The BBC announced on Monday night that its broadcast for Last Night of the Proms will feature lyricless versions of the patriotic songs Rule, Britannia! and Land of Hope and Glory, bowing to pressure from the Black Lives Matter movement.
In a statement, BBC Proms said that orchestral versions of the two songs will be performed without an audience — in light of restrictions placed on the event by the Chinese coronavirus — on the 12th of September.
“The Proms will reinvent the Last Night in this extraordinary year so that it respects the traditions and spirit of the event whilst adapting to very different circumstances at this moment in time,” the statement said.
“With much reduced musical forces and no live audience, the Proms will curate a concert that includes familiar, patriotic elements such as Jerusalem and the National Anthem, and bring in new moments capturing the mood of this unique time, including You’ll Never Walk Alone, presenting a poignant and inclusive event for 2020,” the statement went on.
The speculation that the BBC would scrap the two songs has resulted in widespread condemnation and calls to ‘defund’ Britain’s publicly funded broadcaster. The decision to perform the Rule, Britannia! and Land of Hope and Glory sans lyrics has done little to quell the public outrage.
Arch Brexiteer Nigel Farage commented that “the only thing that needs cancelling is the BBC itself.”
The chairman of the Brexit Party, Richard Tice wrote: “If [the] BBC wants to cancel our patriotism & our history by not singing Rule Britannia & Land of Hope & Glory, so I want to cancel my license fee. They are in breach of their contract with the British people #DefundTheBBC.”
Former Brexit Party MEP Martin Daubney said that the decision is “another nail in the coffin for the BBC as they cowardly buckle & remove the lyrics to “patriotic” songs such as Rule Britannia at the Proms.”
Daubney questioned: “Why does the BBC hate Britain, our flag & our heritage?”, and said the move was “pure, provocative cultural vandalism!”
The former MEP went on to call on the British public to “organise a huge, rowdy choir to turn up at the BBC and sing Rule Britannia & God Save The Queen for hours on end? With brass band & drums? Played through a giant PA? An alternative Proms – a People’s Proms – to counter the BBC’s woke, censored version!”
A source within the BBC told The Times that the handling of the Last Night of The Proms fiasco by the broadcaster’s management as a bunch of “white guys in a panic” trying to appease the Black Lives Matter movement.
The decision to remove the lyrics from the songs is said to be a result of pressure from Ukrainian-born Finnish citizen Dalia Stasevska — the conductor of this year’s Last Night performance — who was said to be a “big supporter of Black Lives Matter and thinks a ceremony without an audience [due to coronavirus restrictions] is the perfect moment to bring change.”
On Sunday, Brexit Party leader Nigel Farge questioned “So the BBC may drop Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory from The Proms because the Finnish conductor is too woke. Why not drop her instead?”
The BBC shot back at the criticism levied at the foreign conductor, saying they “very much regret the unjustified personal attacks on Dalia Stasevska” online.
“As ever, decisions about the Proms are made by the BBC, in consultation with all artists involved,” the broadcaster said.
On Monday afternoon — shortly before the announcement from the BBC — British actor Laurence Fox accused the left-leaning broadcaster of being “navel-gazing” and “British hating”,
Fox said in an interview with talkRadio, that the BBC needs “to be massively defunded and completely root and branch re-looked at because they’re not representative of the majority of this country at all and extremely patronizing and this woke takeover is extremely racist.”
“This is a remarkably tolerant country and I really feel that the tolerance is being tested now,” Fox warned.
The actor said that he is no longer paying the license fee that funds the BBC, going on to “urge everybody who feels the BBC is not representative of them, to not pay the license fee.”
Follow Kurt on Twitter at @KurtZindulka
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