Play it again...
The
UK Theme campaign continues its uncanny echos of
Casablanca (or possibly
'Allo, 'Allo) with the resistance belting out Rule Britannia in spite of
all efforts to repress them.
UK Theme
The radio 4 UK theme is now
available on CD. This is more of an exercise in proving there are people out there who care enough about british culture to pay 4 quid than playing the thing night and day, I think.
A.P. Herbert on marches...
"This is a petition to the Crown by certain members of a political party who were convicted of holding a public meeting in Trafalgar square contrary to the orders of the Home Secretary and police. The petitioners are keenly interested in the 'Hands off Russia' movement, and, although there is no evidence that any person in this country proposes to lay hands on Russia, they have been in the habit for some weeks past of gathering at Lord Nelson's monument on Sunday afternoons and imploring the few citizens present to keep their hands off that country.
These at first sight unobjectionable aims have unfortunately inflamed the passions of another body of citizens, who interpret them as an unwarrantable interference with the affairs of their own country, and have therefore banded themselves into a rival movement whose battle-cry is 'Hands off England'. [...] Their principal song has a refrain to the effect that their countrymen will never consent to a condition of slavery; while the songs of the petitioners assert that many of their countrymen are in that condition already and resent it. So that, at first sight it might be thought that these two bodies, having so much in common, might appropriately and peacefully meet together under the effigy of that hero who did so much to ward off from these shores the hateful spectres of tyranny and oppression. When, however, it was announced that the two movements did in fact propose to hold meetings at the same time and place, the police were so apprehensive of a disturbance of the peace that both gatherings were by order prohibited. For it appears that the spectacle of the national flag is infuriating to the petitioners, while the simple scarlet banner of the petitioners is equally a cause of offence to the other movement...
...the one manifest result of the 'Hands Off Russia' movement has been to implant in many minds a new and unreasonable antipathy to Russia; while the cry of 'Hands Off England' has aroused in others a strong desire to do some injury to their native land. We find therefore that there is no right of Free Speech recognized by the Constitutin; and a good thing too"
A.P. Herbert, Engheim and others v. The King (Misleading Cases, 1927)
Haddock
et al notwithstanding; support the
march for free expression
