蜜芽传媒

God save the King was first performed at London鈥檚 Drury Lane theatre in response to the Jacobite victory at Prestonpans in 1745. Some versions of the song include the lines: 鈥渕ay He sedition hush, and like a torrent rush, Rebellious Scots to crush, God save the King.鈥� You can see why some would have a problem singing that.

The new England interim manager doesn鈥檛 sing the national anthem for different reasons 鈥� he says it disrupts his pre-match preparation. But with England playing again tonight, no doubt the questions on that one will continue.

Now personally, I鈥檓 a committed Royalist who鈥檚 more than happy to sing God Save the King, as we did in church on Sunday to mark the anniversary of King Charles鈥� accession to the throne.

But I also get why the constituent nations of the Union might also want a National Anthem of their own as well. The Scots have Flower of Scotland, the Welsh have Land of my Fathers, and the Northern Irish sometimes use Londonderry Air. But the English don鈥檛 really have even a semi-official one.

One candidate might be Jerusalem. 鈥淎nd did those feet in ancient time walk upon England鈥檚 mountains Green?鈥� Well, actually no, they didn鈥檛. But as with all things written by William Blake, we need to allow a high degree of poetic license. And the idea that an idealised Jerusalem, the heavenly city, might be builded here, among the dark Satanic mills, is for me, a rather beautiful evocation of peace and justice being make present in the place where I live, in England鈥檚 Green and Pleasant land.

But in a diverse multi-cultural country such as this - with believers and non-believers, royalists and republicans 鈥� I can see why some might have a problem with this too 鈥� indeed, any big story we tell about ourselves is probably going to upset someone.

Some years ago, Billy Connolly, jokingly suggested that we should use the theme tune of the Archers as our National Anthem. Or perhaps half-jokingly. You could argue that the advantage of having a national anthem without words might be that no one can be offended by it.

But my worry is that if we give up on the attempt to say something about who we are, who we want to be, then in the end we鈥檒l become little more than a collection of individuals.
And the whole point of a national anthem is to indicate that 鈥渨e鈥� is greater than 鈥淚鈥�. Indeed, the former chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks of blessed memory, and formerly of this parish on TFTD, would often say that the very essence of Biblical morality was the shift from 鈥淚鈥� to 鈥渨e鈥�.

And whether by reference to God, or the King, or some other aspect of our national story, that absolutely seems to me to be a valuable thing to sing about.

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