The Death of A
Monarch is the Ideal Opportunity To Be Rid of the Monarchy – No one is Born to
Rule Over Us
James Connolly on the occasion of George V's visit to Ireland in 1910
The Monarchy is, by definition, a reactionary institution
based on the hereditary principle not merit. It is there to bind the poor to
their fate, to give us the illusion that however rich or poor we are that we
have something in common. In the inestimable words
of Percy Shelley the Monarchy is “the
String that Tied the Robber’s Bundle” (Shelley)
The Monarchy is the human face of the British Establishment
in all its horrors.An Establishment
which, at this very moment, is forcing millions to choose between eating and
heating as the energy companies are awash with money.
The idea that we have anything in common with the parasites
who rule us, who steal the few assets that we had to hand over to their City
friends, is cockamamie.Patriotism is,
in the words
of Samuel Johnson, ‘the last refuge of
the scoundrel’ and our rulers, as Boris Johnson amply demonstrated,
complete scoundrels.
We are told that Liz ‘never
put a foot wrong’ and it is true.She did a wonderful job for those whose job it is to exploit the working
class and poor.Although even that is
not strictly true. During the period immediately following Diana’s death,
Elizabeth and her coterie were in
danger of being seen to rejoice in the death of this uncontrollable former
member of the ‘firm’.
Despite never having met Virginia Giuffre Andrew handed her over £10m
Not once, ever, did she express any sentiments in favour of
those who are homeless, poor, destitute and without means but you can bet your
bottom dollar that she and the other royal parasites expressed their contempt,
behind closed doors of course, for those whom she reigned over.
The Queen was of course herself a very rich woman so it is
natural that she should sympathise with fellow aristocrats. A tax dodger to the
last, where she led others followed. She was happy to lobby
the government to replace the Royal Yacht even whilst her subjects were
sleeping on the streets. The idea of using her own wealth to purchase it
probably never even occurred to her.
The Royal Family as they like to be known are a bunch of
misfits, dysfunctional to the root. Not only the Prince of Paedophillia, Andrew
but the racist Princess Pushy Michael of Kent who
sparked
fury when she arrived at the Queen’s Christmas lunch in 2017 wearing a
Blackamoor brooch on the day Meghan Markle was formally introduced to the Royal
Family by Prince Harry. Blackamore brooches usually depict an African male as a
servant, and are widely considered racist.
But it’s not about the Royals as individuals but what they
represent.The icing on the very ugly
cake that is the British Establishment. In Ireland the Crown represented
Unionism and the subjugation of the Catholics. In the Empire the Crown
represented the super exploitation of India, Africa and Malaya. Not once did
the Queen or her predecessors give voice to any criticism of the atrocities in
India, Kenya and the West Indies.
Prince William IV defended the slave trade in the House of Lords and was known for his relations with African slaves
Prince William, now the Duke of Clarence, emerged as
a vocal defender of colonial slavery and a leading ally of the West India
Committee in London. In 1799, in a reprinted and widely circulated pro-slavery
speech delivered in the House of Lords, he referenced the long history of
European involvement in the African slave trade and drew on his eyewitness
knowledge of conditions in the Caribbean islands. According to the Duke of
Clarence, the abolitionists had misjudged the effects of the slave trade on
Africa and Africans and grossly misrepresented the treatment of enslaved men
and women in the British sugar colonies. The abolitionist campaign to end the
slave trade, he argued, was not only radical and misguided, like the actions of
the fanatical French revolutionaries, but also deeply damaging to Britain’s
national interests.
The Duke of Clarence later became King William IV. In her tributes
to the abolitionist William Wilberforce, Elizabeth Windsor passed over her own
family’s role in delaying the abolition of slavery.
We are told that the Elizabeth kept her opinions to herself.
Perhaps but there is no doubt on which side of the class divide she stood.She personally invited
her blood-stained relation, the King of Bahrain to attend the Royal Windsor
Horse Show. When his largely Shi’ite subjects rose up against his bloody rule
in the Arab Spring, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa not only set the military on
them but he had the doctors and nurses who tended the woundedtortured.
Yet Elizabeth Windsor had no problem entertaining King Hamad.
Gough Whitlam, Australian Labour Prime Minister, was ousted by the Queen's man in Canberra
When Australia elected a radical Labour Prime Minister Gough
Whitlam it was the Queen’s Governor-General Sir John Kerr who used Royal
Prerogative to overthrow
him in a constitutional coup d’etat and put in the conservative Malcolm Fraser.
When the House of Representatives passed a motion of no confidence in Fraser,
Kerr simply refused
to see the Speaker of the House.
So we can see that when there is a constitutional crisis the
role of the Monarchy can become extremely powerful as it nearly did when the
Queen prorogued
parliament, on advice from Boris Johnson, during the Brexit crisis.In that case the Supreme Court overturned
her order.
The Monarchy is anything but apolitical. It is intensely
political and that is why BBC and ITV are currently boring us to death with
interminal programmes about the death of Elizabeth Windsor. Fortunately this is
likely to have the same effect as occurred with the death of Philip Windsor
when there were a record
number of complaints about the saturation coverage which was carried on
every TV channel.
The close identification between the monarchy and the military
is itself a threat to democracy. In times of crisis, as was signalled
during Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, the Generals could declare
their loyalty, not to Parliament or the people but the Monarch.After all their oath of loyalty is not to the
people but the Crown.
However lest this blog be considered unduly critical even the
most hard hearted would have sympathised with Elizabeth sitting alone in
Westminster Abbey after the death of her husband Philip while Boris Johnson was
throwing
parties in Downing Street.But that
incident in itself demonstrates that our present rulers lack any gravitas or
substance. They are as cheap as the alcohol that they packed into that suitcase
smuggled into a Downing Street Party.
It says a lot about the times we live in that Boris Johnson
has been succeeded by ‘thick Lizzy’ whose meeting
with Elizabeth seems to have given the coup de grace to Elizabeth.
As King Charles III ascends the throne we should perhaps
remember what happened to the first King Charles!A Republic is in sight.
The reason the
BBC wants to bury Diana’s Panorama Interview has nothing to do with fake bank
statements - it’s about protecting Charles
Martin Bashir Interviews Princess Diana
for Panorama 20.11.95.
I don't expect the interview to remain up for long as Youtube has already placed this warning
Recently there was been quite a campaign about that famous
Panorama interview that Martin Bashir conducted with Princess Diana on 20
November 1995. As the day of the Queen’s death approaches and Charles becomes King
and Camilla ascend to the throne (assuming the people don’t rebel), determined
efforts are being made to rewrite the history of Charles divorce with Diana and
the fallout from that interview.
The BBC, whose film it is, might be expected to defend the
interview. However, ever loyal to the British Establishment, the BBC has rolled
over and issued
an abject apology because Bashir apparently used forged bank statements to gain
access to Diana via her brother Lord Spencer:
‘This led to a full-scale independent investigation
by Lord Dyson, published in 2021, after which the BBC officially apologised for
the way in which the interview had been obtained and the unacceptable standards
of its journalism.’
We can expect no better of the BBC than this fawning apology for
what was one of the best examples of BBC journalism. For ‘unacceptable’
journalism one need only look at its coverage of Palestine or its uncritical
coverage of US imperialism in the Pacific.
The interview by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport
Committee of Tony Hall and John Birt, two former BBC Director Generals about
the Diana interview
Diana was not the first woman to enter the British Royal
Family and be repelled by its archaic traditions and protocols, to say nothing
of what she saw and experienced in this dysfunctional family. Nor was she the
first woman to reject the role that she was expected to play as the bearer of a
future king’s children.
That honour belongs to Princess Caroline of Brunswick who was Princess of Wales from 1795 to 1820
and Queen and wife of King George IV from 29 January 1820 until her death on 7
August 1821.
George IV
was already illegally married to Maria
Fitzherbert when he married Caroline. Theirs was not a happy marriage. In
1814, Caroline moved to Italy, where she was reputed to have taken a lover. In
1817 her only child Charlotte died in childbirth. Caroline heard the news second
hand as George had refused to write and tell her.
Caroline
refused George’s demand for a divorce and returned to Britain to assert her
position as queen. George attempted to divorce Caroline by introducing the Pains and Penalties Bill 1820 to
Parliament.
Caroline however
was very popular with the London ‘mob’ whilst George was not. They surrounded
the House of Lords every day; her coach was escorted by the cheering mob
whenever she had to appear there. The evidence against her was that during a
cruise she slept on deck in a tent with her servant Bergami and took her baths
with him in full view of the other servants. In Italy she was in the habit of
wearing dresses open to the waist!
Tim Davie, current BBC Director-General disowns Diana Interview
George lived a hugely extravagant life on the taxes collected
by Parliament, whereas Caroline appeared to live modestly. Satirists and
cartoonists published prints in support of Caroline and depicted George as
debauched and licentious. She received messages of support from all over the
country.
Caroline was a figurehead for the growing radical movement
that demanded political reform and opposed the unpopular George. By August,
Caroline had allied with radical campaigners such as William
Cobbett, and it was probably Cobbett who wrote these words of Caroline's:
If the highest
subject in the realm can be deprived of her rank and title—can be divorced,
dethroned and debased by an act of arbitrary power, in the form of a Bill
of Pains and Penalties—the constitutional liberty of the Kingdom will be
shaken to its very base; the rights of the nation will be only a scattered
wreck; and this once free people, like the meanest of slaves, must submit to
the lash of an insolent domination.
The day before the trial was due to start, an open letter
from Caroline to George, again probably written by Cobbett, was published
widely. In it, she decried the injustices against her, claimed she was the
victim of conspiracy and intrigue, accused George of heartlessness and cruelty,
and demanded a fair trial. The letter was seen as a challenge, not only to
George but to the government and the forces resisting reform.
After 52
days the Lords decided to drop it. George IV’s Coronation was to on 29 April
1821. Caroline asked the Prime Minister what dress to wear for the ceremony and
was told that she would not be taking part.
In
January 1820, George became King and Caroline was nominally queen. However when
Caroline arrived at the door of Westminster Abbey demanding to be admitted she
was refused entrance. She shouted “The Queen…Open” and the pages opened the
door. “I am the Queen of England,”
she shouted and an official roared at the pages “Do your duty…shut the door” and the door was slammed in her face.
Caroline died 19 days later and was
buried in Brunswick, and on her coffin was inscribed… ‘CAROLINE THE INJURED QUEEN OF ENGLAND’.
Another
unhappy princess was Empress Elisabeth of Austria,
(Sisi) consort of Emperor Franz Josef. Elisabeth was a 19th-century Diana: both
were beautiful and charismatic, had unhappy royal marriages and met violent
deaths.
Both
married very young after what were portrayed as fairytale romances. Both felt
ill at ease in their husband’s families – especially Elisabeth who found the
rigid protocol of the Austrian court difficult after her informal upbringing –
and disliked many of her royal duties.
Both
women shared a love of fashion and beauty. Elisabeth’s obsession with keeping
slim led to an extreme diet regime which some modern commentators have
interpreted as a form of eating disorder, akin to Diana’s bulimia.
Both were also famous for the causes they espoused.
Elisabeth was a strong advocate for the rights of her Hungarian subjects. Diana
was famous for the campaign to ban landmines and also her association with gay
people and open espousal of the victims of aids.
ABC - Allegations that Special Forces
killed the princess surfaced during a court-martial.
There have been repeated suggestions that Diana was murdered
by the British state on 31 August 1997. However proving this has always been
difficult since British intelligence are rather coy about what they do!
Certainly the father of Diana’s boyfriend, Dodi, Mohamed al-Fayed believed
that she and his son were murdered.
However what is not in dispute is that the Royal Family were
not exactly saddened by what had happened. Diana had been a running sore and
embarrassment while she was alive. She cast a shadow over the future king
Charles and his adulterous relationship with Camilla.
3 in a marriage was ‘a bit
crowded’
Diana had openly embraced causes such as landmines and Aids
that the royals steered clear of but then there was that interview with Martin
Bashir and the accusation that there had been 3 in what was a ‘crowded’
marriage.
The reaction of the Queen to Diana’s death was to carry on as
normal. The Royal Standard could not be flown at half mast at Buckingham Palace
because the Queen was not in residence. Their reaction was very much out of
cync with the popular mood and we had the spectacle of the likes of the Mail and Express, who saw popular support for the monarchy draining away,
beseeching the monarchy to make it clear that they weren’t celebrating Diana’s
demise (at least not openly).
The Queen had apparently been initially opposed to the use of
an aircraft of the Queen's Flight to bring Diana's body home, much to the
alleged frustration of her advisers. Her deputy private secretary, Sir Robin
Janvrin, is said to have asked
the Queen: 'What would you rather, Ma'am,
that she came back in a Harrods van?' (Harrods was then owned by Al-Fayed.)
Journalists were also briefed that the Prince of Wales had
decisively countermanded the original decision for Diana to remain in a public
mortuary in Fulham, West London. Instead, according to his aides, he'd ordered
that the princess should rest in the Chapel Royal.
But Andrew Morton, whose 1992 book Diana: Her
True Story began the whole drama, (revealing in a later version that Diana had been the main source for the
book) wrote:
public anger was also directed at the Royal Family, not only for their
slow and muted response to the tragedy but also for their indifference to her
during her lifetime. Downing Street officials feared that rioting could break
out.
Courtiers tried in vain to convince the Queen and Prince Philip to recognise the increasingly precarious situation and
fly back from Balmoral.
After the Queen had realised the public mood
she travelled back to London
a day earlier than planned and, for the first time in history, allowed the
Union Flag to fly at half-mast at the palace.
As a senior aide explained:
At Balmoral, she hadn't taken it in. You never know what it is like
until you are actually there.
All the remarks and people hugging each other, sobbing — the whole
nation seemed to have gone bananas. The Queen and Prince Philip felt utterly
bewildered.
Nor did they fully appreciate the impact of Diana's death on the
national psyche. Along with her family, the Queen was mourning the flawed
individual she knew rather than the saintly icon.
In only the second
special televised address of her reign and
‘With a nod to the criticism of herself and
her family, the Queen conceded: 'I for
one believe there are lessons to be drawn from her life and from the
extraordinary and moving reaction to her death.'
It cannot be denied, however, that she'd been
slow to change direction when it became clear she was out of step with the
nation.
What then explains the public reaction to Diana, who was
hardly a radical figure? Compare the reaction to her death to that of Prince
Philip, the husband of Elizabeth. When he died last year the BBC was flooded
with complaints because it had decided to stage the same tributes to him on
every TV channel!
Viewers switched off their TVs in droves after broadcasters aired
blanket coverage of Prince Philip’s death, audience figures revealed on
Saturday, and the BBC received so many complaints it opened a dedicated
complaints form on its website.
Phillip was hardly a figure of adoration. I suspect that when
the Queen dies that the BBC will go in for more overkill and thoroughly
alienate the one-third of the British people who aren’t take in by all the
nonsense about the Royal family.
Why then did Diana and before her Caroline and Elisabeth of
Austria attract such adoring crowds and mass popular affection? Why did so many
people identify with Diana?
To understand this one has to understand the role of the
monarchy itself. For the ruling class it has immense benefits in symbolising in
their person the British state itself. It acts as a unifying force. However rich
or poor you are you can identify with the monarch.
However the monarchy, by its very nature, must retain its
distance from the masses if it is to command their respect. As Walter Bagehot, wrote
in The English Constitution (1867) ‘mystery
is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic.’
So people are encouraged to identify with the royals at the
same time as the monarchy must keep its distance from them. And in these days
when the popular press go over every aspect of their lives it is difficult to
retain much mystery. For most people the royals are aloof andremote. In the case of Andrew Windsor there
is mass loathing and contempt for what is reputed to be the Queen’s favourite
son!
In the case of Diana, as her own personal situation worsened
with the breakdown of relations with her husband she increasingly took on a
public persona of her own. The sheer volume of press coverage of her private
life, a coverage that she both detested and courted, increased peoples’
identification with her as the embodiment of what they would like to be. When it
was revealed that Charles had been carrying on an adulterous relationship with
Camilla when Diana was supposed to be faithful (to the extent of having been
tested for her virginity prior to marriage) then many women in particular
identified with her.
It was all very well Charles telling
Diana that ‘I refuse to be the only
Prince of Wales who never had a mistress.’ but the public was more likely
to sympathise with the wronged woman. In fact Charles seems to have had a string
of mistresses. Spare Rib in the week
of their marriage carried
the headline ‘Don’t Do it Di'!
In some ways the Royal Family, which is the icing on the cake
of a very ugly class riven society, functions as religion, a source of
consolation or in Marx’s words the ‘soul
of a souless world.’ People are encouraged to identify with what is a protocol
riven, parasitic bunch of sociopaths and to imagine that they have something in
common. When someone like Caroline or Diana comes along they can create a mass
following because people see in them a reflection of themselves.
That is another reason why the Establishment and the BBC want
to bury the Panorama interview. According to John Birt, the former BBC
Director-General, it was ‘an absolute
horror story’. If Charles is to gain the support of his ‘subjects’ then it
is necessary that people are taught to forget Diana and pretend that that interview
was not what it seemed at the time. Diana had been tricked into it and her
paranoia fed by tales of malfeasance by the rest of the royals.
The fact is though that Diana never expressed any regrets
over the interview, quite the contrary. She made it clear that she approved of
the fact that she had been allowed at last to tell her side of a marriage in
which she had been expected to produce an heir and a spare but otherwise to
keep quiet.
So her eldest son and second in line to the throne, Prince
William, comes out with the statement that the BBC had used ‘deceitful
behaviour’ to obtain the interview and that the1995 Panorama
interview led to Diana's “fear, paranoia
and isolation”.
Martin Bashir attacked by the fawning, forelock tugging MPs with their synthetic outrage at his 'methods'
Interview
Digital, Culture, Media and Sport
Committee 15 June 2021
Chair: Without
the benefit of hindsight, but considering what you knew at the time, why did
you report to the BBC board of governors that you believed that Mr Bashir was
an honest and honourable man?
Lord Hall: Uppermost
in our minds then was: had the interview with Princess Diana, the decision that
she made to be interviewed, been done fairly or not? That was absolutely
uppermost in our minds. The first investigation we did before Christmas under Tim Gardam talked to all the people concerned
and produced a letter where she said very clearly that she had been shown no
documents by Martin Bashir, she was not made aware of anything by Martin Bashir
that she didn’t already know and she had no regrets, underlined, by the
interview. It is quite interesting that Lord Dyson himself says that an
interview of some sort would probably have taken place anyway. At that point in
our inquiries, in our investigations with Tim Gardam, we came to an end that
there was no case to answer.
The Monarchy is the String
that Ties the Robber’s Bundle – We Have to Make Sure That There is No Charles III
Platinum Jubilee - The
Great British distraction
I imagine that like me you are sick to the backteeth of the servile,
sycophantic, fawning tone of BBC broadcasters and news readers as they compete
with each other to find the most obsequious and servile adjectives to describe
a seriously dysfunctional family.
Their purpose being to convince us that the idea of a hereditary head of state is somehow compatible with democracy. Even the bourgeois kind. One wonders whether there are any other professions - teaching, mathematics, history, which use the hereditary principle as well? Perhaps they operate it at the BBC too, which might account for quite a lot!
For the past 2 weeks, whether we like or not, we have been
bombarded with messages about how grateful we should be that Elizabeth Windsor
has agreed to live a life of unparalleled luxury at our expense, aided by a
subsidies of over £100m annually.
Even the right-wing Tax
Payer’s Alliance isn’t happy with the amount of money spent on the Royal
Family.They wrote:
However, there are also clauses in the Sovereign
Grant Act 2011 which are completely unfair on British taxpayers.
The Act includes a provision that prevents a fall in
the value of the Sovereign Grant. It was put into force this year when the
Crown Estate portfolio fell by more than £500 million in value, after land and
property investments went sour during the pandemic. Instead of taking it on the
chin like every other business owner who has seen their assets hit due to
covid-19, the
taxpayer has bailed the royals out – ensuring that the Sovereign Grant will
not fall in value for the next financial year....
The bailout by HM Treasury means that money that
would have been spent on public services has now been diverted to the royals.
This is expected to give the monarch a grant of £86.3 million for the year
2020-2021. Despite the Act guaranteeing the royals will never make a loss, the
Sovereign Grant has ballooned in size, giving them year on year increases for
the past decade above levels of inflation. In 2016-17 the grant was worth £42.8
million, which steeply jumped to £76.1
million in 2017-18 and continued to rise handsomely until this year. The
royal family have a rising income under this system...
Today’s royals have hardly been as thrifty, showing
little regard for value for money. The Sovereign Grant financial report
uncovered that Prince
Andrew squandered £16k on a private jet travelling to Londonderry from
Belfast in his capacity as Patron of the Open Championship at Royal Portrush
Golf Club in July. As eighth in line to the throne, ‘Air Miles Andy’ could have
set an example by going on an affordable airline instead of a private
jet.
Forbes magazine estimated
the Queen's net worth at around £325 million) in 2011, while an analysis by the
Bloomberg Billionaires Index put it at
about £275 million) in 2015. In 2012 the Sunday Times estimated the
Queen's wealth as being £310 million and that year the Queen received a Guinness World Record as Wealthiest Queen.
The Sunday Times Rich List 2015
estimated her wealth at £340 million. She was number one on the list when it
began in 1989, with a reported wealth of £5.2 billion, which included state
assets that were not hers personally, (approximately £13.2 billion in today's
value). (Wikipedia)
The Queen hobnobbing with the Bahrain King whose Security Forces Tortured Doctors and Nurses who Tended the Wounded who had been Fired on by the King's
If this was any other family they would have child
psychologists and social workers crawling all over them, to say nothing of the
long arm of the law.
It is common knowledge that Andrew Windsor raped and molested
girls half his age and more who were being trafficked by a convicted paedophile
Jeffrey Epstein
and his madam Ghislaine
Maxwell. After all no one gives more than £10m to someone they’ve never met,
as happened with Virginia
Giuffre.
After all Andrew had a cast
iron alibi since at the time he was supposed to be with Virginia. He was
entertaining his daughters at a pizza parlour as well as suffering from an
inability to sweat!
Percy Shelley - radical poet
The Real Purpose of the Monarchy was Spelt Out Over 200 Years
by the radical poet, Percy Shelley when he wrote
that the Monarchy was the ‘string that
ties the robbers’ bundle.’
The Monarchy above all have a political function, not in a
party political sense but as the symbol of an ugly, undemocratic British state
in which a tiny handful of people own the vast majority of wealth whilst
millions of people are living in or near the poverty line.
Three in a marriage was a crowd!
The top 1% in society own 25% of total wealth and despite
exhortations for us to be ‘patriotic’ they have no hesitation in stashing it in
offshore islands beyond the reach of the tax authorities.
It is no accident that the Conservative Party, which is
dedicated to a programme of transferring wealth from the poor to the rich, is
the most overtly pro-Monarchist party. Boris Johnson is happy to take £20 per
week from universal credit claimants whilst at the same time he is falling
over himself to spend £250 million on a new Royal Yacht.
Those who demonise ‘benefit scroungers’ are more than happy
to hand over hundreds of millions of pounds to an already vastly rich family.
As Seamus Milne wrote
the purpose of the Monarchy, above all, is a political one. In times of
constitutional crisis they have potentially enormous power because the organs
of the state, the army and police owe their duty to them not the people.
This is called the Royal Prerogative and it was demonstrated
when Johnson prorogued
i.e. cancelled the ability of parliament to sit. The Queen was happy to go
along with Boris but the Supreme Court decided
otherwise.
Sir John Kerr - author of an Australian coup d'etat
In 1975 this was demonstrated when the Labour Prime Minister of
Australia was removed
by the Queen’s representative, Governor-General Sir John Kerr. As John Pilger
has shown,
this was done in co-ordination with MI6 and the CIA. The CIA were apoplectic
that an American base in Pine Springs might be closed down. Australia has
historically been the US’s closest ally in the Pacific, as we can see today
with the Aukus Pact aimed at China.
Overthrow
of Gough Whitlam
The BBC claimed that the
Queen didn’t know of Gough Whitlam’s removal. She didn’t have to know.She appointed the Governor-General who used
the reserve powers of the crown to overthrow an elected government. What the
Crown did in Australia they can do here.
When people
drool over and fantasise about the Royals and what they get up to, with the
encouragement of the tabloids, they are being shown the ‘human’ side of an ugly
family and an undemocratic institution.
It's not just Andrew who has a fascination for paedophiles - Charles befriended Peter Ball, Bishop of Lewes, who was later gaoled for offences against children - offering him a house on his estate
The
Monarchy is not about the tantrums of Price Harry or the peccadilloes of Andrew
or the tree hugging of Charles.Nor is
it about how Princess Diana was treated 20 years ago when she and Charles separated.
It is about
the British state being represented in human form as a family that British people
can identify with, for good or bad. The Royal Family stand above all for the
idea that however rich or poor you are you can identify with them as a symbol of
national unity.
But Britain
today is not what it was 70 years ago. More than one in four (27%) British people
now support
abolishing the monarchy. As Republic note,
support for retaining the monarchy stands at just 60%, well below the 70-75%
previously reported.
A YouGov
poll carried out for anti-monarchy group Republic found that 41% of 18-24 year
olds want the monarchy abolished whilst only 31% want to keep them. Across all
age ranges that figure stands at 27%.
Ben Wallace & the Slaughter of Black Bears
Labour voters are evenly split,
with 44% wanting to keep the monarchy compared with 43% favouring abolition. Graham
Smith of Republic was quoted as saying that:
"When
looked at alongside other polls in recent years, it appears support for the
monarchy is on a slow puncture."
"Just ten
years ago monarchists were consistently boasting that three quarters of the
population supported the royals, now support stands at just 60%."
Of course a republic in itself is no panacea.The United States and France are hardly more
democratic or egalitarian than Britain despite being republics. A democratic
state also has to be a socialist state where wealth and wealth production is in
the hands of the people and where the economic levers of power are not in the
hands of a tiny minority. But there is no doubt that the removal of this rich,
privileged and selfish family will be a step in the right direction.
Nor is there any need for an elected head of state, a kind of
elected dictator. The problem we have is an unaccountable Prime Minister and
Parliament as Boris Johnson is demonstrating with a raft of Bills to increase
Police powers and clamp down on demonstrations and trade unions’ right to
strike.
