Sandwiched between the August bank holiday and the political party conference season, it’s an end-of-summer ritual as predictable as leaves turning brown.
I don’t mean that grand September tradition, The Last Night of the Proms. I mean the equally familiar penultimate night of the prom culture wars. The ritual is now as well-established as the exuberant repertoire of Rule, Britannia!/Pomp & Circumstance/Jerusalem, which, as ever, will end a long summer of music at the Royal Albert Hall next Saturday night.
After the usual feverish debates about our post-imperial confusion or guilt or “what it means to be British” – which are then put into the context of Brexit – the event always turns out to be a thoroughly enjoyable evening, both inside the Royal Albert Hall and on the BBC, which broadcasts it around the world.
But this year, the whole issue risks being dragged into a deeper, more toxic controversy.
This is an issue that has nothing to do with being “British”, and even less to do with Sir Henry Wood’s original vision of high-quality, low-cost music for all.
You can hardly allow people to fly British, EU, German, Australian or Japanese flags and then say that Israeli and Palestinian flags are banned.
But the BBC, which hosts the whole show, thinks so. It issued a new order specifically banning “flags of banned groups, flags related to protest, hate or advertising.”
The new wording is a clear indication that the organisers are concerned about dragging the Proms into the overwhelming and offensive debate over the Gaza war.
Over the years it has been draped in gay pride flags, trans flags and EU flags, save for the last night of 2019, when I shouted ‘Brexit Now!’ I watched a fierce pro-Brexit duo unveil a banner on the hall floor. This was immediately shut them down by an overwhelmingly superior force of Splenetic Remainers, who adorned themselves with EU flags.
After some low-level slapping, pushing and shoving, the two Brexiteers were dragged out of the building by security guards.
This was carefully ignored by all the BBC cameras and the programme continued without any problems.
EU flags and berets were handed out at the Royal Albert Hall during a protest last September.
However, after October 7, tensions between Israelis and Palestinians reached a different level on the Richter scale of public protest. Both sides consider the mere sight of the other’s flag to be a declaration of genocidal intent.
Above all, the Just Stop Oil brigade has been on a rampage lately in their quest to Just Stop Everything Lose. What better place to grab headlines than a beloved national show on primetime television?
This raises the question of whether it is time for a new campaign to depoliticise the Proms altogether. Can’t we just let this great occasion go back to what it used to be, as a celebration of international (not just British) music rather than a contest of grievances? Honestly, shouldn’t 2024 be the year the Proms become the Proms again?
It’s a nice idea, but I’m not holding my breath.
Last Night’s debate usually begins with one of the leading actors – a soprano, a conductor or a BBC musical great – musing wistfully to an interviewer that the whole affair has become too patriotic (the term “jingoistic” is commonly used).
Last week, host Katie Durham rightly claimed that some of the tunes on Last Night are “classic tracks” but with sounds that can be “incredibly problematic” despite being “of their time”.
He was more diplomatic than BBC Proms chief John Drummond, at least until its final season in 1995, who lamented the show’s experience of “sliding from tolerant enjoyment to almost physical rebellion”.
In 1990, bandleader Mark Elder was fired before the big night after criticizing the bellicose national mood following the Gulf War (though he was asked back 15 years later).
Even the great Sir Simon Rattle admitted in 2021 that he generally “avoided” Last Night, adding: “I’ve been uneasy about some of the jingoistic elements since the Falklands in 1982.”
The general point is that the whole evening would be much more civil if the organizers would simply replace those awful imperial anthems with something fluffy and non-confrontational. Kumbaya anyone?
Sir Simon Rattle said in 2021 that he was unhappy with some of the jingoistic elements.
These “progressive” voices trigger the same knee-jerk reaction from traditionalists who argue that Last Night has always been brazenly and absurdly British, and why can’t everyone get over it.
Ritual intervention is followed by ‘calls for change/no change’ from politicians (left, right or both).
2020 offers to rule the game, Britannia! Without saying a word, at the height of the Black Lives Matter campaign, she provoked ridicule from then Prime Minister Boris Johnson. BBC Single.
And then all the flags come down.
As far as “progressives” are concerned, the glut of Union flags is shameful, sinister and feeds a dark, repressed, nativist impulse. However, since the 2016 Brexit referendum, there has also been a concerted distribution of subsidised EU flags that were previously handed out for free. It was organised by a cell of staunch Remain supporters fighting against the result of the referendum held eight years ago.
In 2011, protests led to the concert being taken off the air and later rebroadcast.
There has only been one time in recent years when a graduation concert has been cancelled: in 2011, when a performance by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at the prom was disrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters. A few days later the BBC resumed broadcasting, muted.
There is nothing overtly Israeli or Palestinian about Saturday night, but now that the Gaza issue is so hot that it could affect the outcome of the general election (as it did) and bring hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets every week, it is a safe bet that it will come to the Proms.
My condolences to the organisers. Form a ‘protest’ flag for what? You can hardly allow people to fly British, EU, German, Australian or Japanese flags and then say that Israeli and Palestinian flags are banned.
So I imagine a lot of the latter in the mix, with the inevitable risk of some argy-burgy given that promers, like football fans, are no different. I expect to see a lot of black and white Palestinian ‘kefiah’ scarves hanging around the necks of people who are far more likely to come from Penge than Palestine.
Is this a ‘protest’?
When people bring banners or symbols, the security team will intervene forcefully and quickly. Anything that suggests the Palestinian rallying cry “from the river to the sea,” which is so offensive to Jewish sentiment because it foreshadows Israel’s annihilation, is patently incendiary and must be discarded immediately. But that will not stop anyone from going.
Perhaps I hope the music will wash them all away and continue its usual merry course into the night. Let us hope so. Still, if it doesn’t, I think it makes a change from the boring old dispute over whether the word “slave” should be removed from the chorus of Britannia’s 283-year reign.
