Your Anthem Is My Anathema

National anthems are recently in the news. From being something in the line of "a duty's to be done" whether or not your lot was a happy one, they lurched into expressions of national identity, regardless of the words or the origins. Inevitably in our age of instant media, complaint and looking for an argument they are a soft target.

One reason is that so many of them were first installed, if that is the right word, a long time ago in a different world and when the peoples of the relevant states were not the same as today never mind social structures, ways of governing and belief systems.

Another is the words had to be written by somebody and that person, who may have been once admired, can often be fingered for ideas or life style that now are regarded as wrong and unacceptable.

In the USA Francis Scott Keys is now under the cosh for the "Star Spangled Banner". So I will add my complaint to the chorus. First, it was written as Anti-British, our gallant troops besieging Washington DC and Baltimore to defend our interests.

Secondly, the commander Major-General Ross was killed and last but not least the target for Keys was his Deputy, who took over for a few months, Colonel Arthur Brooke of the 44th East Essex Regiment and brother-in-law of one of my forebears.

The UK has one going back to the mid 18th Century when things were different and how we saw the monarch then is not how we see that institution now. There are real questions about the future. One might suggest "Charlie Is My Darling" for Scottish reasons, but there may be a problem or two there.

Trying to find an anthem which was jolly, happy and written by a person who is not vulnerable to criticism or rather too strident about the rightness or might of the country in question is far from easy. After not many minutes of dismal sound and voice on the web I gave up trying.

But I am in no doubt about one that has a good whack to it and avoids most of the usual problems. On 17 January 1959 I was at Cardiff Arms Park for a Wales versus England game which had two closely matched sides on a wet day and was a grim struggle. The good thing was the singing by the crowd which kept us all warm.

The big one of course was not so much the Welsh anthem, "Land of my Fathers" which is one of the better ones, it was when "Cwm Rhondda" was sung. It does not get better than that. If the UK national anthem was to be replaced, it would do very well.

None of this will help President Trump whose haste to be loyal to his oath of office, again has landed him in argument he can do without as the world enters a difficult period. The irony is that for the USA, a nation that has produced so much music in so many forms it is difficult to think of what might be a new anthem.

"Hold That Tiger". perhaps?