No Tears, No Joy –Elizabeth Windsor Faithfully Served the Rich, the Powerful and the Privileged Throughout Her Reign – She was No Friend of the Working Class or Oppressed

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

With the 200^th centenary of the abolition of the slave trade the Queen failed to apologise either for the slave trade or the Monarchy’s role in opposing abolition.  In her paper, Uncovering Royal Perspectives on Slavery, Empire, and the Rights of Colonial Subjects, Dr Brooke Newman wrote:

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 wounded  tortured. 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.

Tony Greenstein

The Jubilee is a Celebration of 70 Years of Elizabeth Windsor Living At Our Expense

 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.