The Land of Song

16^th of December, 1905, Wales play New Zealand for the first time in the game of rugby. On the tour New Zealand won 34 matches and lost but 1. That loss was to the Welsh. I could stop with the Welsh pride schtick there, but rugby is not the reason I am writing today.

That match is significant for another reason, in response to the All Black’s traditional match opening Maori Haka – used to strike fear into the eyes and hearts of oppositions – the Welsh crowd of 47,000 responded with “Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau” (Land of my Fathers) led by Winger and winning try scorer ‘Teddy’ Morgan. This was the first time a national anthem had been sung before the start of an international sporting event.

I bring this up because one Archbishop of York believes that the Welsh should sing ‘God Save the Queen’ before matches.  Though he has kindly suggested that we sing both when playing against other home nations in a way to ‘recover a national unity’. Yes, a national unity shown as subservient to one person.

National Anthems are weird and wonderful with them being about anything and everything but all with the same objective, to unite. Americans unite under their flag, The Scottish unite under the fact that they drove the English away ‘Tae think again’, The French unite under bloodshed and revolution and the Welsh, we unite under how goddamn beautiful our country is. Then there’s ‘God Save the Queen’, The British National Anthem, not English, British. A song that comes straight out of the authoritarian playbook of subservience. To me, that doesn’t scream national identity. I couldn’t see it being sung as an act of rebellion in a Moroccan Bar ‘La Marseillaise’ style (if you know you know).

Even when a national anthem is overpowered by jeers like the wordless Marcha Real there is still unity being shown. This is because the jeers are from the Catalan and the Basque people showing that they are united by their autonomy and uniqueness compared to the larger sovereign state of Spain.

I guess what I’m trying to say is don’t try and take any more of our national identity away from us, you’ve done enough of that over the past few centuries. If you want unity then have unity through uniqueness, sing Jerusalem at the next rugby match. Save the British one for when we compete as ‘Great Britain and Northern Ireland’. We still won’t sing it, but that sounds like a problem for the Archbishop of York and not for me.