March school parade
This year was the first time that the Greek School of Wales organised a School parade on the celebration of the anniversary of Greek independence (25th of March). The date is close to the Cyprus National Day (1st of April), so the two are often celebrated together. This year the event took place away from the school and during the celebration “God Save the King”, the national anthem of the UK, was sung with the the Welsh and Greek national anthem.
The following text explains why this is problematic.
The problem of the school parades
The idea of the school parade in Greece developed in the 19th century in an effort to increase the national sentiment among young people with a purely militaristic purpose. Following the Greco-Turkish war (1919-1922) and the burning of Smyrna (1922), this militarism was dampened down in favour of a more inward looking nationalistic sentiment. The parade became a regular event in the national calendar as ordered by the dictator Metaxas in the 1930s and this alone should be enough to explain the scope of the parade, a purely dictatorial activity. Every characteristic of the school parade stems from the military parade, this includes the perceived hierarchy of students, the discrimination against disabled students and the inspection of the parading students by members of the government - typically prime ministers or defence ministers. None of this is relevant to education1.
Greece is a country that has gone through a painful civil war. Following the civil war many Greeks were put in prison, were exiled and murdered because of their political beliefs. The esthetics and nature of such parades were defacto designed to exclude those Greeks and project a nationalistic image of patriotism which has regularly led to disasters in Greek and Cypriot history.
Of course, in Cardiff, the young age of the students and low number of participation does not make these problems too obvious. While seeing 5 year-olds with paper flags in Cardiff Castle may be cute, the purpose of the parade remains the same. The parade on the 25th of March in Greece is inherently problematic as I explained above, but at least it happens within Greece. What purpose do expressions of nationalism serve when they take place in Cardiff Castle? How is Cardiff Castle connected to the Greek and Greek-Cypriot community of Cardiff? How is a parade contributing to the education of the students in the School? Who is excluded from the celebration when such nationalistic events take place? Who benefits from these events? These are all questions worth considering.
Greek immigrants have co-existed with many other communities in Cardiff for many decades and there has been no need for a parade to support such co-existence. It is unnecessary and it gives the wrong message.
The problem with the national anthem of the UK
And then we have the singing of “God Save the King”. My views on the events of the 1st of April 1955 are the subject of another blog post, but Cypriots fought and died to gain independence from Britain. How can we possibly commemorate those who died by singing the UK national anthem? It is completely contradictory. It is an embarrassment and a shame. Arguably Cyprus is still not free from British rule and the events that led to the invasion of Cyprus were the results of the British government trying to rule Cyprus by division. Singing the UK national anthem during our School celebration has now happened and it cannot be undone. We will have to explain this contradiction to our children, but I do not how this will be possible because it does not make sense. We can only apologise for doing it and commit to not doing it again.
I make no analysis over here on the additional sensitivities of singing “God Save the King” within Wales, which would be offensive for many Welsh people for reasons that have been mentioned elsewhere2.
A note about the organisers
I have no doubt that the intention of the organisers was not to exclude, offend or upset anyone. However, we must realise that such decisions are not made without consequences. In a world where the drive towards war is getting increasingly stronger, a national parade outside Greek borders is highly problematic. In a world where Akrotiri is still a British military base, singing the UK national anthem while commemorating victims of British violence is highly problematic.
If formal events require parading and anthem singing to please senior officials, then these are clearly not suitable events for a school community and a clear separation should be maintained.
I am making these comments with every respect and care for the community in the hope that the significance of such actions will be understood and in the hope that we can still salvage a morally correct position.
The Greek Leek