6 of 7 February 2024 The 1805 Dispatches #24.01 This is the original transcript of a letter written on 31 January by Immediate Past Chairman Bill White, with the support of our President Admiral Sir Jonathon Band KCB DL and Chairman Captain John Rodgaard USN (Ret). The letter has also been copied to the First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Sir Ben Key KCB CBE ADC and David Pickard, Director of the BBC Promenade Concerts. (Note: The letter as it may appear in The Times is likely to have been edited by them. Also, Bill’s address has been omitted by Ed.) To The Editor The Times Rule Britannia Sir There has been much ignorant carping recently in the press, on the radio and elsewhere concerning the inclusion of Rule Britannia in the programme for The Last Night of the Proms. Contrary to the assertions made, the words were not a celebration of slavery but the very opposite – part of a demand for it to be suppressed. Rule Britannia constitutes the final anthem in the Masque Alfred, with music written in 1740 by Thomas Arne for a libretto by Mallet and Thomson. The Masque deals with the resistance of Alfred the Great to the Viking invasions of several hundred years earlier. The Vikings were major slave traders with their main slaving base being in Dublin. The resistance of the Anglo Saxons under Alfred brought the Viking invasion of England to a halt and thus also prevented the introduction of Viking slavery in the areas under Anglo Saxon control. For some years before 1740, slavers from the Barbary coast of Morocco and Algeria had been raiding European countries for slaves, which were taken back to those countries and often treated brutally. The Barbary slavers also ranged up the Atlantic coast of Europe taking slaves from coastal communities as far north as South West England and Southern Ireland. There was especial outrage over the small town of Baltimore on Southern Ireland. where the slavers took every man, woman and child, leaving the town void of people with the peat fires still smoking in the grates. One of the principle aims of the Masque, based on the example of King Alfred's resistance to the Danes, was to pressurise the British government into instructing the Royal Navy to suppress the slaving activities of the Barbary pirates. In this the Navy was successful, reflected in the line “Britons never never shall be slaves.” Then, in the first half of the 19th Century, following Wilberforce’s anti-slavery act of 1807, the Royal Navy was also heavily engaged in suppressing the transatlantic slave trade and it was and is entirely appropriate that the Service should celebrate its success by adopting Rule Britannia as one of its marches. Rule Britannia should certainly be retained at The Last Night of the Proms and there is also a strong case for reviving the Masque Alfredat the Proms. Both commemorate the achievements of the Royal Navy and the nation in suppressing slavery. G W White Vice President and Immediate Past Chairman of The 1805 Club Footnote: Bill has requested a mention of two informative books on the activities of the Barbary slavers. One is Breaking the Chains (ISBN 1 86176 275 5) by the late Tom Pocock, a very helpful longtime member of and Vice President of The 1805 Club. The other is White Gold (ISBN 0 340 79470 4) by Giles Milton. They may be out of print but if so, might well be obtainable from second hand book sites such asusedbooksearch.co.uk (There are many available, I checked. Ed.)
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