With English Cricket and English Rugby adopting Jerusalem as their 'English Anthems' it will be interesting to see what happens in the Commonwealth Games and the Soccer World Cup.
Jerusalem
A favourite of congregations as disparate as Church of England services, Labour Party Conferences and the terraces of Twickenham, this stirring and beautiful hymn is a melody dating from 1916 by Charles Hubert Hastings Parry and of course the inspiring words are a poem by William Blake.
Surely no English person can fail to be stirred whenever those famous opening lines are sung, though few people outside of cathedrals and rugby clubs could claim to know all the words. But although it is a seemingly obvious contender, is Jerusalem really national anthem material? A dark poem, like the satanic mills Blake writes about, it is a radical lament about the social injustices of industrialisation, a worthy theme that if it were written today, would probably be considered by some as political correctness! And the conclusion is one of negativity, with a stirring call to action imbued with hope, but negativity none the less. As David McKie put in in The Guardian "But it's hard to see what encouragement players could gain from much of the text, most of which Blake devotes to asking questions (Did those feet walk on England's mountains? Was the Lamb of God seen on English pastures? Was Jerusalem builded here among dark, satanic mills?) to which the answers, unhappily, always seem to be: no" (The Guardian, 7 March 2002). Would any country really want a national anthem that, far from celebrating all that is best about a nation, actually sends people away lamenting the present, to come back with hope and do better next time. Surely we have had enough of that feeling with the football World Cup and Wimbledon!
The main issue with Jerusalem, however, is that it is an overtly Christian hymn. No-one, from any part of the political spectrum, would deny what a multicultural society that England is in 2002, and yet Jerusalem's lead character is the Lamb of God, a concept that probably means very little outside of churches in an era when the majority of people don't go to church. And is this something that English Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs agnostics and atheists (and people from all other faiths and none) could identify with? And the other, perhaps even more uncomfortable issue is that in 2002, do we really want to choose an English national anthem whose title is the place in the world most torn apart by conflict and hatred and somehow symbolic of the religious and cultural intolerance that blight our world? Jerusalem in 2002 is a very different concept than the one intended by Blake and to ignore that sad and uncomfortable fact would surely be insular and insensitive.
One also has to suspect that Blake himself, the mystic, would be horrified that his critique of life in 19th Century England ended up as the anthem of his country two centuries on so it would seem a little strange that 80,000 voices were singing Jerusalem at Wembley if Blake was turning in his grave in a corner of this green and pleasant land! Whatever the choice for an English national anthem, this will continue to be one of England's great songs, but like Blake, should we continue to revere it, but leave it be? Or should we ignore our concerns and elevate the song that is already seen by many as England's unofficial national anthem?
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