Princess Di and Lord Louis - under the socialist microscope

Knowing that readers around the world will suffer in the wake of the media-generated tsunami of tears on the 10th anniversary of Diana's death (31 August 1997), it seems prudent to comment today instead, some 28 years after the passing of another parasite, one Louis Mountbatten. Both were victims of capitalism and had much in common. They were members of the ruling class, generally performed well in this capacity (but not without some criticism from their fellows) and died spectacularly.

The Socialist Standard of October 1979 traced the royal lineage of Mountbatten in surprisingly amusing detail: "..[He] 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 (with luck) new thrones....Montbatten came from the line of the dukes of Hesse. Already very well connected, the Hesse royal family came into contact with the British royal family's circle of acquaintance, and two of the four sons of Alexander and his Polish countess...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 accepted 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.

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..turned up as a colonel of Bulgarian cavalry, only 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 during 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 the British royal family 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...." Earl Mountbatten (the name change was a direct result of the anti-German hysteria in 1914 Britain) was one of Prince Louis of Battenburg's four children.

Diana Spencer had the right qualifications to become Princess of Wales: she was the daughter of an Earl and Viscountess, a virgin and Protestant. She, with the help of Charles, produced two offspring. She also served the interests of her class by way of her charity 'work' and other reformist diversions (such as he campaign against landmines, an activity which was not appreciated by all members of her class: one Tory Peter Viggers, a member of the Commons Defence Select Committee remarked 'This is an important, sophisticated argument. It doesn't help simply to point at the amputees and say how terrible it is') and ultimately in her premature death. This event received comment in the Socialist Standard (October 1997): "..Which person in modern human history has received the most attention from, and been the subject of more media predictions by astrolegers, numerologists, spiritualists, soothsayers and other crystal ball gazers, than Princess Diana? And furthermore, why did not a single one of these professional fraudsters prophesy Diana's fatal accident? And just as bizarrely, why has no-one apparently noticed this? The British media, increasingly including the TV media, feeds the working class a meaty daily diet of tricksters and charlatans who claim to have the future in their hands. And yet when further incontrovertible evidence emerges of their complete inability to do what they claim they can, we don't hear a peep from their media pimps. How odd...."

Mountbatten played a more conventional role, 'working' as an aide-de-camp and Viceroy of India. Indeed, his "...personal record of prominent positions in the service of British capitalism, particularly 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..." His 'work' did not go without criticism, which included his masterminding of the Dieppe raid of 1942 which resulted in the heavy loss of life and the hasty partition of India in which perhaps half a million people died. Thirty years later he was one of twenty-two people killed by the IRA in the capitalist struggle over Northern Ireland.

By way of conclusion, it needs to be said that "Socialists are unremittingly hostile to hierarchy and privilege..but that does not mean we have no sympathy at all for those outside the working class who are also sometimes victims of a mad, uncontrollable system..." But, if "you support and work for capitalism, violence - committing it and suffering it, as Mountbatten did - is likely to be part of the deal."

RS