In the village of Felpham on the Sussex coast, a 17th century cottage has come perilously close to falling into ruin. It was in this building, between 1800 and 1803, that the poet William Blake shaped England’s vision of itself.
Blake lived and worked in this cottage, as well as taking long walks in the local countryside, while he was working on his epic poem Milton. This contained the words that we now know as the hymn Jerusalem – which told of this “green and pleasant land”, but warned of the “dark Satanic mills”.
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Officially, England does not have a national anthem. English people are instead expected to sing the British national anthem God Save the King, regardless of their views about monarchy. Unofficially, however, Jerusalem is recognised as the de facto English anthem. What is special about this is that its status comes not from a decision taken on high, but because the people of England chose it for themselves. They recognised a consensus, which was that many felt a unique connection to that song. Its grassroots status makes it more of a genuine national anthem than any other.
This unique status comes in part because William Blake is a rare unifying voice in both English and British culture. Jerusalem has been sung at both Conservative and Labour Party conferences, by the Women’s Institute and the England cricket team, and by Etonian schoolboys as well as socialist folk singers such as Billy Bragg. An appeal as broad as this is rare indeed. It puts Jerusalem in the all-too-small category of things that the English universally approve of, alongside Shakespeare, cups of tea, and chips.
There is a similar situation in the world of football. As its composer Ian Broudie has noted, the English FA are not keen on the song Three Lions. The fans, in contrast, have made it the unofficial song of the English national squads. Jerusalem and Three Lions are similar in that neither of them are triumphant. Instead, the message of both songs is that we could and should be better. It’s a view that both the right and the left, and the religious and non-religious, all get behind. That the English people chose these two songs over the proud, boastful anthems offered by the establishment seems to tell us something important about the true nature of the English.
Yet for all that the flag waving audience of the Last Night of the Proms gleefully sing along to Jerusalem, the establishment has never been entirely comfortable with Blake. For all they may admire his visionary nature, they are uncomfortable with how deeply radical he was. The words to Jerusalem were originally part of the preface to Milton, which contained a furious condemnation of the “ignorant hirelings” of “the Camp, the Court and the University”. In Blake’s eyes, much of the problem was that the establishment simply wasn’t good enough. It was staffed by a protected class who lacked vision and talent. This meant that only the blazing imagination of the people could conceive of a greater alternative. Given the last decade or so of recent history, this critique feels as relevant as ever.
