Nick Griffin could have explained to the Queen that Fascist parties have never come to power in countries with monarchies except in one (admittedly significant) case where they abolished that institution as quickly as possible, and that it is his own party's policy to depose her as apartheid South Africa did and as Ian Smith's Rhodesia purported to do.
When not discussing Her Majesty's own descent, both from the "negroid" Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and, via Elizabeth of York with her Moorish antecedents, from Muhammad. Queen Charlotte, after whom the city in North Carolina is named, is shown clearly with light skin but African facial features in contemporaneous portraiture, and was spoken of as "negroid" without any self-consciousness during her lifetime.
She was descended from the part-black Royal House of Portugal, a member of which, Catherine of Braganza who was the consort of Charles II but from whom no one is descended (unlike her husband...), is shown looking just like a mixed-raced Briton of today in a portrait displayed in one of the private areas of Durham Castle. I sat under it only on Monday, waiting for the champagne to flow and the Vice-Chancellor to speak at the launch of a friend's festschrift. It did, and he did.
This really would have been the last opportunity for Griffin and Her Majesty to have had that conversation. The BNP took barely half as many votes this year as last year, fought 38 council seats and lost 36 of them, and lost every seat on Barking & Dagenham Council, of which it had thought that it might take control. Like the NF before it and the BUF before that, the BNP was always talked up by its sectarian Left opponents, in order to make themselves appear more important than they really were. This remains very much the case with the teaching of the 1930s. Mosley was never really terribly important. Nor was Griffin.
Every 30 or 40 years, this tendency reappears to make a lot of noise before going away again. Thankfully, I will be in my sixties or older before it happens again. And thankfully, it would, once more, only last for a few years. That is how these things work.
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I understand Rhodesia was driven to it; at first (the UDI in November 1965) it tried to give itself dominion status, a step up from the colony it was, but the British said no because, well-meaning, they wanted to give blacks power simply for being black before granting it independence even as a dominion. The rest as they say is history (you don't want to be in Zimbabwe).
ReplyDeleteI understand Rhodesia wasn't South Africa: not an apartheid state but a meritocratic one; the few blacks who qualified shared in ruling. There were a few prejudicial laws but arguably milder than the US at the time (you could marry a black there, which was outlawed in some American states).
They werenot "driven to it" at all.
ReplyDeleteThere remains an extraordinary sentimentality about a regime which was founded in treason against the present Queen, looked for protection to the Boers' revenge republic, purportedly deposed the Queen, and then surpassed even its patron to the south by removing the Union Flag from its own.
Zimbabwe should restore the monarchy. One to work on with a view to Mugabe's death.
"Nick Griffin could have explained to the Queen that Fascist parties have never come to power in countries with monarchies except in one (admittedly significant) case where they abolished that institution as quickly as possible"
ReplyDeleteWhoa there! I'm nitpicking, but what about Italy. That was also a "pretty significant case".
There are also a bunch of Balkan/ Central European countries that might fit, but less significantly and more arguably.
Italy was the one to which I was referring. As to the others, yes, a lot less significantly and a whole lot more arguably.
ReplyDeleteMind you, even in Italy, almost no one in the south had any loyalty to that particular Royal House. Downgrading it to an ornament - abolition, effectively - was nowhere near as far as they would have gone. Odd to think of people who were loyal to the Bourbons because "the other lot are French". But there we are.
My mistake, I just found this blog and am still trying to understand your writing style. I was pretty sure that "the one significant instance" of a fascist party taking power under a monarchy was that of South Africa, and rereading the post it scans the same way. I thought the "they" who got rid of the monarchy "as soon as they could" were the fascists.
ReplyDeleteThe National Party took power in South Africa (despite getting fewer votes than their opponents in the election) in 1949, and abolished the monarchy in 1962. Mussolini's group took power in 1923 and never abolished the monarchy, unless you count the Salo Republic, the Italian public voted narrowly to abolish the monarchy the year after Mussolini was shot, a majority in the former Bourbon kingdom actually voting to keep it.
Again, this is nitpicking, since an actual fascist comeback in western countries would be much more effectively disguised than the BNP.
There remains an extraordinary sentimentality about a regime
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying it was perfect and I wasn't in Rhodesia (were you ever there?) but I maintain that Ian Smith was one of the most wrongly maligned political figures of the last century. His epitaph well could be 'I told you so'.
founded in treason against the present Queen
The trouble was her ministers, with the best intentions in the world, wanted to ruin Rhodesia (like Zimbabwe is now... they wanted to hand over power to unqualified people simply because of race) and Smith, a born Rhodesian who'd lived there most of his life, saw that. He may have had the prejudices common to English-speaking whites around the world at the time (again American race laws were pretty bad) but was no Hitler or National Party Afrikaner for that matter. Arguably he was a patriot (he was a Zimbabwean MP in the ’80s; Mugabe spared him because it was good press).
Again he wanted to keep the Queen as head of state but the British turned him down; he didn't change that until five years after independence. Doesn't sound nasty about the monarchy.
If I remember rightly, South Africa, a country that was wrong, was kicked out of the Commonwealth for apartheid in 1961 so it understandably dropped the Queen the same year.
"Every 30 or 40 years, this tendency reappears to make a lot of noise before going away again. Thankfully, I will be in my sixties or older before it happens again. And thankfully, it would, once more, only last for a few years. That is how these things work."
ReplyDeleteAnd Brenda's kingdom won't be even more dis-United by then? Never mind, as long as the political institutions continue to be manned the country can go to Hell.
Reimer, no, I don't see why it should be. It almost certainly won't be hers by then, of course. But you never know.
ReplyDeleteThe Young Fogey, the Republic of South Africa was the Boers' revenge. They were always going to do it.