We Britons

Although today's post on Gibraltar is far more of a curate's egg (can he not see that the things that he rightly celebrates about the place are precisely because, how and why it is, and wishes to remain, British?), Brendan O'Neill writes:

One thing about the planned rage against the royal wedding doesn’t add up: the question of why these Will’n’Kate haters have never publicly protested against the monarchy before. From the Islamist groups allegedly plotting to shout anti-British slogans, to the radical leftists who moan about the tackiness and expense of the whole shebang, none of these people have previously taken to the streets to demand, “Off with their heads!”

They don’t kick up a fuss during the state opening of parliament each year, which is a far more explicit expression of feudal values than next month’s wedding will be, nor do they organise mass television switch-offs when the Queen gives her annual Christmas address. Yet mention William and Kate’s nuptials and they come out in a rash, stomping their feet about the injustice and horror and gaudiness of it all.

This should be evidence, if any were required, that the trendy anti-wedding sentiment is not underpinned by anything remotely resembling a political principle, far less republicanism. If it were then we would surely have seen these Johnny-come-lately roundheads kicking up a fuss about monarchical privilege at some point in the past. (The monarchy has, after all, existed for a very long time.) No, it is an unattractive combination of mean-spiritedness and snobbery, of stinginess and disdain for the royal-watching masses, that has turned the wedding into an outlet for pseudo-political posturing.

One of the key arguments made against the wedding is that it is a form of brainwashing. In fact, it’s “brainwashing on an Orwellian scale”, says Will Self in this month’s Prospect magazine, where “we Britons are conditioned from birth to accept there’s only one form of government for us: constitutional monarchy”. When he says “we Britons”, he doesn’t actually mean him or his mates in the media – he means Them, the little people, the collectors of Diana plates, who are really dumb. Other liberal commentators argue that the wedding is a kind of “opium for the masses”, a “lethal dose of fairytale schmaltz” which is successfully distracting people from the recession. Because we’re all thick, you see. Meanwhile, female columnists who have seen better days witter on endlessly about Kate’s hair and cleavage and dress sense, in a curious combination of feminist commentary and barely disguised boob envy.

Given their lack of previous when it comes to protesting against the monarchy, and given their obsessive focus on the public’s apparently uncritical fawning over William and Kate, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the anti-wedding outlook is 5 per cent republicanism – max – and 95 per cent killjoyism. It’s the fact that this is a Big Occasion, which some people are quite excited about, which has tempted various miserabilists and moaners to have a pop. They care not one jot for the principled tradition of republicanism, and instead see the wedding as an opportunity to contrast their brainy and enlightened cosmopolitan values with the alleged stuffiness and stupidity of the lower orders who have – sneer – probably already bought their little Union Jacks.

As a republican, I would like to see the abolition of the monarchy. But I have no interest whatsoever in ruining a young couple’s big day or mocking those who are looking forward to watching it on television.

It was Thatcher who led the assault on the monarchy, since she scorned the Commonwealth, social cohesion, historical continuity and public Christianity, and called the Queen “the sort of person who votes for the SDP”, arrogating to herself the properly monarchical and royal role on the national and international stages, and using her most popular supporting newspaper to vilify the Royal Family.

Thatcher legislated to pre-empt the courts on both sides of the Atlantic by renouncing the British Parliament’s role in the amendment of the Canadian Constitution, to abolish the power of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to legislate for individual Australian states, to end the British Government’s consultative role in Australian state-level affairs, and to deprive the Queen’s Australian subjects of their right of appeal to Her Majesty in Council.

Whereas some of us still adhere to the movement of the trade unionists and activists who peremptorily dismissed an attempt to make the nascent Labour Party anti-monarchist. A movement replete with MBEs, OBEs, CBEs, mayoral chains, aldermen’s gowns, and civic services; a movement which proudly provided a high proportion of Peers of the Realm, Knights of the Garter, members of the Order of Merit, and Companions of Honour, who had rejoiced in their middle periods to be Lords Privy Seal, or Comptrollers of Her Majesty’s Household, or so many other such things, in order to deliver those goods within the parliamentary process in all its ceremony.

We still stand in the tradition of Attlee’s appointment of Mountbatten as Viceroy of India, and Wilson’s first choice of him for the new position of Secretary of State for Defence, which he felt obliged to decline only because of his closeness to the Royal Family. The tradition of the Silver Jubilee, held under the Callaghan Government.

The tradition of Peter Shore’s denunciation of the Major Government’s decision to scrap the Royal Yacht, and his support for Canadian against Spanish fishermen not least because Canada and the United Kingdom shared a Head of State. The tradition of the Labour MPs who opposed Thatcher’s cutting of Canada’s last tie to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, so opposing for the sake of the Aboriginal peoples and of the French-Canadians specifically as Her Majesty’s subjects.

The tradition of the Gibraltar Socialist Labour Party, founded out of the trade union movement specifically in order to secure for the British workers of Gibraltar the same pay and conditions enjoyed by other British workers. The tradition of Bernie Grant, who vociferously supported the monarchy because of its role in the Commonwealth, probably also the view of Diane Abbott.

Roll on electoral reform.