It was good to see Jeremy Corbyn trolling the British media last week. As a Republican and an atheist, he was quite right to remain respectfully silent during God Save The Queen, but, even if he had harboured secret monarchical passions, it was worth doing (or not doing) just to make the tabloids' imagined heads explode.
National anthems present a challenge to even the most committed patriot. If they’re not celebrating colonial atrocities or calling sans-culottes to bloodthirsty revenge, they’re offering unconvincing celebrations of boring mountains and filthy bucolic glades. This would be tolerable if the tunes were any good. But the average national anthem is sung to the sort of quasi-martial dirge that could send even an amphetamine abuser into the deepest coma.
The British National anthem is among the worst of a very bad bunch. Perhaps Corbyn was silenced by the dreariness of it all. He must, surely, have known that there was little chance of the notorious sixth verse being sung at a ceremony to honour The Battle of Britain. Putting forward “rebellious Scots to crush” as an aspiration would have done little to boost the Labour Party’s wounded fortunes north of the border. The prospect of a hymn offering a dozen synonymous variations on the adulatory first line should, however, be enough in itself to render any sane man mute.
The Irish get off better than man. Amhrán na bhFiann starts off with the predictably wearisome plainsong before beginning a tolerable crescendo that would work well if sung before a rugby match or outside a burning colonial mansion. Not that you'll hear it at a rugby match, of course. Nothing could be more brilliantly calculated to send the archly unpatriotic listener (such as this correspondent) back to the traditional guns-and-lakes anthem than the class of bland committee-approved singalong exemplified by Ireland's Call. Sing Teenage Kicks. Sing Sean South of Garryowen. Sing The Old Orange Flute. Sing anything other than that.
The main problem with the Irish anthem lies (whisper it) in the fact that it is traditionally sung in the native tongue. This springs from a noble aspiration. But it does rather hamper those whose minds were elsewhere during the decade they were being taught that language. It offered a near-insurmountable challenge for the Liverpudilan grandchildren of Irish immigrants during the glory(ish) years of Irish football.
Given how sensitive Americans are about their lovely country and the many historic institutions that have endured unchanged since as long ago as 1972, one hesitates to say anything too unkind about The Star Spangled Banner. So we will let Kurt Vonnegut do that for us. In his great novel Breakfast of Champions he sits back and, in the voice of an imagined supreme being, offers an analysis of America and its mores. "There were one quadrillion nations in the Universe, but the nation Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout belonged to was the only one with a national anthem which was gibberish sprinkled with question marks," Vonnegut writes. Well, quite. (Though we should acknowledge that Jimi Hendrix did manage to deconstruct the melody into an off-kilter classic.)
The Germans certainly have a good tune. Joseph Haydn knew his way around a quaver and a treble clef. But, in the modern era, the words have suffered a little from the Ireland’s Call effect. Following certain misunderstandings during the 1940s, the authorities ditched all that “Ãber alles” stuff and hired the writers of Up With People! to supply some less triumphalist lyrics. “Germany, Germany. We don’t really want to make too much of a fuss about ourselves,” it begins.
All right, none of this is true. But we do now only hear the emollient third verse before the ritual evisceration of England at the World Cup. It’s all “unity” this and “justice” that. What does that have to do with anything?
Look, I apologise if any of this offends you. But the songs and symbols of national celebration play to an organ that the terminally unpatriotic just don’t possess. (Though a ghost version kicks in when any foreigner is overheard dissing the home nation overseas.) National anthems only stir the soul if the soul is already well disposed towards empty displays of tribal triumphalism.
Well, yes, there is the properly moving 'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika' from South Afric. Okay, the Russian National Anthem still has imperial swing. No, I can't pretend that, when the émigrés strike up La Marseillaise in Casablanca, I don't leap to my feet and bellow through pathetic sobs. Blasted French. They do get on your nerves a bit. But they have the best wine, the best food and by far the best national anthem. It is hard to imagine anybody – even Mr Corbyn – remaining mute during La Marseillaise. Can't we all have that as our national ditty?