How did I not know about Jerusalem?
I'm a Scottish trade unionist and while I've never been a Labour member, I obviously have a lot of friends who are, and on a sentimental level I've always hoped the party might return to its working-class roots someday, somehow. I'm admittedly very unimpressed with my local Labour Party, which seems to consist mainly of small business owners, middle managers and Orangemen.
I was today years old when I saw a reel of Labour conference singing "Jerusalem", then discovered they've been doing that since practically forever, and...I'm sorry comrades, but wtaf?
Don't get me wrong. I get that "Jerusalem" is actually quite a decent, social-critical song, and I think English people should feel free to sing it with gusto and revolutionary zeal amongst themselves. I like William Blake. I'm not some rabid separatist who hates the sassenachs, proletarian internationalism obviously includes you too and there's many figures of the English labour movement I admire greatly (Sylvia Pankhurst ❤️). If a referendum was held tomorrow I'd vote for independence for a chance to leave the unceasing shitshow behind (and weaken a very imperialist jingoistic UK), but if a republican socialist federal UK were on the table I'd obviously support that over an independent neoliberal Scotland.
But how in the name of all that is holy can Labour pontificate about a "union of equals", an exercise in pluralist solidarity that isn't about English hegemony, and then expect attendees of a UK-wide conference to belt out (or at the very least stand there listening to) a song entirely and exclusively about ENGLAND? Do they genuinely have no concept of how that's at best bizarre and at worst demeaning for delegates from Scotland and Wales?
Imagine if you had to sing Robert Burns' "A Man's A Man (For A' That)" at a UK conference - which, unlike "Jerusalem", doesn't even make specific reference to Scotland and is just a nice generic progressive song ("the honest man, tho e'er sae poor / is king o' men for a' that"). But it's in Scots, and written by Scotland's national poet, so it would be patently absurd to make English and Welsh people sing it once a year at a UK-wide political event, right?
Am I the only one who finds this hypocritical, to put it mildly?