Today's Royal Wedding in Stockholm reminds us that most of the great social democracies are monarchies, in the Nordic Countries, in the Benelux countries, and in the United Kingdom and the Old Commonwealth in better days (although Canada and New Zealand still do quite well). Monarchy embodies the principle of sheer good fortune, of Divine Providence conferring responsibilities upon the more fortunate towards the less fortunate.
Allegiance to a monarchy is allegiance to an institution embodied by a person, rather than to an ethnicity or an ideology as the basis of the State. As Bernie Grant understood, and as Diane Abbott probably does, allegiance to the British monarchy, with its role in the Commonwealth, is a particular inoculation against racialism; the same can be said of all of them, since they are all endlessly descended from princes and princesses brought in from all over Europe and beyond.
No wonder that the National Party abolished the monarchy in South Africa. No wonder that the Rhodesian regime followed suit, and removed the Union Flag from that of Rhodesia, something that not even the Boers' revenge republic ever did. And no wonder that the BNP wants to abolish the monarchy here.
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The Danish monarchy is certainly very socially democratic. Christian IX frequented bordellos when he was a naval officer - his reputation was so well known he was banned from his own daughter's wedding by Victoria.
ReplyDeleteAnd his son and successor Fredrik VIII is supposed have suffered his fatal heart attack exerting himself in such a institution in the Reeperbahn of Hamburg.
The Norwegian Crown Prince is married to the former common-law wife of a drug dealer and it is claimed on the streets of Copenhagen that the Queen's husband has penchant for boys.
Oh, well...
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