It Is "Republicanism" That Is Racist

Normally, one would ignore Marcus Brigstocke. But I heard him on the radio this evening, describing monarchism and racism as "pretty much the same thing".

Being British is not and has never been an ethnic identity. However reduced it may now be in these terms, being British is an imperial identity, transcending ethnicity as surely as Saint Paul's Roman citizenship was wholly compatible with the fact that he was a Greek-speaking Jew from present-day Turkey. In view of the entirely voluntary constitutional status of each of the places in question, to be British is now to be not just any, but at some level all, of English, Scots, Welsh, Irish, Manx, Channel Islander, Mediterranean, North American, Caribbean, South American, Southern African Creole, Indian Ocean Creole, and Polynesian.

The monarchy binds together the 16 Commonwealth Realms, the 10 British Overseas Territories with permanent populations, the three Crown Dependencies, the three inhabited territories dependent on Australia, the one inhabited territory dependent on New Zealand, and the two states in free association with New Zealand, as well as the Melanesian half of the people of Fiji (the other half being descended from Indian indentured labour), whose Great Council of Chiefs, which elects the President, continues to acknowledge the Queen as Paramount Chief even though Fiji became a republic following two coups in 1987 and has not exactly had a happy history since.

Although Saint Helena's Dependencies of Ascension Island and, especially, Tristan da Cunha are also very distinct, that gives the minimum, if admittedly quaint, figure of thirty-five and a half countries, every one of them now an elective democracy, with the only weak link in the country with the weakest link to the Crown. Not to mention that the Crown binds together the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom, of which inherent generosity of spirit all the rest is a natural and beautiful extension.

We are one family, even though any member is free to leave at any time; indeed, we are if anything even stronger by virtue of that freedom. What our unifying institution represents has never been more important than in today's world. And we are, like so many these days, a thoroughly mixed-race family. The Crown Dependencies are very white places, it is true. So is Gibraltar. So are the Falkland Islands, although there are now a lot of Saint Helenians there at any given time. But the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have substantial non-white populations. And everywhere else in question is overwhelmingly or entirely non-white.

Furthermore, the most flagrant racists in the monarchy debate are on the anti-monarchist side, for ever banging on about the German and other foreign connections of the Royal Family in a way which would rightly have those same people foaming at the moth with anger if used against British Asians, British Afro-Caribbeans, British Jews and others, most of whose families have been in this country only since a very long time after the accession of George I.

The President of Britain, Canada, Australia or New Zealand would always, always, always be a late-middle-aged, upper-middle-class, white man, probably a middle-ranking Cabinet Minister from 10 or 15 years before who had pretended to renounce party in order to do the job, yet who had depended on it entirely in order to get the vote out. By contrast, the Royal Family is descended both from the part-black Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and, via Elizabeth of York, from Muhammad. No one seriously suggests that an elective arrangement could deliver a mixed-race Head of State, or an elderly one such as the Queen now is, or a young one such as she was when she acceded, or a woman.

That is why both the Radical Right and the Far Right want such an arrangement. And that is why no one else should want it, or arguably does want it, whether or not those who do yet recognise themselves as either Radical Right or Far Right.