Why monarchy matters
Guest Contributor, Michael Merrick, on the perils of constitutional reform and the risk of plutocracy
Following on from the announcement by Julia Gillard that Australia should become a republic upon the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the usual dross is appearing on various websites about how this might just prove the beginning of a vibrant republican movement here in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Dream on.
However, despite the lack of public appetite for republicanism, I thought the issue might well be worth a few quick words, not least because since 'constitutional reform' has become the cause célèbre on all sides of the increasingly whiggish House, so there also appears to have been raised into intellectual orthodoxy the argument that the very presence of unelected beings, be it the Monarch or the Lords, is somehow offensive to the self-evidently superior ideals of democratic representation. Indeed, it is precisely this emerging consensus that has enabled a crooked Commons to earnestly urge ‘reform' of a rather less crooked House of Lords, and an even less crooked Monarchy, and all in the name of making the system less crooked. Thus will the ideologues strain at gnats whilst swallowing camels; and all in the name of making the gnats look more like camels.
One needn't dwell too long on the irony, since there are a variety of reasons why the reforming impulse is problematic, just as there are a variety of defences of the monarchic principle, but the most relevant aspect in contemporary society is the issue of power, the possession of it and, much more importantly, the limitation of it. And it is specifically that ‘limitation of power' bit that is increasingly important. I suspect this is one of the reasons why working-class communities tend, generally speaking, to have great sympathy for the monarchy, and the Queen in particular. To many, the Queen is above the Machiavellian machinations of the power-hungry political classes, representative of something greater than the crudeness of the Commons, a (sometimes failing) paragon of virtue that represents to the world all that we hope is best about ourselves. The Queen, unlike those who nominally serve her, is never deemed to be ‘in it for herself', and her reign is characterised as dutiful more than megalomaniacal. Thus do her subjects line the avenues on the great occasions, wave their flags and sing their anthems, all to the vociferous irritation of the displaced Guardianistas who rather conceitedly think that meritocratic society ought rightfully to be honouring them instead.
And that last line is the nub of it, since the republican argument always seems, in this country at any rate, to be inextricably bound up with the liberal cause, which tends also to mean that it resides primarily (for the time being) within the thinking of the contemporary liberal metro-left. Of course it is rather more complex than just that, but nonetheless when one hears republican arguments offered as an antidote to alleged institutional 'inequality', then it is likely that one is primarily witnessing the bristling of bourgeois sensibilities, resentful of the fact that there could be an institutional and ideological barrier to its own (imagined) upward mobility, angry that in a society largely tilted toward its own interests there yet exists a level to which it cannot ultimately ascend, and wishing to dispose of those very structures that would act as a constraint on the accumulation of power by an otherwise all-consuming oligarchy.
Which is where the limitation of power comes in. The monarch can legitimately be seen as the last line of defence against an all-out victory of the plutocracy, one of the few possessions of the people that the rich man cannot buy precisely because the position is forever in public, and not private, ownership (unless the rich and the powerful steal the crown of course – see the ‘Glorious' Revolution). In that sense, the monarch is an embodiment of the commonality that one would expect the left to embrace – she both belongs exclusively to, and thereby attracts the loyalty of, her people, a possession and belonging that is radically egalitarian since to be a subject is to be subservient, regardless of rank or status. Only, this kind of egalitarianism offends the very soul of contemporary liberal and plutocratic societies, in the habit of thinking that social position is determined only by wealth and power, before employing such terms as 'equality' as the sledge-hammer with which to smash anything that can determine social status outwith wealth and power. Monarchism resists this, since in a world in which the rich are the powerful and can possess all they desire, the position of monarch they do not and cannot: I maintain that it would be a cowardly act of surrender to offer up to the plutocracy the very thing they cannot possess, for no other reason than we no longer see any need to uphold the existence of things the plutocracy cannot possess.
Now of course there are those who immediately point out, perfectly reasonably, that we already have a monarch, before further pointing out, not so reasonably, that she has proved no such barrier to the tyranny of the elected, and indeed that it is the legal and constitutional anomaly of the Crown that has bestowed such unsavoury powers on Parliament. Which is a curious line of logic. After all, if Parliament has been able to become so powerful because it has usurped power proper to the Crown, that is, because of the weakness of our monarchism, then why would one seek to further diminish (or abolish) monarchism? One can only wonder at those who lament that our elected representatives have not done as they ought, before proposing that we have only elected representatives.
Obviously the liberal will rarely see things in these terms, having become drunk on a doctrine that exists primarily to dismantle all opposition to their own advancement. But those at the bottom needn't confuse friend with foe just because their bourgeois ‘comrades' tell them to (and in fairness, in my experience at least, they rarely do). The reality is that the common man does still need to react against unwarranted and unwarrantable power interests; but those interests do not reside in the position of the monarch. The tables that have been tilted have not been designed and constructed from within the halls of Buckingham Palace, and any tilting that has taken place has more often been to the benefit of those who reside in 0AA, not 1AA. In that sense, the monarch can be viewed as a genuine friend and ally of the commoner, an albeit increasingly anachronistic stick in the mud that nonetheless cannot succumb to the will and whims of a rapacious petit-bourgeoisie. And a monarch who realises this central ethic of service, who knows his or her role in defending the people from those that would seek ultimate control, whose very power consists in the limitation of power - it is this vision of Monarchy with which the left can (and in certain circles still does) closely identify.
In short, Monarchy protects the people from Parliament; it does not protect Parliament from the people. And if you think the latter half of that equation has become corrupted in recent years, then think about the role of the former – or else pull it down, and see who really benefits. Clue: it will be the kind of people who were, under the fallacious guise of 'equality' and 'democracy', arguing for its abolition in the first place.