What the Butler saw
It has been a fascinating few weeks for republicans. The Burrell trial and the aftermath has provided the country with new insights into the secret world of royalty and further confirmation of the RDG's view of the monarchy in crisis. It is a crisis which began in the 1990's and continues to this day.
We are not speaking of an odd scandal or one off event, but rather a whole period or epoch in which stability is suddenly interrupted and interspersed by yet another drama. It is an epoch drawn out by the inability of the various social classes to resolve or put an end to the situation.
In the 1996 RDG programme we argued that "the crisis of the Social Monarchy creates the objective basis for a new republican movement. But without republican parties this potential will remain latent. At present neither the middle class nor the working class have moved decisively to reject the constitutional monarchy. The middle class retains its illusions in the monarchy and its fear of republicanism. The working class is still dominated by Labourism. Nevertheless republicanism is now on the political agenda".
To begin to make sense of the situation, we need to make a clear distinction between the queen, as hereditary monarch, the constitutional monarchist system and what we term the 'Social Monarchy'.
Americans would not confuse the US Federal Republic with George Bush. The former represents a constitutional-political system, whilst the latter is merely the present holder of the office of President. It is clear that the American people can get rid of George Bush without abolishing or even changing their federal republic. But in the UK such confusion is quite likely in any discussion.
We therefore use the term 'constitutional monarchist system' to mean the system of government which includes parliament, the House of Lords, the powers of the executive and the Prime Minister, the union of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the first past the post electoral system and the 'unwritten' constitutional laws etc.
Abolishing the constitutional monarchist system means radically changing the form of democracy. It is not primarily or simply about getting rid of the hereditary head of state. But because the hereditary head of state symbolises and binds the whole constitutional system together, the monarchy becomes the symbolic focal point for those who want to change the system.
Republicanism should not be reduced simply to anti-monarchism. It must represent a more general democratic case against the powers wielded by Blair's elected dictatorship and the failure of parliament to represent the people. It is not so much the powers of the queen, but the powers concentrated in the hands of her first minister. We saw Thatcher use these powers against the miners and Blair will now deploy them against the fire-fighters.
The Social Monarchy is the term to describe the historical form taken by constitutional monarchist system when combined with state capitalism and the welfare state. It was the British form of welfare state capitalism emerging from world war two and the 1945 Labour government. We have sometimes called it the 'Elizabethan welfare state' in recognition that the current monarch crowned in 1952 came to symbolise this post war re-articulation of traditional British conservatism and state capitalism.
The Social Monarchy was a testament to both the strength and weakness of the working class. After the war their demands for change won social reforms from the ruling class. But the workers were not strong enough either in consciousness or organisation to overthrow them. The ruling class was not strong enough to take back these reforms until the economic crisis of the 1970's and the defeat of the miners in 1984.
The Thatcher government began the process of dismantling the social monarchy. Mass unemployment, privatisation, attacks on the welfare state and the destruction of the trade union power produced its own shifts in the politics of Labour. Thatcherism reached its zenith in the poll tax, which showed up the failure of parliament to represent the people. The unintended consequences of Thatcherism was the questioning of democratic institutions, the growth of nationalism and the demands for constitutional change. The programme of New Labour has brought constitutional change with continued and extended privatisation. In this sense Blair is 'completing' the process of dismantling the Social Monarchy as begun by Thatcher.
It should be obvious that these social and political changes will not and can not leave the position of the royal head of state untouched. The queen is neither above nor beyond the messy business of class struggle. 'Modernising' the monarchy and trying to find a new role for it in post welfare market capitalism is the Holy Grail which the 'Windsor think tanks' are desperately searching for.
The fire at Windsor Castle was the first shock for the royalists, a sign that public opinion had changed. Tory Ministers were immediately on the TV bowing and scraping and assuring us that taxpayer would spare no expense to compensate the royal family. But public opinion was having none of it. After all the Thatcher propaganda about parasites living off the state, why wouldn't people expect the monarchy to 'stand on its own two feet' and pay for its own fire insurance.
The marriage and divorce of Diana Spencer and Charles Windsor, which is at the root of the current exposures and scandals, has to be seen in the wider political context of a society that has changed. Neither the constitutional monarchist system nor the monarchy that symbolises it has caught up with the real world. Diana Spencer came to represent popular aspirations for a different kind of modernised monarchy. Consequently the Windsor's came to see her as the biggest danger to their position in circumstances when social support for the monarchy had withered on the vine.
That Diana Spencer was more dangerous to the monarchy than the socialist and working class movement tells us much about our present predicament. So the timely death of Ms Spencer seemed to offer a way back for the Windsors. According to Mohammed Al Faheed, the owner of Harrods, Diana was assassinated by the dark forces of the British State with Prince Philip a key player. Most people wouldn't suspect that our ruling class would do such a thing. But certainly there was motive for such a crime.
With the dangerous Spencer now largely forgotten, the Windors had been going from strength to strength. This year was a great political triumph for them. There were massive royalist demonstrations occasioned by the funeral of the Queen Mother with up to 400,000 queuing for hours in what the Daily Mail called the "the river of love." This was topped by an estimated one million out on the streets for the Jubilee event on June 4th. Then the Countryside Alliance uniting the rural middle and working classes behind the fox hunting aristocracy, with Charles and Camilla as unofficial patrons, mobilised hundreds of thousands. The royal 'party' was on the march.
Royalists and political commentators were ecstatic. For example Ros Wynne Jones, a pro-republican journalist on the 'Mirror' declared that whatever you might say about the monarchy, "the royal family is truly for ever". "My republican dream was shattered" she declared watching the RAF fly past on June 5th. "The celebrations were not just for the last 50 years but for the next 50, during which the royal family were guaranteed to remain at the heart of public life".
Even the queen seemed surprised. With such mass demonstrations of loyalty and affection, republicanism would now slink away and throw itself into the dustbin of history where it surely belonged. Not so quickly. Just when the Windsors thought it was safe to go outside, axe monster, Paul Burrell appeared on the scene and a new round of more terrible blood letting began.
'What the butler saw' has kept millions of tabloid readers wondering what will happen next. It has sparked off daily discussions across the air waves as to whether we should get rid of the monarchy or keep it. The story emerging seems as follows. After the death of Diana, powerful people were anxious to get their hands on the 'Crown Jewels', a special wooden box in which Diana kept tapes and letters for her own political leverage and protection. These included nasty letters from the Queen Mum 'Gawd Bless Er' and Prince Philip and the tape about the alleged gay rape. Such letters if revealed would blow open a few myths about the royal family. The tapes would expose Charles as covering up a crime.
Everybody in the know wanted access to the box. Whilst the Spencer family were busily shredding documents, Burrell went to see the queen. The audience lasted for three hours. The 'Sun' claimed it was three minutes. The Palace admitted it was "at least an hour and a half" So three hours is probably correct. Even Tony Blair doesn't get an interview that long.
Most of this conversation was kept confidential. But the queen reminded Burrell that he was closer to her family than almost anybody and knew many of its inner most secrets. She warned him that because of his closeness to Diana, he was in danger from people who wished to harm him. She told him "there are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge". As Burrell says "she looked at me over her half rimmed spectacles as if she expected me to know the rest. She fixed me with her eye and made sure I knew she was being deadly serious."
Roy Hattersley makes the point that if the queen tells us "there are powers about which we have no knowledge" how does she know about them? Perhaps the royal 'we' was really a 'you'. Surely she knows about these powers because as head of state who has access to all the state secrets and all personnel who occupy posts in the state apparatus. She is well aware of what the state is capable of and how ruthless such dark forces are prepared to be in defence of the realm. Diana was a threat to the stability of the state because of the secrets she held and what she might do. Now Burrell was in the firing line for what he knew and might tell.
In January 2001 the police raided Burrell's home in Cheshire. At the start of an intense search the police said to Burrell "you know what we are after" He was then asked about the location of a "small wooden oak box which contained several documents." The police looked everywhere. The box eventually turned up at the trial, but its contents have disappeared.
It seems the police pursued a malicious prosecution against Burrell based on allegations for which there was no evidence. They told Prince Charles a pack of lies which were eventually exposed in court. Nobody seems to be asking who put the police up to this and why? The Spencers got such a rough time in court that the Windsors must have become concerned about their turn. No wonder the queen suddenly remembered her three hour conversation with Burrell and the case was dropped.
All this has exposed the fiction that the monarchy is above politics or that the monarchy would not use its privileged position to protect its own interests. Far from being non-political the monarchy is shown to be intensely political. It is not necessary to outline the further twists and turns of this saga. Suffice to say that the public relations triumph of the Golden Jubilee has turned into a public relations disaster.
It is not a revival we have been witnessing in 2002 but the long drawn out death agony. It is not in the interests of democracy or the working class that the crisis should continue. We need to look at ourselves and not simply watch them. What we see is the weakness of the working class and the inability of the socialist movement in general and the Socialist Alliance in particular to do anything about it. The crisis on the monarchy remains unresolved because of the failure and political impotency of the Left.
A few weeks ago the AWL's Sean Matgamna wrote an article entitled "Notes on the CPGB/WW". In this he devoted a section to the monarchy headed "All monarchs are monarchs, but some are less monarchical than others!". It was intended as a criticism of the CPGB's republicanism, but could equally be directed towards the RDG. Indeed CPGB supporter, Tom Delargy, argued that Sean had mixed up the CPGB and RDG.
So in the spirit that Sean's points could equally be directed against the RDG, I want to begin a reply. His attitude to the monarchy is by no means unique. It is representative of a wide spectrum of Marxist opinion. He repeats some of the arguments first encountered in the SWP in 1980 in the debate between Alex Callinicos, (SWP Central Committee) and the Republican Faction, forerunner of the RDG.
The dominant ideas on the monarchy in Britain are the ideas of the ruling class. The Tory tradition is very pro-monarchist and can be found in Blair's description of Diamond Liz as the "Best of British". But there is a strong Whig or liberal tradition that supports the monarchy by proclaiming it to be irrelevant. There is no need to get rid of something that hardly exists. This is why liberals are prepared to tolerate the monarchy. As Beatrix Campbell says (Independent November 10) the monarchy "has been viewed with almost total indifference by the progressive portion of society."
Liberal and tolerant attitudes to the monarchy have found their modern home in the Labour Party. But it has not left Marxism untouched. All Marxists are formally republicans, but some are less republican than others. In Sean's view this seems to be explained by the fact that some monarchies are less monarchical than others. The queen is not as bad as the Tsar is basically what Sean is saying.
The Republican Faction thesis against comrade Callinicos was that Marxists are divided into liberal-reformist republicans and militant-revolutionary republicans. The SWP is the former, having a more tolerant attitude to the monarchy and generally thinking it is a minor if not irrelevant issue. They view republicanism as a question for the bourgeoisie and abolishing the monarchy is simply a minor democratic reform - no more no less.
Revolutionary republicans consider the abolition of the monarchy is best achieved by the mobilisation of the working class. This is the only class in society that has no interest in keeping the monarchy and every interest in getting rid of it. Whilst the abolition by working class mobilisation can be considered a 'reform', it will if history is anything to go by, mark the beginning of the 'British revolution' and makes the abolition of the monarchy a transitional demand.
The propensity for British Marxism to adopt liberal republican politics is in part explained by economism, the tendency to see economic rather than political struggles as the means of raising class consciousness. Sean follows that line of thought. But he deals with the monarchy simply as a Russian question. He makes no concrete analysis of the position of the monarchy in British class society at all. He contents himself with the observation that the British monarchy is not the same as the Tsar. I hope to come back to examine his arguments in more detail.
Dave Craig (RDG)