The Rule, Britannia! row is too important for anti-racists to ignore

Over the past few days I’ve found myself feeling at odds with writers on the left that I normally agree with. Ever since the Sunday Times reported that the BBC was discussing ditching Rule, Britannia! at this year’s Proms, these voices have been almost united. They’ve treated this as a non-story – a confection by the Murdoch press – and pointed out that no one has been demanding the banning of this song, so we should move on and talk about the things that really matter.

Faced with a rightwing backlash, the BBC first said it would be played but not sung due to Covid restrictions, with the words reinstated next year; and today, under its new director general, Tim Davie, (a former Conservative organiser), it has completely U-turned and announced that the words will be sung this year after all.

There are, of course, far bigger issues than what a hall full of people sing on one night of the year. This year has demonstrated how intractable racial inequality is in this country, and how difficult to eradicate. So if we want social justice, and if we’re listing things in terms of priorities, then let’s look at schools, jobs and policing.

It’s also fair to say that, given where the story first emerged, there’s likely some rightwing mischief-making at play. This isn’t a fight we chose, and there are some powerful voices – the national press, the prime minister himself – keen to create a culture war on this issue and to scapegoat not only the BBC but multiculturalism and the Black Lives Matter movement. So it’s right to be cautious over how we respond.

Yet this year has thrown up all sorts of issues that would not be top of the list for any anti--racist. Take the Edward Colston statue in Bristol. Before it was torn down and thrown into the river – one of the most electrifying moments of the year – few people would have rated this as something we should man the barricades for. Once down, though, it sparked a conversation about who Britain honours, and whether the messages that statues like this convey are appropriate for modern Britain. Other statues, both in the UK and overseas, came down swiftly afterwards. The Oxford college which had previously resisted calls to remove its statue of brutal colonialist Cecil Rhodes, voted to take it down.

The Bank of England took down its portraits of previous governors who had links to slavery. Even the Guardian has set up an inquiry to determine whether its Manchester founders had similar links. Organisations and institutions everywhere are now, rightly, looking at themselves and reassessing their practices and cultural icons – whether or not they’re on the Black Lives Matter to-do list.

So if the BBC chooses to look at Rule, Britannia!, and its infamously repeated line “Britons never, never, never shall be slaves,” then that should be a good thing.

Some people think back to the early days after the killing of George Floyd, and the excessive over-eager responses from some broadcasters. Arguments about the “offensiveness” of Little Britain or Fawlty Towers were irrelevant to most protesters, and indeed to most of the country. These are historic shows, well past their sell-by date, and have a naturally dwindling fanbase.

The Last Night of the Proms is definitely not in this category. As former Proms director Nicholas Kenyon says, it “has always been more than a concert; it is a national event, embedded for years in our calendar of regular rituals, relayed around the world”. This is not about the past, but about the present.

The union flag-waving masses inside the Albert Hall each year are celebrating their pride in their Britishness. Look closely, and you’ll see barely a single non-white face. This is not about a modern nation, but about a continuing attachment to a historical era of global domination. And it’s a ritual they want to continue celebrating for decades, if not centuries, to come.

The song was written in 1740, when Britain’s slave trade was thriving. To sing its words now is to glory in Britain’s subjugation of other races and nations, and to declare to British people descended from enslaved and colonised peoples that the nation doesn’t care about those past inhumanities – that it revels in them, even.

As such, this strikes at the heart of Britain as a multicultural nation. Are its racial minorities to feel welcomed, included, valued? Or are they to feel merely tolerated, to be reminded regularly of their inferior status, and to be told the only way they can be accepted is to ditch their past and try to “fit in”?

Related: The Proms have always kept pace with the world. That’s why they’re so glorious | Nicholas Kenyon

The latter view dominates the national press – every day, newspapers and their columnists attack minorities, immigration, and Islam. Let us not forget that an intellectual hero for many of these writers is historian David Starkey, a prominent media voice for decades, who this summer seemed to almost regret that “so many damn blacks” had survived slavery. If this is what he tells a podcast show, one shudders to think what he says in private to his influential circle of friends.

So, given all the events and the more enlightened thinking on race this year, it should not be surprising if someone in a senior position at the BBC were initially to question whether Rule, Britannia! should be reappraised. And given all this, anyone who believes in race equality should welcome the corporations’s move, and the chance to have a discussion – rather than abandoning the BBC to the rightwing jackals in the media and losing the chance to end this annual supremacist indulgence once and for all.

I’m not for removing all symbols of British history: Winston Churchill, for example, was clearly racist, and helped cause the deaths of millions of Indians during the second world war. But alongside US and Russian allies he saved Britain from the Nazis, for which millions of us remain truly grateful, and he deserves his place on the plinth opposite parliament – whatever some of the voices within the Black Lives Matter movement say.

But Rule, Britannia! is a different thing, and it’s time for a discussion. Does Britain still need to hear these lyrics to feel good about itself? And will it need to keep doing so for the rest of our lifetimes and those of our descendants? If so, God help us. Has patriotism today come to mean the endless glorification of a period of brutality, inhumanity and injustice?

This is the moment for such a debate. This is the year. If not now, when?

• Joseph Harker is the Guardian’s deputy Opinion editor