Rule Britannia will be sung at the Last Night of the Proms on Saturday night and no doubt Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson will be raising a large glass of French wine or several somewhere.
In the Making of the English Working Class (1963) the late E P Thompson reminded that radicals in the nineteenth century were keen on puncturing the patriotism of Britannia and all her works…
The Sheffield Register (30th November 1792) reported a demonstration of five or six thousand people in support of the French Revolution:
(it) drew a quartered roasted ox through the streets amid the firing of a cannon. In the procession were:
‘a caricature painting representing Britannia- Burke* riding on a swine- and a figure, the upper part of which was the likeness of a Scotch Secretary+, and the lower part that of an Ass..the pole of Liberty lying broken on the ground,inscribed ‘Truth is Libel’-the Sun breaking from behind a cloud, and the Angel of Peace, with one hand dropping the ‘Rights of Man’,and extending the other to raise up Britannia.
As resolute and determine a set of villains as I ever saw, remarked a hostile observer.
*Edmund Burke was a reactionary writer and politician
+ the reference is to Henry Dundas the Home Secretary
Still as Boris Johnson said “I think it’s time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history,”
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