50 Years Ago: Rubbish about royalty (2025)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The name which has become well known for attacking royalty is the Labour MP William Hamilton. That is a piece of good luck for the journalists and commentators. Hamilton is an earnest nonentity; so the press can have the luxury of criticizing the extravagance and forelock-touching and the secrecy over the Queen’s wealth, and at the same time disparaging Hamilton. He is reported in various papers as saying he does not want actually to abolish royalty.

“The object of my book is not to destroy the Monarchy” (News of the World).

“Sack the lot except the Queen, her husband and Charles. Pay them properly taxed salaries and take over the two Duchies” (Guardian).

Does it matter? Hardly at all. Hamilton gave his case away in a TV interview on 31st January. Explaining the origin of his hostility to royalty, he recalled his father’s wage as a miner between the wars — £2 a week — and went on: “And it is still the same today, there are the rich and the poor.” Yes, it is. One has to ask if he seriously thinks, then, that putting down the royals would alter it? And, if this is still the position after the voluminous Labour reforms for which he has worked, why has he not thought of working for Socialism instead?

But there is an opposite fallacy which should be mentioned too. It is the idea that a surge of resentment of the sheer plutocracy the Queen represents is an indication that the working class are up in arms against the system. Unfortunately, no. The fact is that royalty’s popularity has always had ups and downs. (…)

… [T]he alternative to monarchy could be a dictator, or a Nixon. Looked at from another point of view, this brings us to the truth. Are things any different for the working class in the countries where they have no monarchy? Manifestly they are not. The class division of which royalty is a tiny, if spectacularly absurd, part exists just the same. The great majority spend their lives struggling to make wage-labour’s ends meet, and other people with other titles lap up the fat of the land.

[From the article, Rubbish about Royalty by Robert Barltrop, Socialist Standard, March 1975]

"The Welsh Republic" (1955)

Pamphlet Review from the November 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The Welsh Republic" (Published by the Welsh Republican Movement, Cardiff)

Some while ago the Socialist Standard printed an article exposing the policy of the Welsh Nationalist Party. Recently there has come to our notice a pamphlet printed by a group known as “The Welsh Republican Movement.” We find, on reading, yet again a somewhat familiar dressing for the same old wound—Capitalism—though dressed in somewhat different phraseology.

The pamphlet begins by criticising the Labour Party (emphasising the prefix ENGLISH Labour Party) and explains that whilst it began its growth on sound Socialist ideals including self-government for Wales, it has dropped its early Republicanism for Monarchy, the symbol of class society. This sounds very nice to the Welshman with a grievance (and who hasn’t?) but is really very naive to those who know something about the Labour Party. The Labour Party never was an ENGLISH party, being composed of representatives of the four nations of the British Isles. Its policy has never been Socialist whatever its ideals may have been.

To say that Wales is governed by “English Concepts” (page 3) asks us to enquire “What are English concepts?” Wales, like Scotland, England and Ireland, is governed by “Capitalist Concepts” which bear equally hard on the workers of these respective countries. Of course, there are spasmodic periods when the workers of one part of Britain are relatively better or worse off than those of another area, due to fluctuations of capital investment. At the moment, S. Wales is in the main “enjoying” a boom period in tinplate.

We are also told that England has imposed its Monarchist tradition on an “innately democratic people” (page 3). The Republicans have obviously written their own history book here. The Wales that was conquered and finally integrated with Monarchist England was herself the Wales of the Princes; indeed, to the patriotic Welshman, the finest chapter in Welsh history was the last great insurrection for independence led by Owain Glyndwr, prince of ancient lineage and doyen of the Welsh of his time.

The structure of Welsh society changed in the same manner and from the same causes as existed everywhere else. To talk about the “old classless society of the Welsh Nation” is utterly wrong. The Welsh Nation began on a class basis as did other nations.

With the revolt of the Roman Magnus Maximus and the disintegration of Roman Britain, leading families took over “trwy ganiatâd y Rhufeinig” (by permission of Rome) as the old historian Carnhuwanawe states in Hanes y Cymru. Maximus represents the figure from which flowed the river of the nobility by whom Wales was ruled until the Conquest. The transition to Feudalism of the English pattern was a relatively simple matter in a land where there had already existed for centuries a class society composed of Kings and Princes (Breninoedd a Tywysogion), lords and gentry (Arglwyddi a boneddwîr” and a slave class (caethion).

Not only are the Republicans wrong in appealing the Welsh as “an innately democratic people.” but they ignore the fact that in modern Wales the Caethion (slave class) is for the first time a Majority Class—as slaves to Capitalism.

What are the positive points in the Republican pamphlet? There aren’t any. There is a 12 point manifesto at the end containing generalities, obviously intended to tickle the patriotic palate, e.g., that the monarch of England shall have no jurisdiction over the Welsh Nation (point 2). The pamphlet contains nothing even mildly anti-Capitalist except for opening with a tirade against the Labour Party and closing with a condemnation of Toryism. This is, of course, merely criticism of the manner in which these parties have conducted the system.

The Welsh industrial worker, like his comrades all over the Capitalist world, has been forced from time to time to rebel against the insufferable conditions imposed by Capitalism. The history of the coalfield provides ample proof of this. It is to such people that we of the Socialist Party speak.

Wales can achieve, along with the workers of all countries, the victory which will end for all time the exploitation of man by man. The history of the future will tell of the final assault and triumph of humanity over slavery and humiliation and the world will be the inheritance of the people as a whole.

The voice of the Socialists in Wales is a small but a constant one. All parties are in opposition to it but it persists. It will continue to expose those who, under the guise of liberators, continue to mislead the working class, included in this category being the Republican Movement.

W. Brain

The royal ceiling (2023)

From the October 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Labour Party is currently promising to ‘smash the class ceiling’ (although, with the way things are going, they may have quietly dropped this slogan by the time this article sees press). This is part of their ‘5 missions’: ‘These missions will only be achieved through relentless focus. They require government departments working together. Business working with unions. The private sector working with the public sector. And a common partnership between national and local government’ (tinyurl.com/y7z84czd). So they are committed to ‘break down the barriers to opportunity for every child, at every stage and shatter the class ceiling’.

The strange thing, though, is that they continue to support the existence of the monarchy. After all, if a kid from Bradford dreams of one day being head of state, there is absolutely no opportunity for them to do so precisely because of the sort of ‘entrenched class system with low socio-economic mobility and opportunities to develop skills available to just some’ that they are objecting to.

With the identities of the UK head of state being known for the next, possibly, hundred years, with a whole host of jobs and roles at their discretion to appoint, you’d think that it would definitely be in line for smashing as part of the class ceiling. Starmer himself has been confronted by historic comments about supporting the abolition of the monarchy, but the current Labour Party strategy is to continue to support the crown as part of winning over the Red Wall seats, where support for the monarchy is presumed to be strong.

The process of crowning a new king demonstrated in part how that majority of support is aggressively built: wall-to-wall propaganda for the monarchy filled the airways, backed up by physical force of the police. The campaign group Republic found that out as they got arrested for trying to organise a protest against the coronation (later found to be baseless arrests: even though the organisers had been working with the police to arrange their protest, they were still picked up).

The police have form on this, they had previously lawlessly arrested a group called Movement against the Monarchy (made up of avowed anarchists) to stop them potentially disrupting the Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II (they were compensated for unlawful arrest, but the police clearly felt it was worth the cost to protect the image of the Jubilee celebration).

But the Republic protest group is a nice liberal campaign group, so its members were probably surprised to find themselves on the receiving end of state repression. If their republicanism is about making the idea of a liberal democracy real, the reality of Labour’s smashing the class ceiling is to make inequality real. The content of their detailed document on their mission makes clear that ‘Smash the class ceiling’ is just ‘education, education, education’ striking back undead from the tomb we all hoped it was imprisoned in forever. Skills and training to give people opportunity: Starmer wants to leave the social edifice intact, complete with inequality, but simply give the impression of a fair chance at the starting gate.

Just as with the obsession that economic growth can deliver fairness without having to make any difficult choices about changing social structures, so the idea is that handing out better education will give people better chances of higher paying jobs (but someone will still have to do the unskilled manual and clerical work, and as we saw during the last Labour government, their share of the national wealth stayed static even as the economy grew).

We, of course, don’t want to smash the class ceiling, we want to dismantle the class tower, to sweep away aristocratic and plutocratic privilege and live in a society where everyone is comfortable and has an equal say in how their community should be organised. We stand against Kings and Presidents alike.

Pik Smeet

Capitalist Republic (2023)

Book Review from the October 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Abolish the Monarchy. By Graham Smith. Penguin, 2023. £16.99

This book by the campaign group Republic’s CEO makes clear that its formal aspirations are for a liberal republic. They see the monarchy as something of left-over business (indeed, at one point in the book he actually argues that the rump of royal powers cannot be exercised because of the lack of legitimacy of the Crown, but that a president could deploy those powers: a cry for more executive power seems an odd stance for democrats).

In fact, the liberal fantasy gripping his work is on full display while he segues into discussing an elected House of Lords. Despite bemoaning the lack of imagination of those who can’t think past having a monarchy, he likewise cannot imagine a state without a bicameral legislature (albeit wanting all parts to be elected). Smith’s republicanism is simply wanting to continue the liberal project and sweep away the last vestiges of feudal power.

His book is worth reading for two features, though. The first is for his accounts of being a campaigning activist outside the political machines, and secondly for his attempts to describe a process of big reform to society, such as a wave of activism that sweeps away the monarchy. Unfortunately he doesn’t have a motor, beyond hope, for how this could come about, but nonetheless there is a certain, well, nobility in his continuing to plug away.

Smith, noting the predilection for the BBC to propagandise on behalf of the monarchy, says he is not suggesting a conspiracy, yet for the first half of the book he describes the very real secretive way the monarchy act and the determined way it protects itself. It is an organised conspiracy against the public, and by misunderstanding the nature of power beyond the formal and public roles, he is missing the real class nature of monarchy. Despite this, he is interesting on the actual real wealth the monarchy wields, and the way in which that buys considerable sway alone (especially as it has special access to the laws around which it can operate its businesses).

Pik Smeet

Proper Gander: send in the crowns (2023)

The Proper Gander TV column from the June 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Both of May’s big events were marked by corny rituals, ridiculous costumes and celebrating a country’s figurehead, with the hype cranked up high. While the Eurovision Song Contest comes around every year, there’s a longer gap between coronations. Over the seven decades since the last one, the reach of the media has grown in ways which those who huddled round a small black-and-white screen in 1953 could scarcely have imagined. Then, as now, the TV coverage of the coronation shows us that its pomp and pageantry is a world away from the difficulties endured by the vast majority. Whether the coronation is seen as an affront or a temporary escape from rising prices and struggling public services depends on our individual point of view.

The point of view pushed by the mainstream media was that Charles’ crowning should bolster a sense of pride not just in the monarchy but in the country’s ability to ‘put on a do’ when so much else isn’t running well. The latter also applies to Eurovision, and another similarity between the two events was the central role of the BBC. The corporation had the monopoly over footage filmed in Westminster Abbey during the coronation ceremony, with an agreement that they would be paid royalties (as it were) by other broadcasters using it. As reported by the Guardian on 5 May, this arrangement was made murkier by the coverage being produced by BBC Studios, a for-profit arm of the corporation, with ultimate say over what could be shown decreed by the royal household. On the day, this was communicated to broadcasters every five minutes, with some parts of the ritual vetoed beforehand, such as Charles being greased up with ‘holy oil’. The National Union of Journalists, in particular, was concerned ‘that a public event, paid for by the people and televised for them to be able to pay their respects should be censored in even a small way’. The BBC’s coverage wouldn’t have been much different without these restrictions, though, as it was overseen by Clare Popplewell, whose favour with The Firm was shown by her being appointed as a commander of the Royal Victorian Order following her work on televising 2022’s platinum jubilee.

This explains why the BBC gave only the briefest mentions of the anti-royalist protests, whereas Sky News, for example, gave them more airtime in its own reports. Otherwise, Sky News’ commentary aimed for the stateliness of the BBC’s, throwing in predictably bland phrases such as that Charles is ‘fulfilling his destiny’ and that the ceremony is ‘both ancient and modern’. Anyone tuning in to GB News would have had Nigel Farage and David Starkey for company, lapping up all the tradition. Later, on his Tonight programme, Mark Dolan hosted a ‘coronation party’ for a panel of pundits wide-eyed with enthusiasm for the royals. He talked about the spectacle in sycophantic superlatives, while against protester ‘numpties’ he said that ‘our day’ was an advert for ‘modern Britain’, adding that if the republicans win we would only get a faceless public servant as a figurehead, such as ‘president Gary Lineker’. GB News’ coverage had levels of tackiness you at least wouldn’t get on the BBC.

Channel 4’s coverage was less reverent, with a package of programmes on its website including documentaries reminding us about Diana’s death and Prince Andrew’s incriminating interview with Emily Maitlis, the latter to be the subject of an upcoming drama from Netflix. Sitcom The Windsors’ coronation special saw the event relocated on the cheap to Slough’s Holiday Lodge Express and Charles abdicating. For all its cheekiness, The Windsors ended up with the family reconciled on the Buckingham Palace balcony and the crowd below rejecting a ‘fiscally responsible, slimmed down monarchy to suit these straitened times’ for one that’s ‘full on’. Like all Channel 4’s output, it wasn’t as radical as it would have us believe.

ITV’s coverage has the honour of the most complained about programme of the year so far, following actor Adjoa Andoh saying ‘there is a bit of me that has gone from the rich diversity of the Abbey to the terribly white balcony’. She was perhaps forgetting that in the real world, the nobility isn’t going to be as diverse as that imagined in her show Bridgerton.

A short piece broadcast on Al Jazeera pointed out that jewels used in the ceremonial trinkets brought out for the coronation are a product of the state’s colonial background, including the slave trade. ‘Their king is a symbol of our bitter past which unfortunately translates into our very difficult present’, according to Everisto Benyera of the University of South Africa. Otherwise, the commentary on Al Jazeera was drier and less involved, with historian Linda Porter saying that while the pageantry is something people ‘can be pleased with’, it may not have a wide impact on ‘national pride’. There’s a contradiction in trying to make people feel part of an institution which is outside them. This applies not just to the British monarchy, but to any monarchy, including that of Qatar, whose state funds Al Jazeera.

The various broadcasters’ coronation coverage differed in tone according to their niche in the market, although they still relied on the ‘money shot’ footage from inside Westminster Abbey controlled and sold by the royals and the BBC. For all the mainstream media’s efforts to present the coronation as something for everyone to rally around, within a day there were calls from leaders of commonwealth countries in the Caribbean to ditch the monarchy, and complaints that the police were too keen to use their new powers to arrest protesters. The coronation has exposed tensions in society as much as its glossy spectacle has been a distraction.

Mike Foster

Editorial: Coronation chickens (2023)

Editorial from the May 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

As of 2023 there are still 43 countries in the world with a monarch as head of state. Most of those pampered parasites seem content to stay away from the media and enjoy their exalted status in relative obscurity. Not so in Britain, where the royals are a glitzy public circus act, and this month are staging a huge event that will no doubt grab headlines around the world. Britain seems weirdly addicted to silly medieval ritual. There has never not been a monarchy here, apart from a strange 11-year hiatus following the beheading of one king in 1649. While politicians regularly rise and fall on their swords due to fluctuating polls or appalling performances, it seems that no scandal, internecine row or public disgrace ever dents the popularity of this archaic and anachronistic state institution. It’s not that there’s no anti-monarchy sentiment. YouGov surveys of 18-24 yr olds since 2020 have shown 53 to 67 percent opposition. But politicians are too chicken-shit to come out against the monarchy. The so-called democrats of the Labour Party are as sycophantically gung-ho for the royal freeloaders as the Tories, while the supposedly radical tax-the-rich brigade didn’t utter a squeak over Chas’s £650 million tax-free inheritance. And now the whole country is expected to lose its collective mind as the nobs and toffs convene at Westminster Abbey to plonk a metal party hat on the old plant-botherer.

Socialists will take the free bank holiday hand-out, but otherwise treat the fancy-dress pomp and pomposity of the king’s coronation with the contempt it deserves. We’re no advocates of a capitalist republic – they exploit their workers every bit as much – but having your nose rubbed in class privilege and entitlement is a bit more than we can stand. In republican countries like the US, disingenuous efforts are sometimes made to background, de-emphasise and disguise class divisions. In the UK they are flaunted in our faces. It would be nice to think that British workers, sick of the cost of living crisis, of war in Europe, of lying politicians, of global warming, would at least treat the royals with disgust, if not turf them out of their palaces as a prelude to general socialist revolution. But the truth is that many workers lap up the royals like a dog laps up its own sick.

The Republic website is asking people to use the coronation event to protest, on the grounds that ‘there is a positive, exciting, democratic alternative’ to paying court to yet another gilded idler. They’re right, there is, but it’s not the alternative they’ve got in mind. The real alternative to a king is not some other ruling class finger puppet, whether elected or not. It’s the abolition of inequality and class privilege through the democratic common ownership of the world’s resources, and the collective and responsible stewardship of the planet and everything on it and in it. Not our king? Not our capitalism!

Editorial: Neither monarchy nor republic but socialism (2022)

Editorial from the October 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many UK people will have struggled last month to escape the stadium-volume hullabaloo as the superannuated CEO of The Firm finally hung up her tiara and departed from her pampered life of ‘devoted service’, triggering a long-prepared barrage of nauseating hagiographies, crocodile tears and posturing TV gravitas. At least workers got an extra bank holiday out of it, which helped put the fun back into ‘state funeral’. Meanwhile certain activists, as reported in the Guardian, were keeping a very low profile, for fear of being trolled, cancelled or petrol bombed for the political viewpoint that, for the time being anyway, dared not speak its name: republicanism, the quest for the abolition of the monarchy. And this despite membership applications for Republic getting a sudden big boost, amid breathless speculation that, while Madge’s invincible popularity had stomped good and hard on those pesky anti-royalist weeds, the ascension of the royal Plant Whisperer might have the opposite effect on grass-roots republicanism, and see it shoot up to new and historic Beanstalk heights.

Socialists have a strong aversion to doffing their caps to anyone, especially to someone who thinks they’re superior because their ancestors wore beads in their hair and stole all the common land. We have every sympathy for people who see the monarchy as an absurd and anachronistic feudal cult which fetishises the class system and should have stayed lopped off at the time of the first King Charles. Historians will scratch their heads and wonder how supposedly rational people thought a bejewelled dynastic blow-up doll had any place in an advanced and civilised society. The only problem is, this isn’t an advanced and civilised society, and abolishing the monarchy wouldn’t make it one either. It would merely result in the same capitalist system of brutal class exploitation with some other figurehead at the top, leaving the super-rich class of narcissistic yacht-fanciers entirely free to go about their business of laying waste to the planet.

The monarchy is about as relevant to the lives of working people as Cowes Week or the final rubbish season of Game of Thrones. It may be a relic from the feudal period, but so are umbrellas and Morris Dancing. We say, instead of spending your waking hours trying to get to where you already are, minus a bit of silly made-up ritual, better to devote time to the vastly more important task of promoting the idea that graces the cover and forms the theme of this special issue: what we mean by socialism. Because socialism is all about where humans can go in the future, once we’ve broken the armlock that the money and market system puts us all in. Would there be kings and queens in this socialist future? Absolutely, in historical re-enactments or period film sets, at fancy dress parties, in chess and on the decks of playing cards, and in fairy stories of long ago and far away.

50 Years Ago: Leopold (2000)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The recent disturbances in Belgium over the return of King Leopold provide a good illustration of how the Communists and Social Democrats waste their time. The Daily Worker (4-8-50) praised the leaders of “this historic movement,” or at any rate the Communists among them. After Leopold returned, said the article, “it took the Belgian working class just five minutes to get angry and five days to get organised.” It applauds the “working class unity” that was attained; it describes the strikes, the riots and the processions, and talks about “this great class battle.” And it leads up to the triumphant conclusion when Leopold agreed to hand over his powers to his son Baudouin—though it blames the Social Democrats for not having insisted on his complete abdication.

When all the shouting and the shooting was over, what had happened? Before the agitation against the king, the Belgian workers were being exploited by the Belgian owners under the nominal presidency of someone called Leopold; after the agitation, the Belgian workers were being exploited under the nominal presidency of someone called Baudouin. Which makes a lot of difference. And yet to obtain such an insignificant change, the “Left-wing” parties strained all their energies, and three men who were following the lead of these parties were shot by the police at Grace-Berieur. The three men were called “martyrs,” and the name is just; the men were martyrs to the ideas of those “leaders” of the working class who, instead of encouraging the workers to understand and bring about encouraging the workers to understand the bring about Socialism, spend all their time in noisy pursuit of aims which in the end bring no benefit at all to the workers.

(From “‘Passing Comments”, Socialist Standard, October 1950)

Editorial: Queen Capital’s jubilee (2022)

Editorial from the June 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism, as we have pointed out many times, is a class-divided society, where there is a capitalist class who own the means of production and derive their wealth from the working class, who own no or little property and are forced to work for a wage or salary. Huge disparities in wealth and income between the two classes are the inevitable outcome. In the UK, the most visible manifestation of this class divide is the royal family, who sit at the apex of the class system. They own large palaces and tracts of land around the country and enjoy luxurious lifestyles, whereas workers live a more frugal existence and have to live in more modest dwellings, in many cases slum housing.

This month the state is holding the queen’s platinum jubilee, celebrating that the monarch has been 70 years on the throne. Showy events, naff TV programmes and local street parties will inevitably be organised. This occasion is an opportunity to reinforce the idea that privilege and hierarchy are part of the natural order of things and to encourage deference among workers towards their superiors. It will also be a festival of nationalism and patriotism, so whether you are a worker struggling on low pay or benefits or you are a billionaire, you can take pride in your great British ‘heritage’.

These celebrations are coming at a time when workers are facing the biggest cost of living crisis for decades. There are royalist supporters who would argue that people need to be cheered up in these hard times. No doubt, a worker who is facing a choice between eating or heating their home will be thrilled to watch some sycophantic arselicker on the television droning on about how wonderful the queen and her family are. The capitalist state has graciously allowed the workers an extra day off from their daily toil. How very generous.

Some opponents of royalty, including some on the left, complain that the royal family leeches off the taxpayers and that they should be made to pay their fair share of tax. This misses the point somewhat as the tax burden falls on the capitalist class, not the working class. The royals derive their wealth and privileges not from any tax advantages but, as with the rest of the capitalist class, from the surplus value created by the working class.

Some groups, like Republic, advocate the replacement of the monarchy with an elected head of state. This would make no material difference to the lives of workers, as the basis of capitalist society, with its pursuit of profit and exploitation of labour, would remain unchanged. We can see this clearly in countries that do have an elected head of state. In France for example, there have been strikes by public sector workers and protests by the gilets jaunes movement and in the USA there has been industrial action among the Walmart workers. In both countries, poverty exists alongside riches, as in the UK.

So the solution is not merely abolishing the royal family, but the economic system upon which their power and privileges are based. A system that exploits and oppresses workers and is responsible for the climate crisis. We argue that the world’s workers need to organise democratically to replace it with socialism, a world of free access and common ownership. Anyway – enjoy your extra day off.

Correspondence: Socialism, the King and the House of Lords (1934)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent asks the following questions:— ,

  Will you please define the S.P.G.B.'s attitude towards the question of Royalty and Republicanism under a Socialist State? Also how would the S.P.G.B. deal with the House of Lords?

Reply.

Whatever part the institution of kingship has played in the past history of the human race and whatever part it now plays under the social system known as capitalism, neither monarchism nor republicanism will be issues under Socialism. The original functions of kingship have already long been lost and are only saved from oblivion because the memory of them is preserved in certain ancient names, ceremonials and pale imitations. Nowadays, although King George V of England and Emperor William II of Germany, and Emperor Nicholas of Russia and the President of the French Republic, went forth. to the seat of war in 1914, nobody seriously believed that they were there to lead or to direct the huge fighting forces of the capitalist State. It was just a piece of make-believe, but a highly important piece. Capitalism, both in war and in peace, under a monarchy and under a republic, inevitably produces a never-ending conflict between the classes—the owning class and the property-less class—and between sections of the same class. It is therefore essential that the capitalist class shall be able to cover up the yawning gulf between these antagonistic classes by throwing over it the cloak of national unity. This is one of the principal functions of the Church, and, above all, of the monarchy, or the Republican President. Surrounding the King or the President, the capitalists carefully build up a structure of ceremonies, hallowed by tradition, glorified by a lavish display of riches, and sanctified by the Church and the capitalist political parties.

Take away the class antagonisms by taking away the private ownership of the means of life and then the monarchist or republican edifice will be unnecessary. The members of society will be bound together by the tie of mutual interest. They will no longer have to be forced into a mockery of unity by the gloved hand covering the mailed fist.

It will be seen that the attitude of the Socialist is not at all that of the republican. The S.P.G.B. would not support capitalist republicans in an attempt to overthrow monarchy any more than it would help to defend the monarchy against republicanism. When, three years ago, the Spanish monarchy was overthrown, the reformist parties in Spain, as in England (the I.L.P., for example), were overjoyed at what they supposed was the inauguration of a new and better system of society. The S.P.G.B. declined to participate in the celebrations, for we know that it is immaterial to the working class whether they live under a capitalist monarchy or a capitalist republic.

The House of Lords presents no serious problem. When there is a majority of Socialists, politically organised for the purpose of achieving Socialism, the House of Lords will not be permitted to stand in the way. It, like the trappings of monarchy or republic, will have no function to perform under Socialism. It will end when capitalism ends.

The idea that the House of Lords will prove a final bulwark of capitalism is based on illusion. When the capitalists can no longer obtain a majority for their candidates at Parliamentary elections they will know that an unrepresentative body like the House of Lords will not be able to help them. It will prove a broken reed, if ever there was one.

Ed. Comm.

John Bull's sacred cow (1965)

From the December 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is pathetically easy to poke fun at Royalty. Look at any copy of Private Eye for the yobly kind of satire, or “This England” in the New Statesman for authenticated stories about incidents such as the removal of lavatory signs “to avoid embarrassment” during a royal visit. The trouble with such side-swipes, however, is that they leave the basic nature of the institution unexamined and untouched. (Indeed, for the satire industry to survive it is imperative that this butt of its jokes remains unchanged.)

A more difficult, but also more useful, job is to define the exact position of the Queen and the Royal Family in relation to the rest of society. For until we have an understanding of the total situation, we have neither the ability, nor do we grasp the need, to change the social structure.

The first and most obvious point is that the Royal Family are members of the capitalist class. That is, they own so much wealth, in the form of vast estates, that it is economically unnecessary for them to work. This means, for example, that they can enjoy themselves at Ascot and similar places as often as they please, without having to pinch an afternoon off from the office or to wait for their week of night-shift to come round (Not that most of us could afford to go to Ascot even under these conditions). It also means that, like the rest of the capitalist class, the Royal Family can have the very best of everything without having to worry about the price.

However, the position of the Queen and her family within this ruling class is, of course, quite unique—and in a paradoxical way which her title would not lead us to believe. Whereas some capitalists, when they tire of Cannes and caviar, may wish to turn their unoccupied minds to politics it is expected of Royalty that they should be above this sordid fray. The Duke of Edinburgh will be tolerated when he tells the workers in industry to “pull their finger out” but if he starts giving more specific advice on British Foreign policy he hits the national headlines.

As regards the Queen, too, we may agree with the official statement:

  “In law, she is the head of the executive, an integral part of the legislature . . .  In practice, as a result of a long evolutionary process during which the absolute power of the monarchy has been progressively reduced, the Queen acts only on the advice of her ministers, which she cannot constitutionally ignore. She reigns but she does not rule. The United Kingdom is governed by Her Majesty’s Government in the name of the Queen." (Britain. An Official Handbook, H.M.S.O. 1965.) 

Stripped of its verbiage this means that despite all the traditional bull, the Queen is merely a rubber stamp.

In this respect the Royal Family provide a glaring example of the redundancy and strictly parasitic nature of the capitalist class in general. Not only do they perform no useful social function but they do not even have to defend their own class interests. Most capitalists choose not to go into politics, and a large part of managing capitalism is willingly undertaken by political careerists from the working class.

Ambassadors
Now it has been argued that the Monarchy does perform a useful function on the grounds that a Monarch can create more good-will the world over than a mere president. Philip and Elizabeth, it is said, are worth their weight in gold as unofficial British ambassadors. But what do their lengthy foreign tours, with all their enormous expense, really achieve? Good-will soon gets flattened under the steam-roller of political reality, as numerous conflicts within the Commonwealth have shown. The fact that both India and Pakistan owe some sort of allegiance to the same monarch does not prevent them from tearing each other’s guts out. And even the great love which the Europeans are reputed to have for Her Britannic Majesty could not get Britain into the Common Market.

But even if it is conceded that these ambassadorial missions have a certain measure of success, that the foreigners warm to us and as a result are more inclined to Buy British—what relevance does this have for those of us whose lives are taken up in earning enough to go on living? It simply means that the wealth which we produce but our employers own may be more easily disposed of on the world’s markets —without this necessarily benefiting us in any way. Thus if the Royal Family can be said to have any function at all, it is that of being public relations officers for the British capitalist class. The latter, after all, are the only people who have anything to sell abroad.

Finance
As for the “reward” (one could hardly call it wages) which members of the Royal Family get for going on long holidays and reading an occasion speech, it certainly proves them to be worth their weight in sterling. The Civil List, the amount of money given every year to the Royal Family, is made up as follows:

It would perhaps be more fitting if members of the Royal Family stood up for the rest of the population when the National Anthem is played, to show that they appreciate such benevolence. They are given more every year than most of us earn in a lifetime, and in effect they are guaranteed an annual pools win without even filling in a coupon.

As if this were not enough Sir Charles Petrie, in a bigoted anology for the institution of the monarchv (The Modern British Monarchy), laments that certain ladies of the high aristocracy are not included in the list of annual pensions and are forced to “sell their trinkets at Sotheby’s.” He is quite blind to the fact that most non-aristocratic ladies haven’t got a single trinket they would be able to sell at Sothebv’s, nor will they ever save enough to be able to buy one. In essence his statement contains the same absurdity as one made recently by another Royalist: “The Royal Family are really quite poor, you know. They have so many palaces to maintain.”

A second bogus point which Sir Charles borrows from The Times and uses in his book is that since the Exchequer receives more in taxes from the Royal Family than it pays out for the Civil List, “the nation makes a profit out of the Royal Family.” Here again the argument conveniently ignores one side of the facts. For example, we should hardly feel it was the whole truth to say that the nation makes a profit out of someone like Charles Clore on the grounds that he pays taxes and receives no annual pension. We would conclude, naturally, that he must be receiving from somewhere even larger amounts of money than he pays in taxes. And since he is not a member of the employed class his income must be from shares, interest, property and the like.

Moreover, it is quite wrong to say that taxes are a profit of the “nation" in the sense of the majority of people in the country. The taxes go to the government, which uses them in a variety of ways to support and maintain the capitalist machine.

We can only assume that this is the case with the Royal Family, whose income derives from their vast estates and property. This brings us back to our first point: the Royal Family, with all the special and unique features we have considered, are members of the socially superflous capitalist class. ,

Changing altitude
What, now, of current attitudes to this archaic institution in an archaic form of society? The satire we noted earlier is perhaps symptomatic of a more critical and sceptical view with regard to royalism. Most of us have been caught up in the stampedes out of the cinema at closing time and some circuits have given up playing the National Anthem at all.

Such attitudes are preferable to an unquestioning reverence, but they do not go nearly far enough. They do not point the way to any effective form of action; they amount at most to grudging resentment, and at their most innocuous merely to condescending amusement. This is inevitably the case as long as one institution of capitalism is considered in isolation from the rest of society.

For this reason there is no reason to support republicans, who want to abolish the monarchy in favour of an elected head of state such as a president. Presidents command as much extravagant luxury as kings, and top politicians pig themselves to the same excessive extent as Henry VIII (See the photos of the Lord Mayor’s Banquet any year). In short, as long as there is a ruling and a subject class, the top ranks of society will always enjoy the same order of privileges.

Conclusion
Men have come a long way since they believed that Royal Privilege was divinely given, but they have not yet realised that this and every other kind of privilege rests in the last analysis on the private ownership of the means of life.

When they do realise this and take the necessary steps to establish common ownership of and free access to wealth (and that won’t be until you do), then there will consequently cease to be classes, ranks land/hierarchies in society. There will be no Your Majesties, Your Graces or Your Honours, and any respect which individuals command will be based entirely on their merits as useful Contributors to the worldwide co-operative community.

Finally, to those people who anxiously ask “What would happen to the Queen in socialism?” We can only say this: as we have shown, she would cease to be a queen and a member of the capitalist class. The only person who can give you more information than that is Elizabeth Mountbatten.

Keith Graham

Brief Reports (2012)

The Brief Reports Column from the May 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

David Cameron called for openness and a lifting of trade bans on Burma after visiting the capital Nay Pyi Taw, where he met President Thein Sein.  Later he had a private dinner with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon. Speaking of his meeting with the great pro-democracy leader he said: ‘It was a privilege to sit down with Ms Suu Kyi and try to flog her tanks and rocket launchers.’

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A test rocket launched from North Korea which broke up after one minute was a resounding success, according to North Korean sources. The rocket exploded as a ‘birthday firework’ for the nation’s long-dead leader Kim Il-sung. A spokesman for the NK Space Agency said: ‘We have the technology to rain scrap metal upon any capitalist lickspittle within a twenty mile radius. Let our enemies tremble.’ In separate news, South Korea reacted nervously to reports of NK tunnelling for an underground nuclear test: ‘We want to know just how far they’re tunnelling’.

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The government is exploring new types of pension schemes that would give more security to retiring workers. In an interview on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Minister for Pensions, Steve Webb said: ‘Firms would like to offer their employees a degree of certainty in these uncertain times. We can certainly help by offering workers cast-iron guarantees that they will get nothing out of us when they retire. We think people should shoulder the personal responsibility of disposing of themselves at retirement age in an ecologically-sustainable manner. Wheelie bins will be provided for this purpose at an affordable rate.’

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Hosepipe bans affecting about 20 million customers have been introduced by seven water authorities in parts of southern and eastern England.Thames Water said this week that the bans were unavoidable due to the unprecedented drought of money for fixing leaks. In a statement the regulator, Oftwat, said: ‘If we fixed all the leaks we would save 3.36bn litres per day in England and Wales, but then we’d make no profit at all so clearly sacrifices need to be made by the great unwashed by, um, not washing.’ Meanwhile the water minister Richard Benyon has hit out at claims he left his hosepipe running the day after the hosepipe ban came into effect: ‘It wasn’t a hosepipe. I was just teaching the kids how to water-cannon the local oiks’.

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Iran has blocked access to the official website for the London 2012 Olympic Games, after previously stating it might boycott the Olympics over claims that the official logo spells the word ‘Zion’. The logo designers reject this, saying instead that the logo represents an exploded diagram of the religious fundamentalist brain. It now seems likely that no information about the 2012 London Olympics will reach anyone in Iran. Bookings from Heathrow to Tehran are expected to increase by a factor of 9000 as a result.

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A London 2012 official has admitted Olympic events could be disrupted by ‘one idiot’ after the University Boat Race was halted by a swimmer. British Olympic Association chairman Watt Sallthe Fussabout said it would do all it could to protect athletes in the Games: ‘I can assure sports fans everywhere that Boris Johnson and Francis Maude will be kept indoors with a bottle of gin and a games console throughout the proceedings.’

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The Law Commission has proposed the abolition of 800 antiquated laws, although these do not include the many imaginary ‘laws’ such as the law against eating a mince pie on Christmas Day, or the right to shoot a Welsh person with a longbow on a Sunday in Chester. According to British urban legend, says the Law Commission, there is an ancient law which allows a single individual to wear a metal hat, wave a wand and own every strip of land in Britain. This mythical person would be known as a ‘King’ or ‘Queen’ and would be entitled to lord it over everyone as if they owned the place, which indeed they would. A legal spokeswoman said ‘I really don’t know how these myths get around. It’s on a par with the one about taxis having to keep a bale of hay in the boot. It’s amazing that people still fall for it.’

'A Banner with a Strange Device.' (1908)

From the September 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Shoreditch Branch of the Social Democratic Party has a banner of which, no doubt, the members are exceedingly proud. It bears what at first sight would appear “a strange device.” But when one recollects the hopeless confusion obtaining in the ranks of the S.D.P., when one remembers its pro-capitalist tactics and propaganda, ’tis not such a very strange device after all. “Reform Delayed is Revolution Begun” it reads, but it must not be regarded as an injunction to the working class to oppose reform with the object of beginning the revolution. That is not the intention of the Social Democratic Party, as is evident by a reference to the list of “immediate reforms” (commencing with the most immediate— “the Abolition of the Monarchy”) of which its program is composed, it appears on the S.D.P. banner as a warning note to the exploiters. “Do you wish the revolution delayed?” asks the S.DP. of these, "because if you do, pass the reforms we advocate in our program. We know,” they sometimes add, “these will not affect the position of exploiter and exploited in the least, still, pass them as soon as possible.” They will assist the exploiters to maintain their supremacy, and therefore it will be to their interest to pass them.

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If any member of the Shoreditch or any other branch of the S.D.P would like to dispute the conclusions we of the S.P.G.B. draw, the columns of The Socialist Standard are always open. We may, after all, be wrong. We are not popes and claim no infallibility. We are always willing, and indeed anxious, to hear the other side, and to give all our readers an opportunity to hear it also. We know the Social Democratic Party claim that they object to palliatives "if they obscure the issue.” Well, what is the issue? Briefly, it is that so long as capitalism endures the workers must be poor. Exploitation of the working class by the master class is the essence of capitalism. Exploitation means that the wealth which the working class alone produce is taken from them, and therefore they are poor, degraded, brutalised. The master class will not get off the backs of the working class as the result of appeals by the S.D.P. or anybody else. The workers will he enslaved so long as they remain there, and therefore nothing but the establishment of the Socialist Republic will avail. The advocacy of anything short of this obscures the issue, side-tracks the working class, causes them to devote their energies to reforms instead of to organising for the revolution, and ultimately lands them in the bog of disappointment and despair. If, as members of the S.D P. sometimes state, they are opposed to the advocacy of reforms if they obscure the issue, they should at once give up the program by which they set such store, and work only for the revolution. That, of course, means leaving the S.D.P. and joining the S.P.G.B.

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The receipt of a copy of this paper is an invitation to subscribe.

Princesses and Piecans (1947)

From the June 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The advent of the 21st birthday of the Princess Elizabeth, heir presumptive to the throne of England, has, as is usual on such occasions, been accompanied by great pomp and ceremony.

That this ceremony and celebration took place in South Africa, where the young woman was “strengthening the bonds of the Empire," in no way prevented us from knowing all the details, as the newspapers of this country blossomed forth in an ecstacy of adulatory and servile slush.

The editorials of our national daily newspapers (except the Daily Worker, of which more anon) have vied with each other in a nauseating exhibition of sycophantic flattery, reiterating the assurance of the love and respect of her loyal and humble subjects.

Mr. Attlee and his colleagues also felt impelled to join the adulatory chorus, Attlee describing himself as Her Royal Highness's humble and obedient servant. As well as the spate of words other and more material presents were showered on the Princess, including many thousands of pounds in cheques and jewellery.

Much emphasis was laid on how good, how gracious, how wise, Elizabeth and the rest of the Royal Family are and what a great gulf separates them from the common run of people. Gods, in fact, among the mortals. The working class of this country, however, wasn't greatly impressed and viewed all this to-do with a tolerant if cynical eye, only really sitting up and taking notice when the “Evening News'' (21/4/47) for example published the news that Elizabeth received, on attaining her majority, an increase in her emoluments to £15,000 per annum, and also that her royal father receives from a grateful State an official annuity of £410,000 in addition to his private income.

The general reaction of the workers to this item of information was one of dissatisfaction and resentment and it was widely argued that, as monarchs performed no useful task, monarchy could well be abolished and that, if this were done, the huge amounts of money saved would benefit the working class. This, of course, is not the case. It is the old fallacious argument, so often used by reformists, that goods or money, gained or saved by the State will ultimately benefit, or relieve the burden on the working class. It shows a complete misunderstanding of the Capitalist system of society and of the position of the working class within it.

The cost of maintaining the Royal Family is a charge upon the Capitalist class of this country, for whom the Royal family perform a useful function.

This useful function consists of being the figureheads of the State, of stressing the distinctions of caste and class, of upholding the monstrous deception that the ruling class are of finer clay and of higher intellect and instinct than the working class, of keeping alive and virile the emotions of nationalism, patriotism and tradition and of providing the leading figures in such things as State poppy-shows and processions.

For that task performed well the British Capitalist class is prepared to pay handsomely, as they consider that British Capitalism—up to this stage at all events— functions most effectively through a democratic form of administration with a monarchy at its head.

Hence, they are prepared to subsidise monarchs at present, but just so soon as monarchs become an unnecessary nuisance or a drag on British Capitalism, then the Capitalist class will soon see that they get what any other unnecessary or unsatisfactory employees get, the sack.

The absurdity of the contention that the cost of maintaining monarchs and their families is in any way borne by the working class is very easily shown.

Monarchs or no monarchs, the working class only receive back from the sale of their energies sufficient to keep and perpetuate them as an efficient labour force.

The worker should know, by bitter experience, that his wages at all times are based on the cost of living, i.e., the lowest amount necessary to produce, maintain and reproduce his power to labour and that, subject to some fluctuation of supply and demand, he gets no more than that, whether or not huge sums of money are paid to monarchs, politicians, prelates or any other servants of Capitalism. However, it is interesting to note that the Daily Worker (21/4/47) goes a little further in muddleheaded thinking.

Declaiming against this “monster monarchist build-up'' it attacks the educational, political and intellectual qualifications of Princess Elizabeth for “a great public office," and goes on to say “The institution of monarchy is an anachronism in the middle of the 20th century," concluding with this gem, “The dignity of a modern State can only be met when its titular head is chosen from among its most eminent citizens."

So there we have it.

In a few self-chosen words the fundamental misconception of the issue (from a working class standpoint) is shown by these piecans who pose as working class champions.

Their objection, obviously, is not to kings or figureheads as such, but to the “closed shop" in monarchy and to the title.

They would apparently be perfectly satisfied if the function were performed by a (working class?) leader, Harry Pollitt perhaps, and if the designation were altered. Maybe Marshal or Generalissimo would meet the case.

It is not the abolition of kings nor the better education or political skill of their heirs, that will solve working class problems, nor is it their replacement by “leaders" or “heads," working class or otherwise. The cause of workers' problems is Capitalism itself and not until workers understand this and organise together to abolish Capitalism and establish Socialism, can these problems be solved.

To abolish monarchs leaves Capitalism and all its evils intact but to abolish Capitalism disposes with monarchs at the same time.

The C.P.G.B. considers that Capitalism can be run more effectively under the guise of State Capitalism and still more effectively if administered by the C.P.G.B.

For who’s benefit, you might ask?

Well, certainly not for the benefit of the workers.

J. P. H.

Mass debating with barmy Bernie (1997)

The TV Review column from the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Usually there is much competition for the dubious privilege of which programme has plumbed the lowest depths of inanity and humbug in the period before this column goes to press. Last month there was no contest. Not even Richard and Judy or Ricki Lake came close to matching the televisual disgrace which masqueraded as informed debate under the title of The Monarchy: The Nation Decides (ITV, 7 January).

Billed as the biggest exercise in democracy ever seen on British television, this programme told us all we need to know about the nature of democracy that exists in capitalist society. Virtually every aspect of it, from the so-called "debate” format, to the paucity of the views expressed by the invited panellists through to the uncontrolled (and allegedly rigged) telephone poll, went to demonstrate that democracy in capitalism is largely sham democracy.

Nothing more than a soundbite was allowed, most of the debate was taken up with whether the Royal family are "value for money" (whatever that means) and as Roy Greenslade explained in the following day's Guardian, the audience of 3,000 had been whipped up into a near hysterical frenzy before the show so that by when the 'debate' actually started it resembled little more than a bear garden.

Large sections of the audience, invited from several cities around Britain, simply shouted, heckled and cat-called on a mass basis for the entire duration of the programme. This meant that the little debate that would have been possible was rendered useless—and clearly by the design of Carlton TV who commissioned and ran the whole thing.

In a sense it was understandable that the audience—or a least a sizeable enough part of it—should have behaved in such a way. It was probably the best chance they had of stemming the tide of verbal diarrhoea emanating from the panellists. Nonetheless, some seeped through and the stench was truly repellent

Particularly odious, as a representative of the monarchists, was author Frederick Forsyth. Though coherent in an entirely tangential manner, Forsyth’s bad-tempered performance was sufficient to bring a whole host of rather unkind epithets to even the most considerate reviewer’s mind—like 'arrogant', ‘bumptious’ and ’surly’, these being the least descriptive but at the same time those least likely to result in a libel action. Forsyth’s main defence of the royals was that they are an economic bonus for Britain. To echo this point, he shouted at his hecklers “Your jobs are at stake!," claiming that any expenditure on the Royal Family is easily outweighed (he even had some figures) by the tourist revenue they create every year. It was possible to imagine the millions of rich tea-towel makers and commemorative mug engravers across the length and breadth of the country nodding sagely in approval. The suggestion that the multinationals and big-time capitalists were the real beneficiaries of all this (if there are any at all) was not considered. The programme producers had neither the time nor inclination to let anyone string more than two sentences together and a coherent reply to this nonsense, if any had been forthcoming, would have been near impossible.

Arise, Sir Bernie

One panellist smartly retorted that Forsyth would be better off sticking to writing Fiction, something he evidently knows a bit about, but what poor old Bernie Grant is good for is anybody's guess. A knighthood perhaps, or an early peerage. Never a stranger to controversy, one might have anticipated that Grant’s presence on the panel was guaranteed to set the cat amongst the pigeons. But, no. Bernie knows which side his bread is buttered on and launched into a sycophantic eulogy of the Queen that would have put Dame Vera Lynn to shame. Elizabeth was a marvellous head of the Commonwealth, he claimed, and did an awful lot to help all the poor black people in Africa.

It was obviously beyond Bernie’s comprehension that the Queen and her like, and the system they uphold, is the reason for their poverty and misery in the first place. But never mind, she's so gracious and has such a lovely warm smile as she walks among the malnourished. Well, she can continue to smile very big smiles indeed with suckers like Bernie Grant to do her bidding for her.

Most of those who plucked up the courage to oppose the monarchy, including those who rang in, did so with the proviso that they wanted a nice, respectable Head of State—a leader to look up to. Bizarrely enough, Princess Anne was the most popular choice followed by monied clown and failed balloonist Richard Branson. As such, the legions of republicans proved themselves little better than the raving monarchists. But then again, why should we expect them to be any different? These are, after all, people who vote for the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats or the Greens and are therefore fully tuned in to what can be expected in an inherently hierarchical, class-ridden and exploitative system like capitalism.

Even if Carlton had provided for a proper debate format, it would have been to no great effect. For does anyone still expect serious arguments for social equality from such people and their elected representatives? Frankly, it is no more likely to come from them than it is from the Duke of Edinburgh. and if this dreadful programme had even one little thing to commend it, it must have been the obviousness of that. 

Dave Perrin

Rubbish about Royalty (1975)

From the March 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the more risible sights of capitalism is when its politicians and journalists think they must appear to be down on unfair stakes. The crisis does it, of course. Here is the Man in the Street, and they have nothing to offer him but unemployment, cuts, shortages and rising prices; and there are the Very Rich, rolling in luxury as ever. In ordinary times the vulgar opulence is the fun of the fair and Our National Heritage, but in times like these it is an inconvenience. So out come the false noses and falsetto imitations, and across the stage they go.

On this occasion it centres on royalty. The Queen has a private income which is secret but estimated (The Guardian London Letter, 28th January) to be £300,000 a year. From the Government she gets £980,000 a year, and on 12th February the Prime Minister almost brought apoplexy on some Labour MPs by announcing that she wanted another £270,000 and proposing to give it to her. A tribe of her relatives and hangers-on exist on the Civil List of government allowances. Prince Charles has £105,000 a year, Princess Anne £35,000, and the young princes Andrew and Edward £20,000 each. The Sunday Mirror on 26th January told us about the Queen’s Hereditary Champion, the Master of the Horse, the Keeper of the Swans and:

Enough Brigadiers, Admirals and Air Marshals, equerries to mount a blitzkreig; a smothering of Mistresses of the Robes, Ladies of the Bedchamber — ho! ho! — Ushers with, and without, Sword, Sergeants at Arms, Constables, clergy with powers of bell, book and candle — apothecaries with vials of goodness knows what!

There are three “official” royal residences besides Buckingham Palace: Windsor Castle, Balmoral and

Sandringham House. (The last, according to the London Evening News on 6th February, has 274 rooms.) In addition there are the racehorses and limousines and the Royal Yacht, which was attacked scathingly in The Sun on 27th January:

She sails endlessly round the world at a cost of £7,700 a week, stopping off occasionally to pick up this or that royal couple for a dream honeymoon . . . When her royal hull was noticed to be less than gleaming, 80 gallons of exclusive royal blue paint were flown from Portsmouth to New Zealand by commercial jet at a cost to the public of £2,180 . . . Her fuel bill, alone, makes nonsense of the oil crisis. While British motorists are confined to 50 mph to conserve the odd gallon. Britannia bums her way through a ton of oil every seven miles.

Veblen with his theory of “conspicuous wasteful consumption” as the apotheosis of class societies would have loved that. It sounds like the crazy pomp of a barbarian super-chieftain; and that is its genealogy.

However, the details are no more offensive than the criticisms of them now being made for public consumption. Royalty has to be surrounded by servility. In R.H.S. Crossman’s diaries published in the Sunday Times, the former Labour minister described the ritual of induction to the Privy Council:

. . . the “fantastic ritual” of rehearsals. He recalled that for over an hour “16 grown men” were taught to stand, kneel on a cushion, raise the right hand holding the Bible and advance three paces to kiss the Queen’s hand.
Of the Queen, Mr. Crossman wrote: “In our ten minutes she talked, as I am told she always does, about her corgies. Two fat corgies, roughly the same colour as the carpet, were lying at her feet. She remarked how often people fell over the dogs . . .

It may all be a printing error, of course. Perhaps it was some corgi dogs which were being trained to sit up and beg and lick their mistress’s hand, and a couple of putty-coloured Labour MPs that were lying on the carpet. But, assuming the scarcely-believable to be true, there is something Crossman’s diaries do not tell us. If it was so pathetically degrading, why was he in it?

There are also the comic sop-gestures which if they were imitated in everyday life would not deceive a child, but are intended to persuade the working class of something or other. The Evening News big headline on 6th February was: The Queen tightens her belt. What was the dour, austere step taken? A plan for improvements at Sandringham House, which was to have cost £250,000, has been postponed as “inappropriate when many face difficulties.” The Queen will keep the money in her pocket instead. Noblesse oblige.

The name which has become well known for attacking royalty is the Labour MP William Hamilton. That is a piece of good luck for the journalists and commentators. Hamilton is an earnestly nonentity; so the press can have the luxury of criticizing the extravagance and forelock-touching and the secrecy over the Queen’s wealth, and at the same time disparaging Hamilton. He is reported in various papers as saying he does not want actually to abolish royalty.

The object of my book is not to destroy the Monarchy.

(News of the World) 

Sack the lot except the Queen, her husband and Charles. Pay them properly taxed salaries and take over the two Duchies.

(Guardian)

Does it matter? Hardly at all. Hamilton gave his case away in a TV interview on 31st January. Explaining the origin of his hostility to royalty, he recalled his father’s wage as a miner between the wars — £2 a week — and went on: “And it is still the same today, there are the rich and the poor.” Yes, it is. One has to ask if he seriously thinks, then, that putting down the royals would alter it? And, if this is still the position after the voluminous Labour reforms for which he has worked, why has he not thought of working for Socialism instead?

But there is an opposite fallacy which should be mentioned too. It is the idea that a surge of resentment of the sheer plutocracy the Queen represents in an indication that the working class are up in arms against the system. Unfortunately, no. The fact is that royalty’s popularity has always had ups and downs. Indeed, it was never widely popular until the nineteen-thirties, when a number of factors turned feelings in its favour. In particular, the British monarch was practically the only European head of state whose speeches were not warlike harangues (the reason being that he had and has no powers in that direction).

The same sentiment probably remains today, despite the criticism: the alternative to monarchy could be a dictator, or a Nixon. Looked at from another point of view, this brings us to the truth. Are things any different for the working class in the countries where they have no monarchy? Manifestly they are not. The class division of which royalty is a tiny, if spectacularly absurd, part exists just the same. The great majority spend their lives struggling to make wage-labour’s ends meet, and other people with other titles lap up the fat of the land.

One other reason why many of the working class don’t mind royalty too much is that it gives them pageantry and a show. That should not be dismissed. We all need colour and variety in life: and the fact that large numbers of people get them from a royal wedding every few years and from distantly viewing other splendours is a testimony to the meanness of life under capitalism — another kind of poverty. Establishing Socialism does not mean simply getting rid of parasites; it is the opening of the doors to living.

Robert Barltrop

The Uses of Monarchy (1958)

From the March 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Quite a thing has been going on recently concerning a picture of the Princess Margaret. This is virtually a repetition of what went on over the same painter’s portraits of the Queen and her husband, and there is no need here to add comments or repeat arguments. What is of greater interest is the trend of which this tiny storm is part: that is, that the Royal Family to-day is as constant a news-feature as football or film-star gossip and is, in fact, more popular than royalty has been since the nation-state began. When you consider that fewer than ninety years ago the reigning monarch was tipped as the last, and a vigorous republican movement was being led by prominent politicians and writers, it is obvious that the British monarchy has somehow had a boost in recent times.

Kings and Queens, traditionally, are romantic figures, the subjects of an inculcated mythology from everybody’s childhood. Every fairy tale revolves round them: once upon a time there was a Beautiful Princess or a Handsome Prince or a King who was Also a Magician. Elementary-school history devolves upon them: Merry Monarch, Good Queen, Peacemaker, Bluff King (never hooligan or wife-beater). For all that, the fact is that only for the last twenty years—if as long—has the Crown been really popular in Britain, and for a large part of the time it was very unpopular. Some idea of the change in the climate of opinion was given last year by the frenzy against critics of the Royal bearing and diction: the young Queen Victoria was ridiculed by cartoonists, and George V openly disparaged in the Press on his accession.

The idea of the monarch as head of the nation is a modern one, belonging to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and depending on the Crown’s holding no political power. Mediaeval kingship was a different thing. The king was supreme overlord, apex of the pyramid of feudal owning interests; his power was actual, deriving from and integral to the feudal system. This kind of monarchy declined as feudalism declined; as rival interests grew, the king became merely head of one of the contending factions. Edward IV, Richard II, Henrys Four, Five and Six were dependent on their factions, and their successors reasserted monarchy and appeared strong kings for a time only because the factions had exhausted themselves fighting.

The struggle against the monarchy was a vital part of the struggle of the rising commercial class. For half a century it held back for the struggles against the Papacy and Spain, but the storm was gathering before Elizabeth I’s reign ended. The bourgeoisie was a revolutionary class, needing control of the powers of government: the execution of Charles I was, in fact, the decapitation of an epoch.

After the swan-sang of the Restoration and James II's short, pitiful reign, the Whigs had one political aim above all others: to keep the Stuarts, with their feudal traditions and their Papal associations, off the throne. Even William III, brought and maintained by the Whigs as mere figurehead, was never pushed too far by them for fear he should name a Stuart as his successor.

Thus, the Hanover family was imported to be the new Crown dynasty, with nothing to commend them and the populace not prepared, as the 1715 and 1745 Rebellions showed, to lift a finger to support them. Drunken, stupid George I, of whom Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote “Our customs and laws were all mysteries to him, which he neither tried to understand, nor was capable of understanding if he endeavoured it.” and Lord Chesterfield said: “The King loved pleasure, and was not delicate in his choice of it. No woman came amiss to him, if they were very willing and very fat"; George II, full of senseless cruelty; George III, shaking hands with the trees in Windsor Park. Of the whole bunch, indeed, Sir Charles Petrie wrote in his Monarchy in the Twentieth Century: “There had clearly been a streak of abnormality . . . from the beginning.” A nineteenth-century poet, Landor, expressed it more feelingly:

“When George the Fourth from earth descended.
Thank God the line of Georges ended.”

However, it was with the Georges on the throne that the modern concept of monarchy developed. Bolingbroke’s Idea of a Patriot King, published in 1749, proposed (although Bolingbroke had the Stuarts in mind) the monarchy as the embodiment of national ideals, and after the final collapse of Jacobite opposition, this became accepted as the real function of monarchy. In fact, there were no interests now that the monarch could represent other than the “national” ones—that is, those of the propertied classes as a whole. No longer an overlord, removed from control of armed forces, set up in maintenance of bourgeois interests against those of the old order, the king had become King Capital’s torch-bearer.

Whatever remained of royal power and prestige sank to rock-bottom in Victoria’s early years. Her predecessors had shown as much interest as they were permitted in government; Victoria’s acquiescence established the convention that the Crown did not take part any more. The working class had little reason for enthusiasm, and the ruling class no longer had to support this dynasty in case something worse came along. When Victoria withdrew from public life after her husband’s death, a strong movement headed by Thackeray, J. R. Green. Morley. Joseph Chamberlain, Bradlaugh and several more asked if the monarchy were necessary at all. The movement faded, principally because the Empire-builders found the Crown too useful a figurehead, but the Crown had learned that it ought to show itself in public.

For that reason, the last years of Victoria's reign had royal display in plenty, and Edward VII gained still greater benefit from pageantry. It is doubtful if the monarchy became much more popular in Edward’s time, except among the beer-swilling and odds-laying sections, but he did open an important new field for the ruling class by carrying regal display—and with it, British interests— abroad. His visit to Paris, starting with compliments to actresses and ending with cheering crowds in the streets, in 1903 prepared the ground for the Franco-British Entente. Lansdowne and Grey conducted the negotiations, but the French President spoke of the “happy impetus” given to them by Edward's window-show. Subsequent monarchs and their families have done as much and more.

There has been one other important influence in the twentieth century in securing the position of the British monarchy: the rise of rival nations with other kinds of figureheads. First the Kaiser, then Mussolini. Hitler and Stalin caused the thought that, if this kind of thing were the modem alternative, there was something to be said for the British monarchy after all. George V was never greatly popular, but in the nineteen-thirties he was almost the only national figurehead in Europe whose public utterances were not inflammatory harangues on war and encirclement.

The real reason why the King never did so. apart from whatever personal inclination he may have had, was simply that it was not his place to speak as a leader or to state foreign policy. The monarchy in modem times is devoid of political power or autonomy. The last time a British monarch expressed himself independently on a political matter was when Edward VIII showed concern over the slums of Glasgow and South Wales; few people believed that the King’s wish to marry Mrs. Simpson was the only issue in the constitutional crisis of 1936. However, many people must have been given food for thought by the fact that potentially the most popular of all British monarchs was dismissed, as summarily as a worker from a factory, when he refused to toe the line laid down by the Cabinet on behalf of the ruling class.

If there was doubt among pro-capitalist politicians in the nineteenth century of the usefulness of monarchy, there is none today. The Conservative Party has never wavered in supporting monarchy, of course; and, since the first Ministers in the first Labour Government made their low obeisances, nor has the Labour Party. Indeed, in the Abdication crisis the Labour Party was solidly behind the Conservative Cabinet, and the Daily Herald's commentary was undistinguishable from that of the Mail or the Express. And since the war there has been ample opportunity—a royal wedding, an accession, a coronation, and a great deal of subsidiary display—to see the cap-touching and sycophancy which make plain the allegiance of a party which initially gained support by big talk about the abolition of privilege.

The only Labour criticism of royalty in fairly recent times was made from the viewpoint of what was good for Capitalism. Shortly after the coronation of George VI, Mr. Attlee spoke of the need for the Crown to come down to the man in the street a bit more—and found Conservatives agreeing heartily (“For them he must be no mere king in a gilt State coach.” wrote Wilson Harris in The Spectator). That policy was pursued with a vengeance, less with George VI himself than in the preparation of his daughter for the throne. No monarch ever started off so well for popularity: a popularity favoured by youth, romance and motherhood and skilfully fostered by every newspaper in the land (most of all, incidentally, by the pro-Labour Mirror and Pictorial).

The present Royal Family comes as close as any capitalist politician could desire to the modern monarchical ideal. No interference in politics, but a worthy interest in science; admirably suited to gather prestige abroad; most of all, a continual and absorbing attraction to the working class. There have been hints recently that the publicity has been overdone, that there have been too many chambermaids’ reminiscences and news items like the Sunday Pictorial’s announcement that the Queen's bust-line had improved to maintain the essential dignity of royalty. Nevertheless, the Crown today as never before embodies the national ideals—the ideals, that is, of the national ruling class.

But does monarchy serve any interest for ordinary people, beyond giving a holiday and a pageant now and then? It may be said that if it does them no good, it does them no harm either. If it were true that to fill people’s heads with nonsense did no harm, that might be so; and most of it is nonsense. There is no reason for thinking that the Queen and her husband are not pleasant decent people. If things were otherwise, however, the truth is that they would still be presented as paragons. Some monarchs have been cruel, irresponsible and contemptibly low, but their subjects have still been asked for reverence. Within a week of Edward VIII’s abdication his shortcomings were common knowledge, and Sir Charles Petrie (in the book already quoted) hinted at a strain of abnormality in Edward from the Hanover ancestry; would those things have been said if Edward had remained the King?

It is not the monarch that is at fault in all this, but the social system which needs a shining symbol; where there is no monarchy, something else has to be held up to dazzle the dispossessed. The man with the flag and the girl admiring the pictures in her magazine have the light full in their eyes just now—but they need only look away for a moment to see who holds it up, and why.

Robert Barltrop