Last Night of the Proms ; or, some reflections on music and politics

The prime minister has, with his customary sensitivity and perceptiveness, denounced calls to amend the habitual repertoire of the Last Night of the Proms as 'self-recrimination' and 'wet'. Whereas the Proms (or, to give them their proper title, the BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts) are, until the last evening, about the performance and celebration of classical music, the Last Night, for a very long time, has been about politics. Music, and the quality of music, takes the last seat in the hall that evening. The quality and range of the repertoire, and the audiences which the Proms attract , have widened significantly in recent years. Important occasions at the Proms in the past few years have included the appearance of the extraordinary musician Jacob Collier ; and of the orchestra Chineke! These events, and many others, attest to the continuing vitality of the Proms. However, the Last Night remains almost unchanged. The classical music critic Richard Morrison has called this institution (the Last Night, not the Proms itself) 'toe-curling, embarrassing and anachronistic.' If anything, this is an understatement. Those, such as the prime minister and the Culture Secretary, Oliver Dowden, who defend the Last Night of the Proms at one moment assume that 'it is just a bit of fun', and then claim that its continuation is vital to our national identity. Something is going on here. Part of it has to do with the fact that, in the absence of more cash for the 'red wall' seats, Johnson is waging a 'culture war' against 'liberal elites'. This is evident in his diatribes against the BBC, the civil service and the judiciary. Brexit is part of this culture war. All this is straight from the 'playbook' of the American Right (see, inter alia, Thomas Frank, 'What's the matter with Kansas ?' (2004)).

The Last Night of the Proms began to assume its status as a national 'tradition' or 'institution' in 1947, when it was televised for the first time. The master of ceremonies then, and for over twenty years thereafter, was the orchestral conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent, a self-confessed 'showman'. His conception of the event was essentially non-musical, and he viewed it as a vehicle for projecting his own personality. His successors have had to take on the mantle of circus master. (I wonder how many of them have dreaded it). It is not coincidental that this event, to which 'Rule Britannia' and 'Land of Hope and Glory' are integral, occurred in the same year as the independence and partition of India. From our vantage point, this event is viewed as the beginning of decolonisation. As far as contemporaries were concerned, it was anything but. The Labour politicians Clement Attlee, Ernest Bevin and Herbert ('good old Empire') Morrison were as determined imperialists as the Conservatives, and were as interested in the long-term British colonial project in Africa. All this was put to an abrupt end when Eisenhower made it brutally clear to Eden at the time of the Suez catastrophe that the United States would no longer support British imperialism. But this was far from clear to most people in 1947. While Britain lost its empire, the Last Night of the Proms endured in its unashamed imperial celebration.

Let's examine those 'iconic' pieces of music. 'Land of Hope and Glory' is an unashamed paean to conquest and violence. It was written at a time (the end of the 19th century) when, although the British Empire was at the height of its extent and power, it was increasingly challenged by the military and economic might of the United States and of Germany. Rudyard Kipling's poem 'Recessional' (1897) captures this rather uncertain mood, a haunting feeling that the British Empire might be ephemeral, after all. The public desired reassurance; 'LOHG' and the 'Pomp and Circumstance' gave them this warm sentiment. The composer Sir Edward Elgar, who composed the orchestral accompaniment to 'LOHG', commonly known as the 'Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1' disliked both 'LOHG' and the 'Pomp and Circumstance' music. This was not because he was in any way a subversive lefty (he definitely wasn't), but, because, like most other composers, he wished to be judged by his very best music, such as the oratorio 'The Dream of Gerontius', the symphonies and the concerto for violin and orchestra.

'Rule Britannia', composed by Thomas Arne in 1742, with words by the poet James Thomson, is just as explicit. Britain had seen off its main international economic and military competitors, the Dutch, before the end of the 17th century, and were prospering

better than the French during the 18th. 'Ruling the waves' was, of course, an essential precondition for the unhindered practice of the slave trade. The literary scholar John Barrell has recently pointed out that 'slaves' had more than one meaning in the 18th century, and the word also referred to England's deliverance from the poltical 'slavery' of Stuart absolutism by the so-called 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688. (It should be noted, however, that the Irish and Scottish experience of the events after 1688 was anything but 'glorious.') It is my humble opinion that hese pieces are rancid, and that the only 'patriotic' song which anybody who is not an arch-imperialist can sing with a good conscience is 'Jerusalem', also a mainstay of the Last Night. (The national anthem automatically brands anybody who is a republican as a traitor). However, the absence of these jingoistic odes would not be an 'erasure' of history, as Oliver Dowden has put it, but perhaps the beginnings of a sober appreciation of it.