Jingoism and Jerusalem

When I was a parish priest on London’s Old Kent Road, I was initially bemused that virtually every couple coming to be married requested that the ‘hymn’ Jerusalem be sung at their wedding ceremony. I later discovered that this was a frequently sung song at school morning assemblies, so in some cases was probably the only ‘hymn’ with which South London’s young were familiar.

Jerusalem was being sung the length and breadth of England last weekend. And by England I mean England and not Britain, for I doubt that very few Celts in Scotland, Wales or Ireland were joining in. It was fervently sung as a patriotic gesture by Englishmen and women in two quite different settings. The first was at the final cricket test match between England and Australia at The Oval, one of London’s two famous cricket grounds. This is a game which has never appealed to me, and even less to my American friends who cannot understand the rules and conventions of a match which lasts five days. The Australians had held the symbolic ‘Ashes’ for nearly twenty years, but the English team, written off before the five match series began, had shown miraculous improvement but needed to win the final match to regain the Ashes, and as the English commentators kept arrogantly asserting ‘Bring them back to where they belong’. The England cricket team, seeking any help they could get, including divine intervention, requested that the fans sing Jerusalem.

The second setting was the last night of the Promenade Concert season at the Royal Albert Hall. This is festive occasion in which the promenaders who stand on the open floor space in front of the stage, bring flags, banners and toy instruments along to join in the final concert’s grand finale, which includes sea shanties, Land of Hope and Glory and, you’ve guessed it, Jerusalem. It is a moment for unashamed English patriotic fervour. This year however, the Observer’s music critic apparently had had enough of this rather loutish behaviour. ‘Let’s face it’, he wrote, ‘Britannia does not rule the waves any more. Those who think she does, or would like to, are clinging to the post imperial delusions beneath so much that is wrong in this country. This is not patriotism: it is the ugly face of jingoistic nationalism’.

If those who sing Jerusalem so enthusiastically were aware of the intention and meaning of the words they are embracing, they for the most part wouldn’t want to sing them at all! They were penned by William Blake who was regarded as a rather harmless lunatic by many of his eighteenth century contemporaries but is now recognised as one of the finest engravers and poets the country has produced. Greatly given to religious visions, he associated with Christian groups in London whose origins can be traced back to the Brethren of the Free Spirit, a mediaeval Christian anarchist movement. The best biography I’ve read on Blake is Peter Ackroyd’s Blake and the best small book I’ve come across is Peter Marshall’s William Blake; Visionary Anarchist.

Blake was an anarchist in the sense that he believed that the Christian has a responsibility at all times to follow the law of Christ and where the law of the land conflicts with Christ’s law, to oppose the state. In 1803, in the course of removing a drunken soldier from his garden Blake was alleged to have said ‘Damn the King’ and to have intimated that ‘all soldiers are slaves’. These words led to his arrest and trial on the charge of treason, from which he was ultimately acquitted.

Blake’s poems are a complicated mix of religious vision and anarchist politics. The words of Jerusalem, are actually part of a longer work Milton and I regard them as one of the greatest works of anarchist protest against all that is oppressive, demeaning and dehumanising about authoritarian rule.

And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?

Now while it is probable that Blake was referring here to a very ancient legend that Christ himself in the course of his earthly life visited England, I think it more than likely that he also intended these questions to be rhetorical anticipating the answer ‘No’. Certainly for him there was no sign to be seen of Christ’s New Jerusalem blossoming amongst the ‘dark satanic mills’ and grinding poverty fashioned by the Industrial Revolution. In response, Blake issues his own call to action:

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.

‘Desire’ and ‘mental fight’ are very important to Blake’s understanding of education and politics. Our desires, our deepest motivations and intuitions are God-given instruments for progress, yet authoritarian societies try to repress them. Blake often referred to the way that the state works to control human behaviour through our socialisation and education – a process today we associate with ideological control and hegemony – as ‘mind-forg’d manacles’. Hence the important of engaging in ‘mental fight’ to overcome this power of the state in order to establish Jerusalem, the reality of Christ’s non-hierarchical and non-coercive Kingdom of justice and peace. We know that Blake’s intention was not a literal call to arms, as many people assume it to be, because of his insistence that ‘war is the health of the State’ indicating that states ultimately depend upon the force of arms to secure their objectives.

So my anarchist heart beats faster whenever I hear Jerusalem sung at weddings, at cricket matches, or at the Last Night of the Proms. I only wish that people appreciated and owned the significance of what they are singing, and in their politics were committed to heeding Blake’s call to resistance.