How Monarchy Defeated Democracy

Published 22 Nov 2016

                                                                Book by Tom Nairn

Tony Blair, with his wide-open eyes that looked like he was high on something, (he was, you know - power) and his big grin exposing a double row of bleached teeth, too many teeth, it seemed, making him look like he wanted to bite something - or someone! - one day got so stoned on his favourite tipple that he finally sank his fangs into a whole nation of people at the invitation of a crack-brained American president who needed a fig leaf of 'international' support for his dangerous caper of invading a nation at peace.  With the result that the Labour leader warmonger fell from the power he so hotly hungered after. A plot for a medieval morality play! Tony Blair, whose 'third way', turned out to be a trifling refinement of the way of right-wing parties everywhere, that is, devotion to a policy of making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

People wouldn't naturally vote for a clown and a liar, but the British political system doesn't really offer them much other choice with its 'first past the post' horserace, which offers the public a drama and easy-to-remember catchwords like 'New Labour - New Britain'. This isn't politics, it's just indoctrination. In reality only two parties contend for power. The third one is  there to suggest that it's not just a matter of Buggins's turn.

The third party, which at one time wanted to 'break the mould of British politics', has instead strengthened  it by saddling the nation with yet another clown and liar, and you can bet that one day Lord Clegg will follow Lord Ashdown into the House of Lords, that biggest blot on the face of British democracy, for services rendered, not to the nation, not to the People, but to the ruling class.

Modern British politicians, what are they? Actors first and foremost, clowns left around by a moribund political system, who regale an expectant people with fine words about fair play and justice, while filching from them, bit by bit, the benefits they'd inherited from past regimes that had stood in rather better odour. The 'business of government' has dwindled into delivering the People over to the interests of big business.

You might think that newspapers would make it their business to expose this treachery. But what is the duty of a newspaper in a Crown State, such as Britain? In a State where the People are sovereign, instead of a monarch, the first duty of a newspaper is to the People, but in a monarchical State, where the people are not citizens with 'inalienable rights', as constitutional language has it, but only subjects, whose freedoms come to them, not by right, but by 'grace and favour', this clearly cannot be the case. Here the fundamental allegiance of a newspaper must be to the monarch. But in Britain the Monarch does not actually rule. His or her absolute right to rule was appropriated in 1688, not by the People, but by a class of people made up of landowners, merchants grown rich on international trade and aristocrats. This class of people has ruled the nation for well over 300 years now, not directly, to be sure, but through the myth of 'the Crown in Parliament', which means in practice that it maintains its hold on the nation, not through any appeal to democratic sentiment, but through the ancient symbols of royal power.

Ancient, but strangely modern, for the public's conception of royalty was fashioned only in the 19th century with the help of an increasing number of newspapers. Before the reign of Queen Victoria people and royalty lived on two separate planes. Neither one took the least interest in the other. The often scandalous behaviour of royalty did not at all affect its popularity, because it had no popularity, and didn't want any. After all, why should it want subjects sticking their common noses into its affairs?

All this changed when politicians of the day managed to convince the Queen, and especially Prince Albert, the 'great modernizer of the Monarchy', that this state of affairs would have to change, otherwise the Monarchy would disappear. Royalty henceforth would have to conduct itself in ways that were broadly pleasing to the public at large and, in addition, be obliged to participate in 'royal ceremonies' that were either invented at the time or dug out of the trash bin of history for the specific purpose of displaying royalty to the public. This was a bit of a shock for a class of people that had always done just what it pleased without reference to the public or recognized any duties beyond that of living a luxurious life.

However, the point was taken, and thus began the creation of the species of street theatre that Britain now possesses instead of a modern and efficient political system. The strategy worked. The monarchy not only survived, but the public became frankly infatuated with it and sometimes even besotted by such spectacles as white horses drawing a Cinderella coach with a crowned head peeping from it, a white glove waving from a window and a pair of liveried lackeys attached to the back.

Compared to all this, politics is boring! Democracy is boring. But they are boring because they are made to seem boring. And they are made to seem boring because politics and democracy are threats to class rule.