This issue has been raised in parliamentary questions and through early day motions repeatedly since 2006; David Cameron’s even felt the need to come out as a backer of Jerusalem. But nothing’s happened.
So what can you do if you really care about this issue – if you’re a sports fan, say, who is fed up of watching the national team standing gawping through our current anthem?
Well you’ve only got one choice really: you’ve got to start booing God Save the Queen. Or singing Jerusalem over it. And you've got to keep doing so until you force a change.
I know that sounds ridiculous, but a surprising number of sports fans already do it. Bosnia, for instance, currently has had an instrumental national anthem, adopted in the late-90s as a way of trying to quell ethnic tensions between the Serb, Croat and Bosniak populations. But some people there are still upset it meant replacing the previous anthem, Jedna si Jedina (You are the one and only), and so they continue singing that over the top, one song to the tune of another, ignoring the fact it creates the most horrific dirge.
In Hong Kong too, football fans last year took to booing the Chinese national anthem as a political protest. When Fifa fined the Hong Kong football authorities and told them to ensure it never happened again, the fans held up pieces of paper with the word "boo" written on them instead. Then there’s the case of Catalans who regularly whistle Spain’s national anthem, and the French-Algerians and French-Tunisians who have booed la Marseillaise.
"All those examples actually involve serious political protests, which the debate around England’s national anthem never will"
OK, so all those examples actually involve serious political protests, which the debate around England’s national anthem never will. But they at least get the point across. If England football fans started doing something similar, MPs might respond.
At the very least, it might save everyone having to sit through this issue being debated again in two year’s time before the next World Cup and four year’s time before the next Olympics.
Alex Marshall is the author of Republic or Death! Travels in Search of National Anthems
Source: http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/579309/s/4cd3c068/sc/13/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cnews0Cpolitics0C120A96670A0CWant0Ean0EEnglish0Enational0Eanthem0EThen0Eits0Etime0Eto0Eboo0EGod0ESave0Ethe0EQueen0Bhtml/story01.htm