they are sending out a message, and even if the language is unfamiliar, the meaning is clear: ‘Hello, we’re from Wales and we’re very proud of it.’ England’s continued attachment to the British national anthem smacks of a lack of self-confidence, a worry that, without it, we might somehow be a lesser people. The message sent out every time we sing ‘God Save the Queen’ is one of ambiguity: ‘Hello, we’re the English, but we’re not really sure what that means.’

Communist lackey or not he has a point. The Progressive Patriot is available from Billy Bragg’s website.

I do feel that things are changing for the better, but still, to anyone English, this passage from The Christian Science Monitor must serve as a damning indictment of lacklustre England:

There is no national dress, no national song. (The English footballers must sing the British anthem before matches.) The national day, April 23 – named for the patron saint of England, St. George – is an utter non-event compared with July 4 in the US, March 17 in Ireland, and July 14 in France. A decade ago, a World Cup run would have been feted with British Union jacks, not St. George flags.

Simon Lee, writing in the Yorkshire Post:

ENGLAND is a strange country, politically speaking.
If it was an independent nation-state, England’s population of 50 million and national income of £861bn in 2004 would make it both one of the largest member-states of the European Union and a prospective G8 member. Paradoxically, as the New Encyclopaedia Britannica acknowledges: “Constitutionally, England does not exist.” England and its political identity have been subsumed within and conflated with the institutions of the British state, symbolised by the playing of the British national anthem at England’s World Cup matches.

Is there any other country at the World Cup without its own national anthem? Is there any other country at the World Cup without its own parliament?

In the Leicester Mercury the Devil’s Advocate argues the case against God Save the Queen.

Dr Chris Harwood is a psychologist from Loughborough University. He knows all about the effects music can have on the sporting psyche.

“Music before a sporting event can play a part in getting the athletes and crowd ready for the game,” he says.

“God Save the Queen is – how can I say this – very consistent. The tempo and melody is the same throughout the song.”

What we need instead, suggests Dr Harwood, is something which rouses to a galvanising, stirring climax; something to fire you up.

What we want, he says, is a tune with a bold rhythm; a song with qualities that represent the toil of the forthcoming battle.

“I would agree that God Save the Queen, from a musical point of view, is not very inspiring,” he says.

“The tempo and melody are simply not very good. I would have thought Land of Hope and Glory and/or Jerusalem are lyrically more suitable and musically more inspiring.”

The Advocate concludes with a statement that is not so far away from the thinking behind this site.

Is it too much to ask that we drop this irrelevant, tuneless, dumb and offensive piece of music for something that actually works: a tune that represents England, all that’s great to be English – and something which gets the hairs on the back of your neck standing to attention when it’s given a public outing?

Everyone knows the Devil has the best tunes.

This Devil wouldn’t object to Jerusalem. That would do. Land of Hope and Glory? Yep, we’d settle for that, too.

We’d even swap it for Don’t Stop Me Now, by Queen, or Gercha, by those stalwarts of Englishness, Chas and Dave. It can’t be any worse than what we have at the minute.

But we have to move quickly. There’s a World Cup looming. And if we’re stuck with this dreadful old dog of a song, then God Save The Team.

In 2002 the Isle of Man’s Tynwald gave Land Of Our Birth official status as the island’s national anthem. The story was largely ignored by the UK media but Glasgow’s Daily Record felt the story deserved two lines, a month after the event:

Manx anthem
The Isle of Man has replaced God Save The Queen with its own anthem, Land Of Our Birth. But they will still play the national anthem whenever the monarch visits.

Yes, it’s really that easy. God Save the Queen has no official status, so if you don’t like it change it. The Australians did so in 1974, on the basis of a public opinion poll (Encyclopedia of Australia):

In April 1974 the Whitlam Labor Government announced that, as a result of a public opinion poll, the Australian national anthem would be changed from God Save the Queen to Advance Australia Fair. God Save the Queen had been the official anthem since Federation in 1901. God Save the Queen would still be used on certain occasions to honour the Queen. The new anthem was considered more appropriate as Australia’s ties with Britain weakened. A suggestion to make Waltzing Matilda the national anthem was rejected, although Waltzing Matilda is recognised as a symbol of Australia and is often regarded as an unofficial anthem.

by The Monarchist

As a Canadian supporter of our shared British Commonwealth Monarchy, I am strongly opposed to a future England formally adopting God Save The Queen as its national anthem. GSTQ is not the chattels of any particular British nation or Commonwealth country, but the historic and patriotic property of every one of Her Majesty’s loyal subjects, wherever they might live in her 16 remaining sovereign realms. The Royal Anthem belongs to not just Britain, but to all of us, even if relegated to constitutionally nominal and nostalgic pretenses.

The recent kafuffle over the playing of GSTQ in Australia during our Queen’s official opening of the Melbourne Commonwealth Games was a fresh case in point, which perfectly illustrated just how confused and out of touch we have become over the roots of our common identity. Many Australians now apparently believe that their royal and national anthems cannot co-exist, that there is a contradiction in the traditional dual allegiance we pay to Crown and Country, presumably because the Royal Anthem is also used unofficially (and unfortunately) as the national hymn of the United Kingdom. We are not British they tell themselves, we are Aussie. Advance Australia Fair should take precedence in Australia, even over that of the anthem of the Queen of Australia! It’s all so wonderfully misunderstood.

The incident highlights the need for reform and statutory recognition: The need for Britain to denationalise GSTQ and adopt it in its proper royal context; the need for England to shed its quango state image and formally adopt a national anthem like Scotland and Wales; and the need to recognize an ever increasing important reality – that our once shared and still receding Britishness has been, and is being, supplanted by a deeper fealty and affection and native attachment to our respective nations and lands.

Now I don’t believe in a rabid nationalism – the heart that beats to the nationalist drum can be repulsive and partly savage. But I do believe in a proud, gentile and emblematic attachment to country and an equally symbiotic and patriotic connection to crown, as a lasting, indeed permanent, symbol of our collective identity. We should embrace the bonds that bind without sacrificing our shared institutions. The best way to do this, in my outside humble opinion, is to officially recognize the existence of England in a federal Britain; a federal Britain that is outside Europe and firmly inside the Commonwealth. For the real tragedy is not whether Britain loses its Britishness (its national identity), but whether it loses its britishness (its cultural identity).

As for England’s national anthem, that is for England to decide. I may be an Anglophile, but I am not English enough to be of any use in that department. Just keep your dirty palms off the Queen’s anthem. Oh, and stay well clear of Zadok The Priest. That one belongs to God.

By Theodore Goodridge Roberts

YE who reckon with England–
Ye who sweep the seas
Of the flag that Rodney nailed aloft
And Nelson flung to the breeze–
Count well your ships and your men,
Count well your horse and your guns,
For they who reckon with England
Must reckon with England’s sons.

Ye who would challenge England–
Ye who would break the might
Of the little isle in the foggy sea
And the lion-heart in the fight–
Count well your horse and your swords,
Weigh well your valour and guns,
For they who would ride against England
Must sabre her million sons.

Ye who would roll to warfare
Your hordes of peasants and slaves,
To crush the pride of an empire
And sink her fame in the waves–
Test well your blood and your mettle,
Count well your troops and your guns,
For they who battle with England
Must war with a Mother’s sons.