Letter: Communists and Kings (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Communists and Kings

It was of course very wrong of the Morning Star to have published an attack on any aspect of the capitalist State, it should know that only the SPGB is allowed to do that. At any rate that is the opinion of the SPGB. Indeed the outside cover of your March issue should have read “Royalty, Rates, Taxes and the Working Class, Tzar Brezhnev and the Jews, Do They Matter?”, since without rates, taxes and Tzar Brezhnev capitalism would still exist as your pages of Socialist Theory make clear.

I notice that although you do not approve of the Morning Star article you nevertheless follow its lead in exposing the character of royalty. You in the end come down in its support because it gives “pageantry and a show”. If they did not get this some workers would have to start reading the Socialist Standard to find out why Royalty was not Rubbish.

Tom Braddock 

East Preston

Reply:

Obviously the Socialist Standard makes you wild by being right. If you are prone to the Morning Star, that is understandable; though, curiously enough, we never mentioned the Morning Star in the article you object to. We do not think, either, that anyone else thought the final paragraph “came down in support” of royalty.

However, since you draw the Morning Star to our attention, we will say that no notice need be taken of it. First, because it does not attack the capitalist state. It supports it in Russia all the time and elsewhere some of the time, as expedient. Second, because Communist parties and papers are quite prepared to support national figureheads. The Morning Star's predecessor The Daily Worker in 1947 (21st June) wrote of the present Queen’s 21st birthday:

The dignity of a modern state can only be met when its titular head is chosen from among its most eminent citizens.

In July 1938 the French Communist paper L’Humanite welcomed a visit to Paris by the King and Queen of England in these terms:

We applaud the visit of these rulers in the measure to which it is devoted to this end . . . Our good feeling is extended to that England which fights on the front of Collective Security; that England in the name of whom leading bourgeois such as Lord Cecil, Churchill, Lloyd George, and prelates like the Dean of Canterbury, pronounce regularly such grave warnings . . .

And haven’t you heard yet that a royal visit to Moscow is in the air? Tom Braddock, you are confused.

Editors.

50 Years Ago: Stop being fooled! (2002)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Stop being fooled!

The world is large, and individually workers are small and at present united under no cause beneficial to themselves. Because of his ignorance and feeling of inferiority the worker considers the affairs of state and the understanding of politics for too complicated for his inadequate brain to comprehend. So he trusts the course of his life to others – namely the government – and remains employed, exploited and ruled.

It is difficult to have to realise that the worker himself can suffer the horrors of the capitalist system without being even conscious of being exploited. He reads the national newspapers and is bemused with such meaningless boastings as “Why is the Daily Express the paper for the people? – because it represents the heart and soul of the people it serves.” (31/12/51). Come, workers, let’s stop being so naïve. Let’s get down to realising the fact that the ‘nation’ these newspapers serve is nothing more than the British capitalist class, and that they are part of the medium by which capitalists continue to fog your brains and sense of reason with such empty phrases as ‘national prestige,’ and ‘duty and honour first.’

[From the Socialist Standard, March 1952, the first by P. R. Lawrence]

 

The Printers Object to an Article

An article that should have appeared in this issue entitled “The King Is Dead” has had to be withdrawn. The compositors’ chapel at our printers objected to the article, and it was too late to carry the matter further without holding up publication of the issue.

The article dealt with the general question of kingship from an historical point of view, and only had two incidental references to King George VI in his capacity as king.

[From the Socialist Standard, March 1952]

Letter: Royalty – an irrelevance? (2006)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Royalty – an irrelevance?

Dear Editors,

On the road to Socialism there are powerful institutions in the way. Monarchy, with all its associated inequalities and public loyalty, is a powerful support for capitalism. It embodies wealth and privilege alongside emotional adoration by the poor. Cromwell managed to remove a king, but soon after his death the monarchy was re-established.

Why has it been as successful as an institution? It no doubt has its own methods for self-survival (modern PR experts, and years of experience of being a monarch, plus perhaps a genuine love for the British people). Yet the institution can only survive with public consent. None of the political parties that have attained power has bothered to question in any serious way the existence of the monarchy; partly I assume because they dread the loyalty of the British people.

We are been socialised into a culture that respects the royal family, at least in principle (people may frown at certain incidents with the royals, but basically accept their existence). Submission to the monarchy is encouraged from the cradle to the grave, and even if cynical, a person may find it difficult to resist a feeling of pride when a member of the royal family visits their factory or local area. Celebrities have occasionally returned MBEs, but they are few and far between.

Vast arguments are put forward to justify the royal family (e.g. encourages tourism and hence the pockets of the people) We all ‘immersed’ in royalist propaganda and culture. Yet how can it be right for one family to be so well provided for (houses, land, wealth, public adoration etc) when other families struggle from day to day?

They also assist and legitimise other people who have unfair amounts of wealth (in the past kings and queens have helped each other in difficult circumstances – when the peasants are getting above themselves for instance).

The institution also puts unfair pressure on the members of the royal family. The horses the Queen must have sat on horses on rainy days to fulfil her royal duties; and the boredom of watching parade after parade! The lack of privacy – even minor scandals blown out of all proportion, and the difficulty of moving in privacy from A to B.

We are so ‘brainwashed’ into the advantages of monarchy, that we grossly underestimate the disadvantages. Yet it take courage for a politician to suggest to suggest we abolish it – the inaction of millions of indoctrinated people can be a formidable thing to experience. Other politicians would condemn his very words (in the hope of gaining votes for their own parties!).

Are we all involved in a ‘mother-figure’ complex (or for ex-public school types –‘matron’)? Do we feel more comfortable knowing she is then looking after us? Or are we being childish? Shouldn’t we liberate her and her family, as well as the public, from an institution that goes hand-in-hand with unequal society? Draw a line under history and move on?

Paul Wilson, 

Brighouse, West Yorks

Reply:

Obviously if the monarchy is still around at the time socialism is established it would be abolished immediately. Such institutionalised privilege can have no place in a society of equals. This said, we don’t see any point in wasting time campaigning to get it abolished under capitalism. Whether or not a capitalist state is a monarchy or a republic makes no difference to the economic structure of society, which is the root cause of the problems wage and salary workers face today. Just look at the USA, which has been a republic since the 18th century – Editors.

Kings & Queens (2025)

Book Review from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unruly: A History of England’s Kings and Queens. By David Mitchell, Penguin, 2024

1066 And All That, published in book form in 1930, was a parody on how English history was taught in schools. One of the targets was a history of England as a record of kings and queens, their years of reign and their battles and wars. After the Second World War there was a concerted criticism of this approach from historians — EP Thompson in particular — who argued for a ‘history from below’. One consequence of this criticism was the creation of the GCSE history syllabus in the 1980s. This changed the emphasis from memorising the dates of kings and queens to ‘key skills’ such as empathy. Empathy was an attempt to encourage schoolchildren to imaginatively experience what it was like to live as others lived, such as being a child worker in the cotton factories of mid-nineteenth century Britain. It was controversial, didn’t last long, and the emphasis has shifted back in the other direction.

David Mitchell is a comedian, writer and actor. He has no use for empathy in the study of history. He claims that ‘it’s impossible for a child … to get their head round how different the lives of the people they’re trying to empathise with actually were’. No evidence is offered for ‘impossible’, not even an amusing anecdote of the sort which peppers this book. ‘I’m better with dates, to be honest’, he admits. Mitchell went to a private school, so he might not have done GCSE history. In a book with plenty of autobiographical detail, it’s curious that he doesn’t mention it. So what you do get are a lot of monarchs with a lot of dates and absolutely no history from below. ‘It’s like a soap opera,’ writes Mitchell, ‘It never fucking ends’. He doesn’t refer to Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, but Bennett has a student complaining that history is ‘one fucking thing after another’. This is what can happen when the subject matter lacks context.

If you are after the historical facts, there’s nothing here you can’t get from Wikipedia or Google. Apart from the jokes and one-liners such as his summary of Henry VIII — ‘He was a cunt’, there are some interesting factoids. For instance, according to the Domesday Book of 1086, ten percent of the population of England were slaves. By around 1200, after the Norman invasion, there weren’t any.

Lew Higgins

Pomp, Pageantry and Privilege (1953)

From the June 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

The coronation on June 2nd of a young woman by the name of Elizabeth Alexandra Mary of Windsor, as Queen of Great Britain and the British Commonwealth of Nations, is an event which, it is safe to say, has received more publicity and been the subject of more propaganda than any other peace-time occurrence of the last fifty years. Since the death of her father, the Queen has been publicised to such an extent that there can hardly be a literate person in the whole world who is not aware of the forthcoming event.

For the first time millions of people will, as it were, be inside the Abbey witnessing the ceremonial, the religious service, and the rest of the mumbo jumbo with which a Monarch is crowned. They will be there by virtue of Television, and wireless which will relate every detail of the ritual. Every organ of propaganda has been geared to the event; schools, Churches, newspapers have given it every attention all with the design to make us feel that we are part of the coronation and that we shall all be the better for it.

There can be no doubt that the organisation will prove itself efficient. The collection of notabilities from every corner of the world; the display of heraldic symbols; the presence of dignitaries with such titles as Gold Stick, Bluemantle, and Rouge Dragon will provide a magnificent spectacle beside which the productions of Hollywood will pale into insignificance. We may be sure that the belted Earls, the Dukes and Marquesses, the Society ladies, the Dowagers, the Duchesses and so forth will appear dressed in their full regalia, their diamonds sparkling, and their coronets adding lustre to the occasion.

But when the cheering has died away; when the inevitable dustcarts which follow coronations as well as Lord Mayor’s Shows appear to clear the debris; when the “captains and the kings” have departed, what will remain? When the sightseers stands have been demolished; when the red carpets have been taken up; when the diadems and the crowns and the rest of the regalia have been returned for safe keeping to the Tower of London, what then?

If the historians and the publicists, the journalists and broadcasters are to be believed, Coronation day is to usher in a new period of glory and prosperity for this country. They assure us that whenever a Queen had ruled this land it has flowed with milk and honey, and its influence spread all over the earth. They cite the days of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria as evidence for their claims, yet even the most superficial examination of those two periods will show that they are either ignorant fools or deliberate liars who by promising us the fictional glories of the past, hope to blind us to the grim, sordid realities of the present.

The Elizabethan Era

What are these glories of the first Elizabethan age? It is true that then was laid the foundations of the British Empire and British mastery of the seas. It is true that British merchantmen sailed all over the world trading goods and bringing back to these shores unimaginable wealth. Colonies were established in America; pirates, cut-throats and swashbucklers flourished, prospered and were honoured by the Virgin Queen. Those not brave enough to fight the Spaniards indulged in trading in the human flesh of the African coast. Many fortunes were made in those days and it is interesting to note that some of the congregation at Westminster Abbey are there because their ancestors in the days of Queen Elizabeth were successful freebooters. But while all these things are true and while the rich and ruthless became ever more wealthy, the majority of the people of England had no share in that prosperity. For them there was work and poverty and starvation. For them the privilege of fighting to preserve the wealth of their Feudal Lords. (Strange how history repeats itself!) All the viciousness of the Elizabethan era is now glossed over with a tawdry coating of journalistic paint. But a writer of the period shows in a few words the hollowness of the claim that England as a whole was prosperous in the days of Queen Elizabeth:-

“The poor lie in the street upon pallets of straw, and well if they have that too, or else in the mire and dirt as commonly it is seen, having neither house to put in their heads, covering to keep them from cold, nor yet to hide their shame withal, penny to buy them sustenance, nor anything else, but are suffered to die in the streets like dogs or beasts, without mercy or shame showed to them at all.

“Truly, brother, if I had not seen it, I would scarcely credit that like the Turkish cruelty had been used in all the world.” (Philip Stubbs; The Anatomie of Abuses).

The truth is that in all ages and at all times in written history, prosperity has always been for the rich, never for the labourers, the “hewers of wood and drawers of water”.

The Victorian Era

If we have demolished, as is the case, the claims made about the days of Good Queen Bess, what of the age of Victoria? The Industrial Revolution had already taken place. Railways had been introduced and England had become the workshop of the world. No other country could compete in the manufacture of goods, and the world’s markets were the preserve of British industrialists. Huge fortunes were built up and their possessors bought themselves titles forming a new aristocracy to replace the fast-dying old. At such a time then, surely the poor and oppressed were better off? Work there was in plenty for they were forced to toil sixteen to eighteen hours a day. Surely, therefore, the workers were amply rewarded for their toil? Nothing could be further from the truth.

Men, women and children slaved in the factories, their pay a miserable pittance, their homes hovels, their food cheap and adulterated. Epidemics, when they came, killed them off like flies. The child labourers became stunted and old before their time. There was no lack of priest or Bishop to condone this cruelty in the name of God. They praised the manufacturers for keeping children at work so that evil thoughts would not invade their otherwise idle hours.

During the reign of Queen Victoria, India became the “most precious jewel in the Imperial crown”; the Suez Canal came under British control, and yet a poet of that time could still write of Child Labour:-

“‘How long’, they say, ‘how long, O cruel nation

Will you stand to move the world on a child’s heart–

Stiffle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,

And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?”

(“The Cry of the Children”, E. B. Browning)

And if a poet’s word is not considered evidence we can refer to many factual reports given by Government Inspectors, reformers and others. In a book published just before Queen Victoria came to the throne, and dealing with conditions which prevailed well into the Victorian era, the author, J. Fielden (“The Curse of the Factory System”) wrote:–

“Cruelties of the most heart rending were practised upon the unoffending and friendless creatures who were thus consigned to the charge of master manufacturers; they . . . were harassed to the brink of death by excess labour . . . they were in many cases starved to the bone while flogged to their work . . .

“The beautiful and romantic valleys of Derbyshire . . . secluded from the public eye, became the dismal solitudes of torture and of many a murder. The profits of manufacturers were enormous; but this only whetted the appetite it should have satisfied.” (Fielden did not know his capitalists!)

So much for the “prosperity” of the Victorian era, that age of ruthless exploitation when the wealth and power of the ruling class was literally built on the blood and life of the workers.

The Coronation and its Meaning

Not content with telling us that the Coronation will usher in this new period of glory and prosperity, we are told that it will be a dedication and a consecration. Bishops have prated on the holiness of the occasion, politicians, with their ability to seize every opportunity, have tried to fill us with patriotism, and the whole collection of lick-spittles, ink-slingers and columnists of Fleet Street have combined to convince us of the promising life which lies ahead.

What is this dedication and to whom in this day consecrated? Prayers for the safe keeping of her Majesty will be offered up to God; and all over the country, if the Archbishop’s suggestion is followed, people will join the choir at Westminster in singing “All people that on earth do dwell”. And in that sense perhaps it will be a day of dedication. But behind the facade of prayer and patriotism there are other interests involved which makes the Coronation a day of dedication to Mammon.

The late King’s body was scarcely cold in its grave, when every junk manufacturer in the Kingdom rushed to produce enormous quantities of shoddy souvenirs. Not one avenue for making money has been neglected. Even the “Gentry” tumbled over themselves to cash in on this “day of consecration”. They have advertised their homes to let at fabulous rentals, from which even American millionaires have recoiled. Hotels and boarding houses, restaurants and nightclubs have put up their charges, and anybody with window-space to let on the route of the procession has been courted, bribed and enriched.

Nothing has been overlooked in this money-making jamboree called the coronation. The Star fashion expert tells us:–

“If you’re fired with a desire to be patriotic through and through, so you can be . . . right down to your corsets. Berlei are showing—as the star item of their new summer collection—a strapless one-piece controlette in elastic net and nylon voile in a choice of red, white or royal blue”.

This then is the “holy” character of Coronation day, a day on which the money-makers will give their workers a day off on full pay. While they count their money they will join in the singing of the incantations at Westminster Abbey. And indeed they will have something to sing about for it is estimated that over twenty million pounds will accrue as a result of this “day of consecration”. Is it not strange how holiness is so often linked with the “things of this world”?

A People’s Coronation

Efforts have been made by means of propaganda to imbue this Coronation with a democratic flavour. For the first time, at least that is what we have been told, the people are to take part in this event. But again this claim is hollow. The only part that the “people” will have is to stand in the streets and at their windows, or crouch before their TV sets cheering the procession of as great a collection of parasites as have ever been seen together before.

Not a dignitary involved but is a wealthy banker, landowner, Field Marshal or Major-General. There will be Black rods, and Gold sticks, and Knights Pursuivants in profusion. Most of them directors of large Banking or Insurance Companies. Many of them huge land-owners who are no more representative of the people than is the Queen herself, a by no means poverty-stricken personage. Surrounded as she is by these wealthy courtiers and nurtured in Palaces with a background of wealth and splendour she is cushioned off from the ordinary cares that beset the people who will stand and cheer her as she passes through the streets.

We have no personal quarrel with the Queen. As occupant of the Throne of Great Britain she has no power. The monarchy has become a mere facade of authority, a rubber stamp signature at the bottom of State documents. The Queen’s whole life is regulated by strictly-defined rules and a standard of behaviour is expected which would make even the humblest of us protest.

Surrounded at the Abbey by Bankers, landowners, Labour leaders and a “few representatives” of the Trade Unions her Majesty will perform her part, we have no doubt, with grace, charm and dexterity, and the Archbishop will intone at the right time and in the right places. The choirboys will contribute their “Vivats”, and the people whose coronation we are told this is, will stand outside and cheer. Thus it has always been; the people on the outside looking in, wearing clothes which cost less than one button of the gorgeous raiment that they have made and which they are allowed to see only at a distance. This is all the people will receive or can expect from this “People’s” coronation.

The ceremony to be performed on June 2nd has no meaning for us. It is of no consequence who sits on the throne, which flag or Royal Standard flies over Buckingham Palace; or whether her titles are Elizabeth II or I. We are not concerned with all the flummery and mediaeval mumbo-jumbo with which the event is to be celebrated. Nothing will have changed. The private ownership of the means of life will continue with all its consequences. The threat of war, the general insecurity will not be abated one jot or tittle by this glorified circus. Not one of the claims made for this event will be fulfilled as far as the workers are concerned. The promises and allurements of a brilliant future will be forgotten almost as soon as the procession has disappeared from sight.

In the Psalms, some of which will be read during the service there is a phrase which we commend:–

“Oh, put not your trust in Princes, nor in any child of man . . .”

adding only the counsel to trust to yourselves, to your experience, to your knowledge to build a better Society in which all mankind will live in freedom, peace and security.

“Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.”

A. S.

The Socialist Forum: The Question of Republicanism. (1931)

Letter to the Editors from the May 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are asked what is our view of Republicanism and of the Spanish revolution.

Our object as a Socialist Party is to get Socialism, and we are not much concerned with the question which is the better way of running’ capitalism, by means of a monarchy or by means of a republic. The purpose in both cases is, from the capitalist standpoint, to have a figure-head in whom the majority of the population will repose confidence. As far as the workers are concerned, it is a distinction without a difference. In Spain the capitalist system will be carried on in much the same way as before, and in the main by the same set of politicians. Our objection to Republican presidents is the same as our objection to kings, i.e., that workers who still believe in the fiction that affairs are run by the titular heads of the republics or monarchies are not yet fit to take on the responsible task of understanding political and social problems themselves and of organising to control affairs collectively in their interests as a class.

Editorial: A King on Socialism. (1908)

Editorial from the June 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dr. H. M. MacCracken, Chancellor of New York University, has—according to the Harmsworth Press—been interviewed by the Daily Mail’s Own Correspondent.

The professor had just returned from a trip to the Scandinavian countries, undertaken with the object of arranging an interchange of professors. What we are concerned with here, however, is not the object of his holiday, but rather with the delightful example of bourgeois mentality that the Chancellor of New York University introduces to us via the Daily Mail.

The chancellor lunched with King Haakon and conversed for several hours with him on education and politics. “If King Haakon,” he observes, “were not a king he would make an excellent professor of political economy. He understands his subject thoroughly. He knows, too, that Socialism is increasing among his subjects, recognises the fact openly, and is, indeed, much worried about it.”

And then we come to that dreary, hoary old wheeze that Socialism is the Great Divide; that it does not mean a co-operative commonwealth run by associated labour democratically organised, but means that all wealth is to be split up amongst the people !

“Recently, Dr. MacCracken said, the King went among some working men who were known to be Socialists and asked them if they were in favour of a division of wealth. They said they were. “Then let us appoint Friday at noon as the time for the division of wealth,” the King suggested to them. “Very well,” answered the men. “But wait,” said the King, “at five minutes after twelve many babies will be born, and they will be entitled to their share of wealth. Shall we make another division then and another one every five minutes ?”

The King did not get a satisfactory answer to that question, so his opposition to Socialism, he told Dr. MacCracken, was not modified. “Why,” he added, “I could black my own boots if I wanted to. I have done it, and know how. But if I did, what would become of those people who make a living by blacking boots ? The Socialist demand for equality of labour is in fact impracticable. I believe in division of labour.”

After that we are not at all surprised that “King Haakon impressed Dr. MacCracken as a man of unusual intellect.” And when the learned chancellor informs us that the King “would make an excellent professor of political economy,” we can but agree with him.

Letter: What's the name (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard 

What's the name

I noticed in the article “Queen Capital’s Jubilee” (April SS) that you refer to the future King George V as George Wettin. I am curious as to where this name originates. I was told it should really be Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Did the writer of the 1911 article make a mistake which you have followed, or was he really George Wettin? I am writing on behalf of other people besides myself who are curious about this.

F. S., Newcastle 

(name & address supplied)

Reply:

Your letter raises a very interesting point.

The name Wettin goes back in European kingship to the year 997. Frederick, one of the two sons of Dietrich, received lands taken from the Wends, including the county of Gau of Wettin on the bank of the Saale. A succession of kings added to these lands. Thimo (1104), cousin of Henry I, built a castle at Wettin and he was called by this name. In 1288 the county, town and castle of Wettin were sold to the archbishop of Magdeburg and later incorporated in the kingdom of Prussia.

By the time of Frederick the Warlike (1381-1428) the lands of the Wettins stretched from the Oder to the Werra and from the Erzgebirge to the Harz mountains. It is from the son of Frederick that two branches of the family descend, the Ernestine and Albertine. To the former belong the dukes of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. The kings of other European countries came from this line, including Belgium from 1831 and Great Britain from 1901.

Source of information: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 23 o. 551.

Editors.

50 Years Ago: A gold-filled irrelevance (2023)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

How conditions have improved! At the time of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, or George V’s Silver one, or the Victory Parade, and even the present Queen’s wedding, to see any of it meant notable hardships for the workers. Up half the night to get a place; standing in the street for hours; shouting oneself hoarse; then having to get back home through all the crowds. Compare that with what progress has brought us today. This month loyal subjects will be able to sit in comfort at home, watching on colour TV the romance of Princess Anne brought to its consummation (well, not quite, but no doubt that will come).

Should one laugh or weep? On one hand, millions riveted to this idiot’s spectacle; on the other, its reduction to only another pattern of moving wallpaper. While the gilt-edged incantations are pronounced, the Golden Oldies of the dirty-joke index are revived for a generation fresh to the ambience of royal weddings. The souvenirs pretending patriotic fervour but representing only fervour for Mammon — cheap mugs and tee-shirts in the High Street, silver and Wedgwood trophies to be hoarded as “investments”. And the sight of radicals and make-believe socialists, straight from the Labour conference, bowing obsequious knees and kissing the fat backside of opulence. Ugh! (…)

What is the purpose of it all? Royalty is a pretended ruler long since denuded of power but maintained still in glittering barbaric splendour: a mediaeval survival. In most countries those who really rule have decided they are better without it, and in some they still find a use for what history has left them. If class-divided society is to be believed-in, here is a symbol of it. If privileged riches are a social ideal, here they are personified. And if rulers have to provide bread and circuses, here is the Big Top where the horses prance and the troupers have the style.

To be enthralled by this kind of thing is to be in the clutch of capitalism. Remember, however, that capitalism has alternatives. It does not need royalty — and that is why royalty doesn’t matter to the working class either. Working people are no better off in the countries where kings and queens have been superseded or never existed. In the United States the cheering and drum-beating go into presidential election circuses; in the one-party regimes, to ceremonial displays of the State’s might. Better to regard royalty as, in John Osborne’s phrase, “the gold fillings in a mouth full of decay”; then to see about the reasons for the decay. Of course a sane world would have no place for such nonsense, and it is society we must change first.

(Socialist Standard, November 1973)

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

Letters: Ted Grant (2006)

Letters to the Editors from the October 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ted Grant

Dear Editors

Following on from your obituary of Ted Grant, the Trotskyist founder of the “entryist” Militant Tendency (September Socialist Standard), I agree that he was never a revolutionary; but just another reformer masquerading as a revolutionary.

I first heard Ted Grant speak at a meeting in High Holborn, of the so-called Revolutionary Communist Party, just before its demise probably in 1947. At this meeting, I heard for the first time the claim that the Soviet Union was not socialist, or even a “degenerated workers’ state”, but in fact a dictatorial form of state capitalism. A member of the audience (of about 100) got up and forcefully, as well as persistently, much to the annoyance of Grant and the other Trotskyist speakers, and argued that the economy of the USSR was state capitalist, and that the workers and peasants there were exploited in much the same way as elsewhere. Shortly after, two of the leaders who were at the meeting, Jock Haston and Tony Cliff, both accepted the claim that Soviet Russia was state capitalist.

And who was the speaker from the audience? I learned later, when I knew the SPGB (from meetings on Clapham Common), that it was a man named Sammy Cash, a well-known and active member of the Socialist Party.

As you noted, Ted Grant was ousted from the Militant Tendency by a man called Peter Taaffe, a thoroughly dishonest individual who claims that his existing group is the “socialist party”, known by the most appropriate acronym of SPEW.

Peter E. Newell, 

Colchester, Essex

A frustrated priest

Dear Editors,

The obituary on Ted Grant by DAP rather impressed me with its honesty and, even, generosity. I met Grant and Haston in 1948 at the RCP HQ on the Harrow Road. Haston was a fun fellow; Grant seemed a bit like a frustrated priest.

Richard Montague, 

Ballymena, Co. Antrim.

King of Siam (1960)

From the September 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is said that today’s kings and queens are a ruling class indulgence. From recent press reports, it would appear that an exception is the King of Siam, who with his Queen, recently made his first State visit to this country.

Great play was made of the young King's activities outside of his constitutional duties. It would appear that some of his pastimes include fast cars and jazz. As a claim to his reputed democratic outlook, it is reported that his children study with 40 other youngsters. What is the other side of the picture? A semi-translation of the word “Thailand" means "Land of the free,” and yet conscription for two years is imposed upon every Siamese male. All political parties are banned. In 1959, a Thai national was executed for printing and distributing communist literature. The detention without trial continues of over 100 political prisoners. In Siam, no man can stand higher than the monarch and all Siamese who approach him must bow down on all fours. For nine-tenths of the people, he is their direct link with the gods. It was not so very long ago that a queen of Siam died when her boat overturned in a lake, as no one dared touch her head.

And we should not forget that extreme poverty exists in Thailand— according to some reports, it is about the worst in the world.

Apart from tin and rubber, Thailand's importance to western capitalism is in her closeness to China. Whilst it may be true that she is the only independent kingdom in south-east Asia that never became a colony of a foreign power, her geographical position, together with American aid, have combined to add yet another sphere of influence to the western powers. Hence the need for Thailand's ruling class to maintain its constitutional monarchy as a symbol of national stability.

We are told that the Siamese King's main object is to get out of Thailand, not, as one might assume, “while the going is good,” but to get about and learn with a view to be able to instruct his advisers and Government with a greater ”sureness of touch.” But reading of his London itinerary with all its pomp and circumstance should convince one that it is the puppet masters back in Thailand who hold the strings and make the decisions.

W. G. C.

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

Mountbatten: ruling class casualty (1979)

From the October 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Violence, within and between individual states, is inescapable under the social system of capitalism. States often disagree over their mutual boundaries; each, in normal circumstances, wishes to preserve, or to extend if possible, its frontiers. The larger the territory, the greater the chance of profit. The ideas of ‘race’ or nationalism, of separate language-groupings or cultures, or the traditions of such groupings, are often called on by both sides in such disputes. So is religion. Among capitalists in Great Britain and Ireland at the present time, and among those who take up the banners of either the British or the Irish capitalist class, there is such a dispute. Should Northern Ireland become part of Irish capitalism, or should it remain part of British capitalism? Cultural and racial traditions are appealed to by both sides. The slogan of a ‘united Ireland’ is opposed by the cry that the six counties are really British. Catholics are exhorted to support one side, and Protestants the other.

Many Northern Irish workers, deceived by the ever-active propagandists of capitalism, have strong views as to whether they would rather be exploited by Irish or British capitalism. Capitalist boundary disputes cannot be ‘solved’, except by the forcible transportation of thousands or even millions of people such as we saw, for example, in eastern Germany and eastern Poland after 1945.

In the capitalist struggle over Northern Ireland, twenty-two people were killed by the IRA on Monday August 27. As a single day’s casualty list, it was high by Ulster standards, being rivalled only by the numbers of demonstrators killed in Londonderry on one day in 1972 by the British army, and by some massacres in public houses caused by bombs planted by the other side. Among the twenty-two dead in August was Earl Mountbatten of Burma. Why was his death greeted with such grisly satisfaction on one side, and such ostentatious horror on the other?

Unemployed royalty

Mountbatten was by descent a member of a kind of condottieri of minor German royalties who ranged over Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries seeking new positions, new countries, and (with luck) new thrones While in northern and western Europe the feudal barons had given way to kings and eastern and south-eastern Europe was split among the Russian, Austrian and Turkish Empires, in the middle of Europe the barons had evolved into petty princelings of small states, mostly German-speaking. Some were consolidated by Napoleon, and the 160 principalities of 1789 became only thirty-eight in 1815. Nevertheless, that still meant a lot of royal families, all with younger sons and daughters to be provided for as improved medical care led to the survival of more babies.

At the same time, two careers opened to the fortunate: marriage into the more important royal houses of Europe, or the filling of new thrones in the east of Europe as the older empires crumbled and new independent states were established. Others of the successive ducal broods followed their more fortunate brothers and sisters, and commanded armies or navies or found other well-paid niches — or rich spouses, or both — within the ruling hierarchies of the larger European countries. Some had to try two or even three different states before finding a satisfactory position for themselves.

The royal base from which these adventurers set out was obliterated in 1871 when Prussia swallowed up most of these petty territories in the creation of the new greater Germany. But the destruction of the thrones did not mean the destruction of their occupants, and for many decades after 1871 these ex-royalties continued their ancestral occupations.

British connection

Mountbatten came from the line of dukes of Hesse. Already very well connected, the Hesse royal family came into the British royal family's circle of acquaintance, and two of the four sons of Alexander and his Polish countess (Louis, Alexander, Henry, Francis) decided to become British and make their fortunes in the UK; Prince Louis of Battenburg was chosen as the husband for another of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters, and Prince Henry was accented as the husband for Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter. Honours quickly flowed in: Louis became Admiral of the Fleet, personal aide-de-camp to Victoria, Edward VII and George V, and First Sea Lord.

Jackpot

Another of the Battenburg boys seemed to have hit an even bigger jackpot. In 1879, the Bulgarian capitalist class established its de facto independence from the Turkish sultan and invited Prince Alexander of Battenburg to become the country’s monarch as Prince of Bulgaria. Immediately, Alexander’s younger brother, Prince Francis, the fourth of the Battenburgs, turned up as a colonel of Bulgarian cavalry, only too ready to swear undying allegiance to Bulgaria as soon as he could find it on the map. After Alexander had enjoyed only seven years as front man for the Bulgarian ruling class, however, Russia decided the country was getting too big for its boots and kidnapped Alexander, forcing him to abdicate. This nasty experience subdued him, and he returned to Hesse, still financially well provided for, and settled down there as an ex-monarch. Prince Francis, however, was not beaten yet. He married the daughter of Nicholas I, King of Montenegro; but his efforts to learn the Montenegrin national anthem were in vain, as the country, and its royal house with all the perks attaching to it, disappeared in the First World War.

These royal adventurers often fought loyally for ‘their’ countries, despite relatives on the other side. Nor did they worry too much about how repressive or otherwise the regime they served turned out to be: relatives of the British royal family ran anti-Semitic pogroms and jailed or executed opponents in Russia and elsewhere, and other relatives of British royalty fought for the Nazis in the last war — Prince Charles has a German cousin, born in the 1930s, named Adolf after Hitler. The international background of this stratum of ex-German royalties contrasts strangely with the jingoism and chauvinism — ‘my country, right or wrong’ — which each state shoves down its workers’ throats in war and peace.

Mountbatten

The British Battenburgs found themselves under suspicion in 1914 when a wave of anti-German hysteria swept the country. Prince Louis of Battenburg, whose brother-in-law was a Grand Admiral in the Imperial German navy, was forced to resign as First Sea Lord. They avoided all such future complications by changing their name to Mountbatten. George V further anglicised his cousin’s husband by creating him Marquis of Milford Haven. Prince Louis had four children: George, second marquis; Louis, later Earl Mountbatten; Victoria, who married Prince Andrew of Greece and was the mother of Prince Philip; and Louise, who married Gustav VI of Sweden, becoming Queen of Sweden. Louis entered the British navy and eventually became an admiral, filling many top posts in the armed forces and elsewhere. He was personal aide-de-camp to Edward VIII, GeorgeVI and Elizabeth II. He was Chief of Combined Operations in 1942-3, Supreme Allied Commander in south-east Asia in 1943-6, Viceroy of India in 1947, Governor-General of India in 1947-8, First Sea Lord in 1955-9, and Chief of Defence Staff in 1959-65.

He chaired a committee investigating security in British prisons, and recommended the formation of new high security units. His personal fortune was greatly extended by his marriage to the Hon. Edwina Ashley; her father was a Conservative MP, a government minister and a peer, and her mother the only daughter of Sir Ernest Cassel, who made much money out of publishing. Mountbatten’s personal record of prominent positions in the service of British capitalism, particularly in the titanic struggles (so costly in destruction and in human suffering) of the British state earlier this century against its rivals, together with his close relationship to the royal family, ensured him the panegyrics which duly appeared in every national newspaper on his death.

Slaughter

It is true that some past criticisms were mentioned in the obituaries. Some recalled the heavy loss of life, allegedly through faults of advance planning, in the Dieppe raid of 1942 which Mountbatten masterminded. Others referred to the slaughter which followed when he went to India in 1947 (the British ruling class not being able any longer to keep such a vast country as its own private possession), pushing through the partition into India and Pakistan so quickly that many minorities were caught on the wrong side of the new frontier and were promptly massacred; perhaps half a million died.

Northern Ireland

Both sides in the Northern Ireland dispute stand aghast at violence — when it is committed by the other side. The IRA deplore British violence, but they have not only killed British soldiers and prominent men like Mountbatten; they have frequently killed also mere bystanders. The Mountbatten bomb also killed a local boy who worked on the yacht. British newspapers were horror-struck at such indiscriminate homicide, but the British army in Northern Ireland has also killed innocent bystanders who got in the way of gun-battles (apologising afterwards, like the IRA does). And during the Second World War, while Mountbatten played a leading part in the direction of the British war effort, many innocent German women and children were deliberately slaughtered in bombing raids. The 100,000 killed in a single Allied raid on Hamburg (many of them burned alive in a fire-storm) must have included thousands of babies, boys and girls, women and old people, as well as hundreds of foreign conscripted slave-workers — besides all those left mutilated, crippled and disfigured. Nor was any apology considered necessary. Where were the horrified newspaper articles and broadcasts then?

If you handle pitch, you get dirty fingers. If you support and work for capitalism, violence — committing it and suffering it, as Mountbatten did — is likely to be part of the deal.

Alwyn Edgar

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)

What has the monarchy done for us? (2022)

From the July 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

How does a technologically and industrially advanced 21st century nation come to have an unelected head of state that is at the centre of extravagant and expensive medieval-inspired rituals such as coronations and jubilees? Many countries have adopted, in various forms, a constitutional monarchy but none go to such lengths to celebrate monarchical decadence as do the English. It is all the more surprising since it was the English bourgeoisie who were historically the first to cut off a king’s head during their quest for power in the 17th century. Far from being a symbol of Englishness the present queen comes from an ancient line of German princes who, in many of their inbred incarnations, actively opposed English imperialism. We can answer some of these questions historically but how are we to explain the admiration of so many of the working class for this symbol of their slavery?

The Tudor dynasty had adopted (rather half-heartedly) the Reformation and developed a centralised state that made the evolution of the modern nation state possible in the following centuries. When the last of them (Elizabeth I) died the Scottish Stuart dynasty took over with an inbuilt autocratic tendency that was to prove ill-suited to deal with the rise of the ‘middle class’ and their rising hegemony within parliament (House of Commons). The resulting revolution convulsed the country with some quarter of a million casualties (making the French revolution look like a bar brawl) and a republic whose leaders executed the king (Charles I) for treason. This regime was soon to degenerate into a military dictatorship that was thoroughly disliked by the people and a deal was done with Charles II for his return on the understanding he would respect parliamentary power. This again soon degenerated into an attempt at counter revolution led by James II, which proved once and for all to the English bourgeoisie that they could not trust the Stuarts and that their only hope for a truly constitutional monarchy was to call on William of Orange who had proven his credentials in this respect within the Dutch Republic. This proved to be successful in giving the illusion of both historical/royal continuity and also liberating capitalist trade from the threat of monopolistic autocracy.

Subsequent ‘Whig’ historians dedicated themselves to creating a history where the English revolution was relegated to a religious civil war followed quickly by a ‘restoration’ that hardly troubled the calm national continuity of the English class system. This myth became very convenient when the international power of the English ruling class was threatened by the French Revolution and the subsequent rise of the European Napoleonic Empire. The political convulsions of continental Europe were contrasted to the stability of the British system and it is indeed true that the first of the French revolutionaries wanted to create a constitutional monarchy on the English model but the duplicity of their king (just as with Charles I) made this impossible giving the militant Jacobins their chance to create a republic. Another difference between the two revolutions was the relatively quick integration of the bourgeois and aristocratic classes in England. The ruling class was now economically entirely capitalistic but the old families of aristocratic origin retained an air of cultural superiority and the nouveau rich could not help but admire this ancient elitism – when it didn’t conflict with profit making. The other element of aristocratic culture that the English bourgeoisie absolutely adored was the warrior tradition and pageantry. No coal magnate, however rich, could compare with the mythology of Henry V and his victory at Agincourt!

To this day the glamour attached to the aristocracy and the royal family in particular, is used to sell the illusion that the English are a united country which all have a common interest to preserve. As with all hierarchical social structures there is a need to condition those without wealth and power to believe that those who possess it are somehow different and special. Along with the myth of the ‘self-made man’ capitalism needs a symbol of nationalism/militarism and what better symbol than those descended from murderers (warriors) to stand on balconies wearing pantomime military uniforms. For socialists the queen stands for: nationalist tribalism, class privilege, massive unearned wealth, Christian superstition and unelected power. They cannot even preserve the image of an ideal bourgeois family that serves as a model for us all given the continual scandals emanating from what must be one of the most dysfunctional families in existence. Such criticisms are commonplace and feel like an exercise in the proverbial ‘shooting ducks in a barrel’ but somehow these people continue to be admired by many within the working class.

Given the history above and the usefulness of the royal family as propaganda we can see how they are placed at the centre of UK capitalism’s greatest shibboleth – ‘patriotism’. No mainstream politician dares question this tribal loyalty in public just as they would not criticise its royal incarnation. Perhaps to the younger people the royals are merely celebrities but for those of an older generation they represent a perverse feeling of community and continuity despite the reality that it is their existence and the class they represent that continually destroys communities by fuelling the relentless class struggle.

Wez.

Jubilee Junket (2022)

From the July 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

To paraphrase a recent radio comedic comment, had Napoleon really wanted to take over Britain, rather than an army all he needed was to offer an extra two days’ bank holiday. Then he would have been welcomed with cheers and bunting.

This satirical response was a none-to-serious explanation for the popular enthusiasm for the present monarch’s platinum jubilee. Indeed, it can be difficult to understand why people who are increasingly struggling against economic challenges should wish to celebrate the present wealthy incumbent of a feudal institution adapted to the political needs of capitalism.

At the recent state opening of Parliament, due to the absence of the queen, the throne was occupied by her crown, an object of monetary value enough to ease the fuel poverty of a huge number of her impoverished subjects. Yet many will have spent some of their sparse and dwindling financial resources on plastic bunting made in China.

As Brexit and the 2019 general election demonstrated, there remains a strong nationalist resonance, a significant bulwark protecting the status quo. There will have been very many who did not deck their homes in red, white and blue, or watch the seemingly endless sycophantic ‘news’ items and kitsch TV programmes, yet still were broadly sympathetic to the event.

The jubilee is an indication of the seemingly Sisyphean task facing socialists arguing that the working class needs to take responsibility for, and actively pursue, abolishing capitalism in favour of a new, true commonwealth. This will be a worldwide society of democratically achieved common ownership of production for need not profit.

It will certainly be a world without leaders, monarchs or otherwise. Those who count themselves republicans will have taken exception to the jubilation, demanding the hereditary monarchy be replaced by an elected president. While superficially this appears more democratic, effectively it changes little.

A cursory glance at countries with presidents is not encouraging. The USA is the self-proclaimed land of the free, but it’s a freedom to live in dire poverty for all too many, with racial divisions and a small financial elite hell bent on preserving their freedom to remain obscenely wealthy.

The ineffective nature of the US presidency when it comes to helping resolve social issues is shown by the continuing slaughter of school children to preserve the free market in assault rifles. The president may weep, but it’s nowhere near the flood of tears shed by grieving parents.

President Putin is as readily seduced by martial ambitions as ever the Tsars were and presides over a country afflicted by poverty, be it of workers not peasants. In France nationalism remains a curse and is no more economically progressive, whatever that might mean, than Britain. The challenge to republicans is to identify one republic that is a significant improvement on British monarchy.

The problem is that a huge effort would be required throughout the UK to convince enough of the electorate to trigger a referendum and then vote for the abolition of the monarchy in favour of a republic. Having achieved that, then nothing would have significantly changed. Capitalism can comfortably continue with a presidential head of state as it does in most of the world. As Belloc suggested, most people will ‘always keep a-hold of nurse for fear of finding something worse’.

Here lies the nub of the issue. It is not that monarchists are more deluded than republicans, rather it’s the fact the working class has not yet grasped its potential to look or move beyond capitalism. To do so there needs to be an ideological shift to an understanding that leaders, actual or symbolic or both, cannot deliver such a transformation on behalf of the working class. New political forms will have to be developed, transcending present institutions.

This is what is meant by revolution, not barricades and street fighting, the storming of Winter, or any other, palaces. The revolution comes about by men and women democratically making their own future through a radical change in thinking that emerges from an understanding of the material reality of the present. Monarchs and presidents are both barriers that will have to be overcome through a popular understanding of their role in preserving present social, economic and political arrangements.

In any society, the seeds of the future are sown even if the social soil is not so fertile as yet. Many of the jubilee events, street parties, community picnics and the like, were people freely working together cooperatively without any incentive of financial reward, often the opposite, for a common goal. Such examples show that people can and will work without being wage slaves requiring the threat of the lash of poverty.

A street party works because people contribute what they can – sweet, savoury, alcoholic or non-alcoholic, bunting, music and so on. Then people take what they need, even those who didn’t contribute due to their particular circumstances, too elderly for example.

While there are no moments of socialism while capitalism exists – all those elements for the street party will have been commodities produced for the realisation of profit – there is social motivation that gives a glimpse of what is possible.

This is not to suggest in any way that the motivation behind jubilee events was socialist-inspired. However, socialists must be aware that no matter how much they might deplore the overt motivation behind the events, the capitalist state’s ideological reinforcement of its legitimacy, there is nonetheless an underlying if presently unconscious potential.

The jubilee weekend came and went. By Monday the bunting was already starting to look incongruous and, like street party memories, beginning to fade. Capitalism is already reckoning the balance sheet, lost production due to time off set against increased retail sales.

As the present monarch becomes increasingly frail the state will have plans in place for the succession. Should the royal family then prove to be as dysfunctional as its recent history suggests it might be, republicans may get their moment. Then, no doubt, there’ll be an extra bank holiday to mark the inauguration of the new president. More plastic bunting from wherever capitalism has shifted production to by then.

Or, maybe, a different way of doing things altogether…

Dave Alton

Shakespeare and Elizabethan society (1964)

From the June 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

In this article it is aimed to outline briefly Elizabethan Society and its effect on the work of Shakespeare. It is necessary to look into the social background in order to see how conditions gave rise to new ideas of society and how they were reflected by Shakespeare.

The feudal system was in a dying state towards the end of the 16th century. The first upheaval and the greatest was due to the change in the methods of production. The most important development was in the growth of the wool industry with its expanding export markets. This led to the enclosure system —the forcible seizure of the lands from the peasants by the rich landlords. Here we had the development of early capitalist industry, and the exploitation of the former peasants.

The feudal system was crumbling and power began to move from the feudal aristocrat to the new landed bourgeoisie.

Now for the political aspects of the time which followed from the change in economic conditions. The intensive reorganisation of sections of the landed nobility and their unification with the bourgeoisie (the new merchant class) which in its early period (almost to the end of the 16th century), brought about the desire for an absolute monarch to. combat rebellious feudal lords.

The victory of the House of York in the Wars of the Roses, brought Edward IV (1461-1483) to the throne. He was the friend of the merchants and during his reign the mercantile system and absolutism in the political arena first made their appearance. Edward IV ruled almost without Parliament. Absolutism reached its climax during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Everybody was affected by the revolutionary changes in the social conditions.

Shakespeare (born 1564, died 1616) was a champion of the new forces. He recognised the barriers of the old feudal order and was in favour of absolutism to crush feudal rebellion. The history plays show this very clearly. The essential theme is the affirmation of absolute power. His fore-runner, Marlowe (1564-1593), likewise reflected in his work the aspirations of the bourgeoisie.

His plays expressed all the passion of an exultant class, eager to rush into the fray for the conquest of the world. Marlowe develops the heroic tragedy. “To know everything” is the motto of Marlowe's heroes. Shakespeare has his roots in Marlowe, but picked up the pen of Marlowe and developed his style considerably.

Above all Shakespeare recognized the necessity of a strong central power, to put down rebellion. The English bourgeoisie favoured not only monarchism, but even absolutism for a time, which still served their ends. This is a problem that occupied Shakespeare.

This also explains the peculiar omissions in his works. In “King John”, for instance, there is no mention of the Magna Carta, one of the most important events of that epoch; this would have lowered the stature of the ruler, and defeated Shakespeare’s purpose.

The bourgeoisie, the squirearchy and the absolutists were united in their common struggle against the feudal nobles who stood for the old order. The history plays leave little doubt as to where Shakespeare’s sympathies lay. The powerful feudal nobles depicted by him—the Percies, Glendowers, Mortimers—are arrogant and refractory. To him they were the scourge of the land. He saw Henry IV’s reign as an uninterrupted series of tragic events due to the feudal uprisings which resulted from the King's usurpation.

A strong King, according to Shakespeare, is the greatest political blessing a nation can enjoy. Title alone does not make a King—he must justify his rank. Henry VI and Richard II perish because they are not such Kings. In the play Henry V we have the only sovereign who has completely crushed feudalism. He embodies all Shakespeare’s hopes which were to be realised by absolutism. In Richard III the King represents a strong ruler who firmly holds the reins of power and puts an end to the intrigues and quarrels of the Court cliques.

The history plays are permeated with the idea of the inevitability of the historical process: “evil inevitability”, Richard II calls it. There are many references to the “times” and the “spirit of the times”.

The Earl of Westmoreland (Henry IV, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 1) replies to the accusation of the rebellious feudal nobles with:

O, my good Lord Mowbray,

Construe the times to their necessities,

And you shall say indeed, it is the time 

And not the King, that doth you injuries.

Then we have the speech by Warwick (Henry IV, Part 2, Act III, Scene I)—

There is a history in all men’s lives,

Figuring the nature of the times deceased;

The which observed, a man may prophesy,

With a near aim, of the main chance of things 

As yet not come to life.

Shakespeare not only states the casual conditioning of events but demonstrates it through all the means at his command. One of the chief means is to relate events to the social background. In Henry IV, the scenes in which Falstaff appears; in Henry V, the scenes in the camp; and in Richard III, the scenes of proclamation depict the life which is the foundation from which spring the major political events.

Shakespeare was a powerful poetical dramatist opposed to the feudal system and in the history plays he used the history of the previous times to help further the object of crushing feudalism. It was a tradition in those days, handed down from medieval times, that drama was to entertain and to teach.

During the first period of Shakespeare’s work until around 1601, there occurred the coalescence of all the foremost forces of the country: upper middle-class, the monarchy, the gentry, and even part of the old landed nobility. This process is reflected by the joyous optimism of Shakespeare’s early work which was filled with a bold and happy affirmation of life, with obviously aristocratic elements. He has two main themes:

1. The assertion of the absolutist national state; and 
2. The joy of living now available to society, at last emancipated from feudal bondage.

To the first theme he dedicated the history plays: to the second the series of enchanting, gay comedies like “Two Gentlemen of Verona”, “Love’s Labour’s Lost”, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, and “The Taming of the Shrew”. But the effects of the disintegration of the class alignment are already apparent in the plays written towards the end of the 16th century, plays like “Much Ado About Nothing” (1598) and ‘Twelfth Night” (1599) with their bitter sweet atmosphere which is never very far from tragedy. The decomposition of the Court had set in, the Puritans were becoming more and more aggressive, the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the nobility had already begun. Hence the tragic treatment of power in “Julius Caesar” (1599) with its confused conclusions and its pessimism.

Shakespeare lived in the period which saw the rise of the bourgeoisie, later to become the capitalist class. Here is an extract from the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels which sums up the situation:—

“The bourgeoisie . . . has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors' and has left no other bond between man and man than naked self-interest and callous ‘cash payment'. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. . . . The bourgeoisie has stripped off its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. . . . The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil and has reduced the family relation to a money relation.”

During the second period to 1609—years which marked the decline of Elizabeth's reign and the advent, under James I, of feudal reaction—the process of disintegration was completed. Corruption was rife and the nobility, with the support of the monarchy, was preparing to defend its position against the bourgeoisie and the gentry. The literature of the time was teeming with pessimism.

These events, plus the execution of the Earl of Essex and the Earl of Southampton, who was a friend of Shakespeare, had a profound influence on the poet. He did not write any more gay comedies but created the powerful tragedies “Hamlet” and “Troilus and Cressida”. In both these plays Shakespeare gives us a picture of the social background as being ripe unto rottenness.

In “Measure for Measure” (1604) there can be seen the internal problems of absolute monarchy. The characters comment on the ruler and on current political events. We have portrayed the dregs of humanity; young profligates of the Court; procurers; corrupt constables and swindlers.

Then came the later tragedies like “Macbeth” and “King Lear", again dealing with the question of Kingship and the troubles of society. “Macbeth” may be seen to be another “Richard III”, but the play is much more profound. It is the portrayal of the mental troubles of Macbeth after he has usurped the throne. “King Lear” can be seen as a powerful representation of Shakespeare's familiar theme showing spurious feudal ideas as opposed to ideas of genuine powerful love. The play also contains doubts about the money grabbing bourgeoisie. Edmund is like the bourgeoisie, a ruthless machiavellian, crafty and ambitious for personal gain.

In “Coriolanus" (1607) we have one of the gloomiest tragedies. It reflects disillusionment in the rulers. There can be seen a criticism and condemnation of the feudal aristocrat trying to rule under the new conditions but wishing to retain his feudal privileges. An interesting feature, also in this play, is the language of the lowly plebians. There is no indication of hypocrisy, greed or baseness and they are presented in a sympathetic manner.

Shakespeare was a powerful poetical dramatist and the language and dramatic intensity of the plays develops beautifully. In the early plays blank verse intrudes on the drama, but later he developed his art and reached a fusion in the heights of poetic drama. His achievement, however, is not only in the form of poetry and drama, but also in his presentation of the social background, and it is only by recognising this that we can fully appreciate his work.

In “A Companion to Shakespearian Studies", G. B. Harrison makes the following remarks:—

A serious student of Shakespeare's plays cannot neglect the national background, for in an age that was in many ways cribbed and confined, the problems of the individual were inseparable from the problems of the state. The picture of a Shakespeare magnificently aloof from life may be pleasing to romantic critics, but it does not square either with the facts, or with Shakespeare’s own comment upon his art. “Players”, said Hamlet to Polonius, “are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time”. Besides the purpose and end of playing “both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature”; “to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure”.

Shakespeare was at first a supporter of the bourgeoisie, the exponent of the program advanced by them when, in the name of humanity, they first challenged the feudal order, but which later they disavowed.

Towards the end of Shakespeare's life the bourgeoisie were already strong enough to throw off their cloak of being in the interests of humanity, to reveal their money grabbing and narrow-minded puritanism. Then he subjected the bourgeoisie to a keen and profound criticism. The rapacity, greed, cruelty, egoism and philistinism so typical of the growing bourgeoisie are scathingly portrayed and attacked. He placed on stage the social types of his day and through them reflected more clearly and profoundly than anyone else, the predominant social ideas of the times.

W. Waters

[Reprinted from the Socialist Standard, June 1951.]