blues BY OUR COURT CORRESPONDENT ANOTHER ROYAL WEDDING is upon us, this time Andrew and Forgic. For many on the Left the wedding is an occasion merely for saying 'stuff the monarchy' and reflecting that while royalty is a circus for the masses, nobody really takes it seriously nowadays. The real battle remains between the workers and the bosses and royalty is an irrelevant sideshow. Such an approach would be a mistake. It overlooks the very important idcological and constitutional role which the monarchy plays in our society, and the ways in which royal doings births, marriages and deaths — are deployed in a quite conscious way by the ruling class.
The British royals are going through something of a boom. Royalty has to reproduce itself, and reproduce itself in sufficient quantities to establish a viable functioning unit..... an extended family with the necessary number of princes and princesses to carry out all the royal duties. Hence the importance put on the selection of wives and husbands for the said royal personages, with all the attendent gynaccalogical examinations and selection of the right 'types'.
While royalty was once quite remote, now a positive premium is put on public accessibility — not only to the routine comings and goings, but also to intimate details. The growing over of the royal family into soap opera was nicely demonstrated at Ascol when Joan Collins of 'Dynasty' staged her own walkabout to clash with the arrival of Di and Fergie. As all the popular press pointed out, it was ditticult to tell who was soap opera and who was royalty.
The present royal tamily is doing a splendid job — not only two royal marriages in quick succession, the doings of 'randy Andy', a succession of royal births, all topped off by a magnificent royal grandmum, loved by the nation.
All this is aimed at securing popularity for a group of people who above all represent continuity, the continuity of British bourgeois society. But the peace which the British bourgeoisie made with the monarchy in the seventeenth century was quite different to the myth of a family who provide some public entertainment and social cement. British bourgeois society is quite literally a 'constitutional monarchy' and the monarchy plays an active political role
in this arrangement. A reminder of this came in a sticky little business which the royal family carried off with some
the death of Mrs Simpson, the American-born Dutchess of Windsor. Edward VIll was not allowed to have an American wite because it interrupted the myth of a 'British' and 'royal' monarchy to which the armed forces, every member of parliament, the civil service and so on could swear 'loyalty'. By contrast, a monarch who is pure entertainment like prince Ranier in Monaco had no such problems.
The British government is 'Her/His Majesty's government'. The monarchy invites somcone to form a government after each general clection. By convention the leader of the winning party is invited to form the government. But as we move into a fragmented party system in which there may be no winner, the political role of the monarch is likely to become more transparent. Imagine if our beloved monarch was faced with a choice between a left Labour government or an Alliance government, if both parties had a roughly cqual
The monarch has an absolute right to dissolve parliament. We can be sure that in a period of actute social and political crisis all these so-called 'formal' rights would if necessary be used with utter ruthlessness. The monarchy has a select political advisory group, the Privy Council, which could act as a council of war in such a situation (by an historical accident Tony Benn is a member of it).
Utilising the power to summon and dismiss parliaments and governments,
the monarchy would also possess the power to appeal directly to the nation, to call on loyalty to the Crown against subversive governments and parliaments, or ex-governments and ex-parliaments, or insurgent workers. Here the popularity of the monarchy would come into its own.
The loyalty of the armed forced to the Crown is, of necessity, absolute. The political powers of the monarchy, in order to preserve its mystery and charisma, must be used with extreme circumspection. Despite the occasional reactionary rantings of Prince Philip, the hurly-burly of day-to-day bourgeois politics is strictly avoided. But the monarchy is there, with its powers and potential intact, and let nobody think that it could not be used
Far-sighted members of the establishment clearly understand this, and this is why they raise a critical eyebrow when Prince Charles visits the homeless under Waterloo bridge, talks to flowers, or speculates on Nirvana. In general, however, they can content themselves with the thought that such eccentricity won't be too much of an obstacle when it comes to putting down the plebs.
Scorn for the monarchy on the Left goes hand in hand with a curious incapacity to combat it. Some very leading members of the parliamentary Labour left have steadfastly refused to countenance abolition of the monarchy as a serious demand and slogan. Often it has been left to people like Willie Hamilton, a right winger, to raise questions about the Civil List, and generally throw mud at royal parasites.
Such left passivity is encouraged by simplistic stereotypes which see the royals as simple entertainment and of no independent political significance. Abolition of the monarchy, a simple republican, bourgeois-democratic demand, should be as much a part of the socialist programme as abolition of the House of Lords
For the royals are not just there to breed acceptance and loyalty to the status quo, any more than the House of Lords has a purely ideological function. They are also there to (literally) rally the troops against fundamental social change. Not 'stuff the wedding' but 'down with the monarchy - for a workers' republic' should be the socialist slogan!
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