Between the Lines: Queen of the Scroungers (1992)

The Between the Lines Column from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Queen of the Scroungers

The BBC's shock revelation that the Queen is a human being with an almost real voice, after decades of giving the appearance of a mindless stuffed dummy impersonating a parasitical insect, was compulsive viewing. Elizabeth R (BBC1, 6 February, 8pm) followed this unelected Head of State for a year in her useless life. It was quite evident that forty years in the job had turned the woman quite barmy, unable to perceive social reality except as a prepared theatrical performance. Her idiotic advisers, recruited from the dregs of aristocratic idleness, always stand up in her presence and call her mam. She is never criticised and is consciously treated with sycophantic worship by her oafish followers.

In one scene she was shown with Kenneth Baker and Neil Kinnock who competed to each give the greater impression that they were indistinguishable from her corgis. The only passion shown by this pointless being in the whole recorded year was once when she was watching her horse come fourth in a race and once when she was entertaining the Reagans on her Royal yacht in Florida. The horse was not interviewed and had no chance to explain why it came fourth, but Reagan was given every opportunity to show that he had a lower IQ than the horse and a remarkably similar enjoyment of luxurious living to any Royal low-life.

In the exchange between Liz and Ron (in which we assume that she thought that he was Margaret Thatcher and he thought she was Oliver North) the Queen declared that, in her opinion, all of the "democracies" (i.e. nations like Britain where governments are elected but Heads of State aren't) are going broke. This was a perceptive remark. We assume that R Liz has been quietly studying Marxian crisis-theory between periods of scholarly examination of The Sporting Life. She then went on to say that countries are going broke because they spend too much on welfare and there are too many people who have grown used to grabbing all they can get. This from the biggest state scrounger in Britain!

So, do socialists plan to abolish the Queen? Why bother when we have a much more ambitious abolition in mind: the removal of the entire capitalist class as a group of legalised scroungers who live off the backs of the wealth-producing majority.

Powerful Sisters

If parasites like the Queen give women a bad name, the superb Channel Four documentary about the Amazon Sisters (3 February, 11 pm) showed the strength of those Brazilian women whose lives are being ruined by the coming of industrial capitalism to the rainforests where they have lived for generations.

These women were not out to ask humbly for this or that reform. They would demean themselves before no monarchical goddess who must be called mam. They were opposed to the coming of wage slavery. They spoke and sang with refreshing directness and passion about their hatred of what the profit system is doing to ruin their lives and the ecology of the area they inhabit — an area which is larger in size than Europe. These women, without formal education or political theories, were able to articulate the antagonism between the power of property and profit and the strength which comes from seeking to retain your humanity without having to sell it on the market.

The Amazonian women will lose their struggle against forces backed by billions of dollars. But their struggle will be won as soon as their fellow workers, in other lands and situations, all realise that it is as wage slaves that we are denied the freedom to control our lives and have access to the goods of the Earth. Watching these women was as refreshingly vital as watching the Queen was tediously depressing.

A Führer for France?

BBC's Assignment (4 February, 7.45pm) was a profile of the French racist leader of the fast-growing Front National, Jean-Marie Le Pen. The man himself is a wild personality, not unlike a Breton Ian Paisley. He is playing on the fears within France that the recession is getting worse (unemployment is at 10 percent) and Arab immigrants are to be blamed for taking away French jobs.

Le Pen is undoubtedly on the rise, as are racist parties in Germany and Eastern Europe. Indeed, it is quite possible that Le Pen could become the next French President; the Front's results in this month's provincial elections will indicate how likely that is. In response to Le Pen the other leading politicians, eager for state power, are trying to outdo him in racist rhetoric. Chirac and Giscard are making speeches which could quite well have been spewed out by Enoch Powell in Britain in the 1960s, and Mitterand's bogus Socialist Party is passing laws to prevent immigrants from having rights in France.

Fifty years ago France was occupied by the Nazis. The first time it was tragedy and Le Pen is rehearsing the farce. Meanwhile, we are quite sure that, if elected, a state banquet for Führer Le Pen will be hosted by Elizabeth R. After all, the first thing that her uncle, Edward VIII, did when he abdicated was to fly to Berlin and pay his respects to his political mentor, Adolf Hitler.

Steve Coleman