THE ROW over a "patriotic One Britain" song has deepened with a Whitehall source calling Twitter trolls “despicable” for criticising retired police officer Kash Singh for “trying to do good”, a media report said.
Singh is behind the One Britain, One Nation (OBON) campaign supported by the Department of Education, which tweeted to encourage schools to celebrate One Britain One Nation Day on Friday (25) to mark five years of Brexit.
The proposed celebration includes singing a song called the “OBON Day Anthem 2021” though the department said it supported the "broad aims" of the day and not endorsed any specific materials produced by the campaign.
The One Britain song was written by primary school children, as young as seven, and was composed by their music teacher at St John's CofE Primary school in Bradford.
It was later adopted by the OBON campaign. A lyrical video of the song went viral online recently and drew from social media users with some comparing it with extremist organisations’ anthems like Hitler Youth and the song sung by east German communist pioneers.
Blasting the internet trolls, Singh said criticism of the song is “diabolical” and the children who wrote the song would be “so upset”.
“I am absolutely shocked by the response. Where have we gone so far wrong in this country?' MailOnline quoted him as saying.
One Whitehall source said, “It is despicable that a police officer from an ethnic minority background trying to do good has been lambasted in this way by a Twitter hate mob.”
Meanwhile, the education spokesperson of the Liberal Democrats, Daisy Cooper, accused prime minister Boris Johnson of supporting the “barmy brainwashing event” and claimed that children need real investment with a “fully-funded catch-up plan – not weird made-up rituals”.
OBON has previously been known to promote campaigns to celebrate the Queen's 90th birthday in 2016, and the birth of Prince George in 2013.
Karan Johar and Smriti Irani