Singing everybody’s song
After the huge fuss that was made in the media about Scottish and Welsh football players not singing “God Save The Queen” during their opening games at the Olympics, we were a bit surprised to find nobody mentioning the issue after their second matches. Even a Twitter enquiry unusually failed to produce a single person who knew if they had or not, and we eventually had to go and watch the recording of Great Britain vs the United Arab Emirates on iPlayer to find out.
As it turned out, the five Welsh players in the starting 11 had stayed resolutely silent while their English comrades on the field and in the technical area all strenuously implored God to intervene in the fate of the monarch. “Again the Welsh boys in the side chose not to sing the anthem, it’s not the national anthem of Wales of course”, said the BBC’s commentator Jonathan Pearce, having seemingly failed to notice that Wales was not one of the countries taking part in the competition.
This blog isn’t a fan of footballers (or rugby players or anyone else) singing national anthems before games anyway. There are few things less patriotically inspiring than hearing a load of tone-deaf sportsmen butcher a song like a rag-bag of badly-treated dogs from an animal-rescue centre, and whichever idiot first thought it’d be a good idea to go down the line with a microphone as well as a camera while anthems were being sung needs a good kicking in our opinion.
And in the case of the UK specifically, we couldn’t blame anyone for not wanting to sing what is beyond sensible dispute one of the world’s worst national anthems. “God Save The Queen” is a miserable downbeat dirge of a tune, and the lyrics don’t even mention the country until passingly in verse five, instead focusing on preserving the hereditary feudal privilege of our notional ruler.
We’d much rather all players stood in silence during anthems, for both general aesthetic reasons and for UK-specific political and religious ones. Not everyone supports the monarchy, and we see no benefit in causing division among your own team before the game’s even started by forcing a republican centre-half or left-winger to grudgingly mumble a paean of praise to someone he/she wishes didn’t exist.
Similarly, not everyone believes in God, so some players are being asked to pray to something they don’t believe in to preserve something they want to abolish. And this is supposed to motivate them?
That said, the Mail et al do have something of a valid point with their criticisms of Ryan Giggs, Craig Bellamy, Kim Little and the rest. While in football there can be sanctions levelled against players who refuse to turn out for their national side, such rules don’t apply to the Great Britain team. The Welsh, Irish and Scottish players picked for the two squads could all have declined the opportunity – and indeed were actively urged to do so by their respective national associations – but all decided of their own free will that they felt British and wanted to play for Britain.
As such, it seems rude and churlish not to sing the official British anthem your team-mates and fellow British nationals are singing. If you’ve decided you’re British, suck it up and sing Britain’s song. If you’re NOT British but are instead claiming Scottish, Welsh or Irish as your nationality, then you’ve plainly got no business in the Great Britain national team in the first place, because it’s not your nation.
There’s an easy, logical and obvious solution to the problem, of course. The only reason there’s an issue with “God Save The Queen” as the British national anthem is that the English insist on also adopting it as their own individual anthem in those sports where the constituent parts of the UK are represented individually. It is, if you think about it for a moment, an extremely arrogant choice.
It sends out the message that England and the UK are one and the same, and that the England team is representing the other three nations whether they like it or not. It’s a colonial, imperialist assertion of ownership and supremacy, even before you consider the explicitly anti-Scottish sixth verse. By not choosing a separate anthem for England, the sporting authorities put “British” players in a position whereby it’s inevitable that they’ll be seen as traitors to their own country, by both sides.
(And with some justification – if Ryan Giggs was seen singing “God Save The Queen” at the Olympics, and then England faced Wales in a World Cup or European Championship qualifier, how would it look if he stood there in a red shirt while 80,000 Welshmen in the Millennium Stadium booed the very anthem he’d been singing only a few months before? He’d appear to be a fifth columnist, a spy in the ranks.)
If the Daily Mail wants British sportsmen and sportswomen to sing the British national anthem then it ought to be running a campaign to get England its own, instead of presumptuously commandeering one that it has no right to use. The great museums of the Olympic host city might be full of the spoils of centuries of crime, but you can’t just help yourself to other countries’ anthems.
Shut it” Jimbo” before you start your Unionist diatribe.
There was an interesting article on the Guardian recently asking for suggestions for a non-offensive national anthem for UK sporting events. Someone suggested ‘The Hokey Cokey’, which I thought was a brilliant idea. Not only is it a catchy tune, but it’d be the only anthem which included pomposity-bursting silly movements. Straight-laced sporting events and international relations would benefit enormously from such self-deprecating piss-taking.
Couldn’t agree with you more, Colin:
link to wingsland.podgamer.com
‘It sends out the message that England and the UK are one and the same’
Let’s face it, that really is what a lot of English people implicitly believe. It’s not even that they consider England the dominant nation within the UK (unarguable anyway), but that in fact Brtitishness is a subset of Englishness, and the other nations within the UK are being generously allowed to claim a little bit of watery Englishness by calling themselves British.
GSTQ is so mind numbingly boring AND offensive to us Scots,We should have a national anthem thats upbeat and projects us as an advancing nation!
One example is the Italian Anthem”il canto degli italiani”(the chant of the italians )they get it right and its a cracking piece of music
@Restlessnative1320 says:
Shut it ”Jimbo” before you start your Unionist diatribe.
Ahahaha!
If they don’t feel part enough of the country to sing the national anthem what are they doing in the team? Silence seems to be some sort of salve to their consciences. We’re playing but we’re not singing.
The real hero of Scottish Women’s football is Julie Fleeting who ruled herself out of the British team in June 2011.
She said:
“Obviously the Olympics is a fantastic stage but I am Scottish through and through. It might mean our girls would not have the opportunity to play for the national team in the future because some of us went to play for Team GB. That’s not a risk any of us are willing to take.”
I see there was an entrant in opening ceremony parade called “Independent Olympic Athletes” consisting of four people. I wonder if one from Scotland could of competed under this? This I would enter under. Not Team GB.
Rev Stu – Just to say I’ve been following your blog for a while now and think it’s great.
For a Scots national anthem – I propose this classic:
link to youtube.com
Oh, and just for the record – I’m not a Celtic supporter.
Would love to see one of the Scotts taking their tune to this verse would be a bit akward to say the least.
Lord grant that Marshal WadeMay by thy mighty aidVictory bring.May he sedition hush,And like a torrent rush,Rebellious Scots to crush!God save the Queen!*
Please write more about The Olympics. It’s a lot more interesting thsn Rangers. I’ve been horrified to discover that the sight of the Union Jack, which normally fill me with loathing and anger, has stopped affecting me so much because I’m seeing it so often. I think this is a form of brainwashing. So far however I have been quite unable to cheer on Team GB. It’s just not my team. 2 more weeks to go though – anything could happen! Good point from Tyran about the Independent Athletes. Where were we then?
There is a variant of the words of Land of Hope and Glory, which was actually approved by Edward Elgar. (Legend has it that he disapproved very much of the “wider still and wider” bit.)
I may not have this quite right, because it’s hard to track these words down. They were however performed at a recent Prom concert by a solo soprano, and indeed my recollection is that this (from memory) isn’t quite right. But it’s close.
Land of hope and glory,
Mother of the free,
How shall we extol thee,
Who were born of thee?
Truth and right and freedom.
Each a holy gem,
Stars of royal brightness,
For thy diadem.
What’s wrong with that? Cracking tune. And the words are a lot more suitable than all that Jerusalem malarkey.
I know what you mean, Shirley. I’m seeing it plastered everywhere every supermarket has “GO TEAM GB” and union flags or posters with the iconagraphy, newspapers telling you how it’s “good to be British”, packaging on food and other goods with the same sort of symbols and messages, etc. All we need is for everyone to start putting up a painting on the wall of Dear Leader and there will be old communist refugees having flashbacks.
Although Rev. Stu was right in that this the year for British propaganda and their high point. Total saturation. Depiste that huge boon for the unionist side we’ve held onto the core of the independence vote and the SNP fared well in the elections. How will things work out in 2013 on a more level playing field when the shine has worn off and the plastic tat and union flags are put away once again? Then on 2014 things – at least on the face of it – look to be more on the Scottish/independence side of things rather than the British/union one.
Have any of the players who did not sing actually provided a reason for not singing? We are assuming they are anti monarchy, anti religion or anti Britain, but maybe they’re just crap singers. Or maybe they don’t know the words.
And TYRAN, yes, I spotted that and had the same thoughts. I wonder what thier anthem is…. I think that team is to do with countries that are at War rather than those on eiter side of politcal disputes, so we might need to declare war on England before we could get in.
And Appleby, my local supermarket had one of those “Go Team GB” signs. Underneath it is another sign which says “And don’t come back.”
And Appleby, my local supermarket had one of those “Go Team GB” signs. Underneath it is another sign which says “And don’t come back.”
Fantastic!
The upside of all the union jackery nonsense we are having pushed this year, is that by 2014, it will seem dated, and will be no longer ‘fashionable.
As a point, I refuse to purchase anything with a union jack on it. The marketers of course don’t know that people choose to do such a thing, but I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. I regard all this union jackery as an imposed culture, and it has no place in Scotland.
Maybe we need to all stop being so quiet about it, and express our views to shops and other businesses indulging this nonsense, otherwise we might find that it becomes the ‘accepted’ norm.
This blog really is tackling the big important issues that matter to people in Scotland like the economy, nhs & jobs?
I’m sure everyone in Scotland’s first thoughts right now are about Welsh players singing GSTQ, oh wait people reallly could not care less, the average working man and woman are too busy to care about such nonsense, only a lunatic fringe do.
Scotland has the lowest life expectancy in Europe maybe just maybe that is a bigger issue than writing wee snide remarks under photo’s or who sings what at a football game.
The nationalist minority and that’s what they are a minority are like children crying over spilt milk. We get it the snp types who have watched Bravheart 700 times are not fond of the Enlgish, most true scots really could not care less tbh.
Hurray up and have your silly wee referendum which you will lose by a landslide so the people in this country can get back to talking about what really matters like hospitals etc.
“Scotland has the lowest life expectancy in Europe”
The Union dividend, there. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, right?
R Louis, you’re probably right in that being the best way to tackle the blanket propaganda.
Feel free to let us all know what good work you’ve been doing to tackle the issues you mention, in between singing the Famine Song, hating Celtic fans, making excuses for tax dodges or making angry, bitter and tear-filled posts on blogs. It certainly seems like most unionists like you only care about these things until you actually get a chance in power to fix them…then you seemingly forget all about. Remember that there’s been decades of union rule that have lead to all the problems you speak of today.
Jimbo, haven’t you got some diddy league games on BBC Alba to watch?
@Jimbo – I call Gibsons Law on that one!
This is not about being anti-english or about a hollywood movie and any attempt to make it out as so is braying nonsense.
This is about good governance, the rule of democracy, prosperity, pease and the future of our country. These are things worth campaigning for.
The Westminster political system is horribly broken, corrupt, self serving and in bed with big money to the detriment of the ordinary voter in the street.
We have had decades of Westminster rule and the last one of Westminster restrictions and we still have one of the worst incidences of poverty and poor health in Europe. How can that be so if the Union is working to benefit the lives of the Scots.
We are the only country to strike oil and get poorer as a result. We are told that we cant amount to anything and eventually that breeds a type of behaviour that doesnt achieve because it never tries. We need to change that and independence is the vehicle to do it.
Darn… just spotted the typo in my last post… [grinds teeth]
With regard to flags on supermarket produce, I noticed that, unlike Morrisons and Tescos, Lidl doesn’t plaster the store with Union flags. In fact, their main advertising board always displays a Saltire.
When I mentioned this to the local store manager he confirmed that Scottish Lidl stores are handled differently in this respect. Maybe this is due to people writing to Lidls, for example:
“Tescos are full of the Union jacks. I remember when Lidls did the same several years ago, so the mrs and I wrote off in German, to their German HQ, we got a nice reply, two days later all union jacks were removed and replaced with Saltires!”
Bella Caledonia are running a Union flag competition: link to bellacaledonia.org.uk and here’s another site collecting pictures: link to villageaunties.org
Jimbo,
Most of us manage to have an interest in a whole range of issues. For example I’m quite capable of caring that centuries of Westminster rule have resulted in Scotland having the lowest life expectancy in Europe, laughing at jokes about embarrassing 3rd division football teams AND national anthems. All without breaking a sweat. I really like cats, reading, cooking, gardening, bees, politics and knitting too. I have stacks of interests. It’s healthy.
Where you make your bloomer Jimbo is maintaining such a narrow focus in life. That’s why you’re in such a foul mood. Trust me, old bean, you’d be a much happier person if you developed a range of interests. C’mon you’ve got 3rd Division Football and and secret love of Wings Over Scotland but it’s big world out there. You can manage better than just two hobbies.
Scott Minto,
I just assumed you hoped for a return to traditional Scottish fare, what with independence an that.
Pease Brose:
“This is made by the Scottish peasant in this way. He puts some pea flour into a basin, and pours boiling water over it, at the same time stirring and thoroughly mixing the meal and water together. When mixed he adds a little salt, pepper, and butter, and eats it with or without oatcake.”
“Scotland has the lowest life expectancy in Europe”, spot on Jimbo. Is that the biggest benefit of the Union, or are there others to come after we’re a’ deid?
Balanced article Rev.
Personally, I dont give a monkeys what they sing. The Daily Mail and the *ahem* more strident nationalists can go jump in a river and debate it ad infinitum.
About time footballers at the Olympics were true amateurs anyway. Perhaps Newco could help…….. (sorry, couldn’t resist it).
@Douglas Clark
Sod it! I’ll campaign for that too!
(As long as we get to keep Mexican food – Fajitas… mnnn)
Scott Minto,
Bravo- couldn’t agree more! We need everybody in Scotland to think about what is best for our country, If we value the NHS, then we need to decide who we most trust to protect it. If we want jobs, we need to think about who is going to work hardest to bring jobs to Scotland.
For me, it is absolutely without question that a Government in Scotland represents our views and desires more than a Government in Westminster. I hope we can put aside the petty tribalism that plagues our country, and realise that we have an historic opportunity to make things better- for ourselves, and for our children.
Err, my response to Scott was in response to the post at 9:09, not the one about the Fajitas!
+1 for what Ken said @ 10:43pm.
[Edit]
Oh! I see Ken got back in before me. I also liked Scott’s post at 9:09pm, so +1 to him too!
This is quite weird, I am becoming a cheer leader!
I have no idea how that second sign got there and I’m not glad one of my mates is six foot tall but weighs less than ten stone.
; )
And you Mr Lyons can easily lift ten stone? I’m glad your on my side…….
Rev Stu, an observation and a prediction! There can be little doubt that The Rangers Tax Case blog helped restore some integrity, pride and honesty to Scottish football. I confidently predict that Wings over Scotland will do something similar for Scottish politics.
The MSM in Scotland is discredited and the vacuum is being filled by WoS, more power to your PC.
‘It sends out the message that England and the UK are one and the same’
Unfortunately this is the view of many abroad.I have friends in Spain,Korea,Italy,Venuezela and a whole clan in Buenos Aires and all of them,particularly the Argentine crew,assumed UK=England although,interestingly,none of them thought Scotland was part of the UK and not one of them can understand the Union argument at all.I,ve tried presenting the usual arguments for the Union and all I get are a collection of puzzled looks and ,them Argentines again,cries of “Freedom!”
I think that the independent athletes were people from places like South Sudan that didn’t exist when the Olympics were being planned.
Seem to recall that at the Moscow Olympics, several countries chose the Olympic Hymn instead of their own national anthem.
According to the internet (so it must be true) , a nation can choose to have something different played e.g. in 1992 the Former-Soviet-Union team chose “Ode to Joy”. Perhaps winning athletes should be able to choose.
link to nationalanthems.info
link to topendsports.com