So you’ve paid off your mortgage and now you own your house and the land on which it stands. No, you don’t — the land still belongs to the Queen, who is the sole legal owner of land in the United Kingdom. In fact the queen also owns all the land in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and a number of other Commonwealth countries. the Queen of England is the titular owner of all the national soil. In all she owns well over six billion acres (one-sixth of the earth’s land surface), making her by far the largest landowner on the planet. But really what difference does it really make if in the last analysis the queen owns the land your house is on, supposedly making you and everyone else serfs rather than free individuals? In Britain the government can no longer legally seize land in the name of the Crown, but in theory the queen could sell Canada (just as Russia sold Alaska to the US.)
Does monarchy serve any interest for ordinary people, beyond giving a holiday and a pageant now and then? Since her accession to the throne scarcely has a newspaper been published without some mention of the Queen, her husband, and the rest of her brood. Journalists have tripped over each other in their efforts to boost circulation by publishing highly-coloured stories of Royal doings and going-ons. The articles are written in such obsequiously nauseating terms that one can only turn from them in disgust. No effort is spared to convince everybody that the Queen is the repository of every human virtue. With next years royal jubilee we will be subjected to no end of absurd and expensive pageantry with the usual round of royal documentaries, all giving the line that our glorious monarch is the centre of our “identity” and political stability.
SOYMB have no personal quarrel with the Queen. As occupant of the throne of Great Britain she has no real 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. Monarchs exist because other people treat them as monarchs not because there is something intrinsic or magical about the royal personage which makes them a monarch. It is the willingness of people to kneel before them. In contemporary Britain, this willingness does not directly turn into political power, but a much more nebulous symbolic one. Local councillors and assorted worthies vie for the opportunity of getting to meet a royal on walkabout, or be invited to special dinners and garden parties with her. Of course, this sort of veneration does not only apply to royalty. Pop singers, movie actors and sports stars receive similar veneration from an adoring public, and perform the same function of reflecting meaning and glory upon the fans that meet and read about them. It is a mark of the extent of the alienation of our society that neither we, nor the doings of our friends and neighbours, are worthwhile to ourselves unless refracted through the lens of the media and the fame game. 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 monarch, something else has to be held up to dazzle the dispossessed. When millions of people feel alienated-politically, economically, psychologically-they are easy prey for spectacles inviting them to displace their feelings about themselves for someone or something else. But so that the media hacks may be assured that their message has reached us all we hereby declare that we believe every word they tell us and accept every tale of the indomitable courage with which Her Majesty faces her duties, and that we believe that under the inspiration of the Queen this country will become glorious once again. Having issued that declaration, we hope that these inane drivellings will cease and that journalists will now devote themselves to other and more serious matters, that is, provided always that they are capable of anything other than High Society chit-chat.
It would appear, if the court scribblers are to be believed, that the Queen has no faults whatsoever. We are not disposed to dispute that assertion. As we are not personally acquainted with Her Majesty we are unable to pass judgment. The contribution made to society by the Queen and her greedy and incestuous clan is simply zilch. Each one is capable of happily consuming in one day more resources and commodities than any 100 members of the working class, perhaps 1000 times as much as the inhabitants of a small African village. Yet we are meant to kow-tow to this bunch of self-seeking leeches, to prostrate ourselves in front of them? It is time we, the working class, celebrated something of far more importance—ourselves. It seems we have been led for so long by idiots, convinced we should look up to our "betters" and to celebrate their shenanigans, brainwashed into thinking the same by the media, that we have forgotten our own collective strength. If the injustices that plague our world and perpetrated in the name of profit were to receive one-tenth as much coverage as this Jubilee will get, then our case would have been well publicised and our ranks undoubtedly swollen.
Surrounded by bankers, landowners, Tory and Labour leaders, Her Majesty has no doubt perform her part with grace and charm. But 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. The royal family's role is to act as a focus for loyalty to the British state. The royal family may be a relic from feudalism but it is easier to get people to identify with it than with some abstraction like the constitution. It is true that a republican movement did not grow up in Britain as it did in other European states in the nineteenth century but then, as seems fairly obvious, it didn't need to after the defeat of royal authority in the 17th century. Indeed, the early nature of Britain's bourgeois revolution meant that capitalist growth and secular control of its perceived interests went hand in hand with a “constitutional monarchy”, i.e. a monarchy that was increasingly impotent as political force but emerging as a convenient “impartial” figurehead.
Socialists, of course, are unconcern as to whether we live in a republic or a constitutional monarchy – capitalism is capitalism whatever its political label. We must, however, point out the worst lies told about the history of our class. Constitutional monarchy has not always been a comfortable political framework for British capitalism and has always had its critics, including a minority of republicans. Socialists desire a good deal more than a mere capitalist republic. Unlike the left of capitalism, we openly advocate common ownership and democratic control which, for the privileged royal parasites, would mean the end of their vast ownership of resources and their place as sources of political deference and patronage.
Stuff the 2012 Diamond Jubilee.
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