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Rule What? Rule How?

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On Remembrance Day, November 11th, 2019, Lily Allen sparked controversy by posting on Instagram that the anthem "Rule, Britannia!" belongs "in the bin." Lily Allen specifically targets lyrics concerning slavery, such as "Britons never, never,/ never shall be slaves" and "Britannia rule the waves." Since then, BBC radio and other media feature debates as to whether the song honors fallen Navy sailors or is a relic of colonial time past. For instance, below is a clip of Joanna Jarjue (from BBC's The Apprentice) debating Toby Young (right wing British journalist) and Piers Morgan about the continued relevance of the song.








A month before Lily Allen's stance, "Rule, Britannia!" was performed on the last night of the annual BBC Proms with a performance by self-professed "queer girl with a nose ring" Jamie Barton. Barton triumphantly waved a Gay Pride flag in place of a Union Jack during the swell of the music. Following the performance, the Guardian's Owen Jones released an article entitled "Rule, Britannia!: Should We Still be Singing the Jingoistic Anthem?" Jones critiques this updated performance stating that even the very continued tradition of closing the Proms with "Rule, Britannia!" is " just symptomatic of how the British never came to terms with the legacy of empire: whether it be the millions who perished in unnecessary famines in India or who were locked up in concentration camps in South Africa and Kenya, let alone the legacies of colonialism – whether that be poverty, conflict, or Victorian anti-gay laws and homophobic attitudes." In other words, Jones question if the song even allows for recuperation, or if it is inherently excluding of any other-ed identity.





How did "Rule, Britannia!" become such a longstanding tradition? The anthem was originally composed as an ode written by James Thompson and set to music by Thomas Arne for a 1740 masque entitled Alfred. In such, the lyrics that trouble Lily Allen—about how "Britons never will be slaves" even as they "rule the waves"—are perhaps even more unsettling as they are written during a time where England was one of the leading slave-trading countries, forcibly transporting about 70% of African captives. How did an ode in a masque become a "jingoistic anthem?" It is worth it to trace the origins of the anthem to destabilize what is being upheld as a tradition beyond critique. Even in Barton's subversive performance, the tradition of closing the Proms with "Rule, Britannia" is not in question, but instead upheld; in fact, by waving the Pride flag, Barton expands the parameters of the nationalism espoused in "Rule, Britannia" including LGBTQ communities in an imperialism designed to exclude anything and anyone out of the norm.



Alfred follows Alfred the Great, King of Sussex from 871-886 and King of the Anglo-Saxons from 886-889, during the time Alfred the Great is exiled in the Isle of Athelney. The final ode, that becomes what is now "Rule, Britannia!", is sung by a hermit in the play. The time of the masque, 1740, was a time of Hanoverian rule. There was political unrest at the beginning of the century. Jacobites disputed the Hanoverian claim to the throne wanted to reinstate a Stuart. The Hanoverians won and the subsequent Kings—King George I, King George II, King George III, and King George IV—made up the Georgian era which lasted from 1714 to 1830. The hermit singing the ode is important to the message of Alfred, in that it shows the unity that was so crucial to monolithic Hanoverian rule. A hermit is an outsider, living on the fringes of society, but when he sings the praise of Britannia the hermit is incorporated into normative British society.

Shana Redmond opens Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora in saying "[music] is more than sound; it is a complex system of mean(ing)s and ends that mediate our relationships to one another, to space, to our histories and historical moment." The repeated performance throughout the centuries of "Rule, Britannia!" shows a commitment to the colonial values underpinning the cultural moment at the song's inception.
 

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