“They serve entirely to enshrine classism in the British nonconstitution. They live in high luxury and low autonomy, cosplaying as their ancestors, and are the subject of constant psychosocial projection for people mourning the loss of empire.”
Patrick Freyne, Irish Times feature writer
I started writing this blog to prevent my mind from turning to jelly during lockdown. It is for readers to decide if that has been achieved. One promise I made to myself was not to blog about the Royal Family. I am not a Royalist – I feel there are too many Royals, living in too many castles and large houses and costing far too much money. Now I am not a Republican either – I just could not trust the British people not to elect Nigel Farage as President when the job should really go to David Attenborough. I am all in favour of a Constitutional Monarch – we just do not need all the glamour, glitz and drama that goes with the Windsors. Something Danish or Norwegian style would suit me fine.
Well, here I am blogging about the Royals – Meghan and Harry to be precise – because I feel a great opportunity has been missed which simply may never return.
Now any student of the history of British Kings and Queens will tell you it has always been a soap opera. What could not make a better Eastenders script than Henry VIII working his way through numerous wives or Charles II’s liaisons with countless women or George IV’s preoccupation with wealth and possessions let alone secretly marrying a catholic? The days of beheadings or having a red hot poker placed somewhere unmentionable, as alleged was the fate of Edward II, may be over but the soap opera continues with Meghan and Harry, following on from Diana and King Edward VIII, as the latest instalments over the last 90 years. Perhaps we should add Princes Margaret to that more recent list.
On those great state occasions like the commemoration of VE and VJ days, or a Royal wedding, or the Queen reaching yet another great milestone, we are given the opportunity to see the Royals on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. As I watch this at home, I am left wondering who are all these people squeezing out on to the balcony waving to the mass peasants below who in turn are waving paper Union Jacks back? Do we need so many of them? What do they all do with their time on the other 364 days? My overriding impression is that they do not look anything like the United Kingdom I see when I travel to London or any other large town or city. They do not even look the good folks I see in the local park.
While the UK has become a more diverse country, the Royals have stayed resolutely white. The crowd they wave at is also predominantly white. What we have is the very privileged white section of society exchanging waves with the somewhat less privileged section of white society. The aim being to maintain the vision of a white UK which enjoys the support of so much of the tabloid press. If you are mixed race, British Asian or British Afro Caribbean, you are simply not invited and nothing says that more than all those white people on that distant balcony. The priorities are Empire nostalgia, WWII nostalgia and nostalgia for a UK place in the world that disappeared decades ago. The whole performance is about the past.
The bigoted right wing British media continues to play its part. The Daily Mail is currently running a campaign to have the Duke and Duchess of Sussex stripped of their royal titles alongside pictures of Kate and William showing the way on what doing your duty should be.
We, therefore, should not be surprised that support for the Royals is most enthusiastic amongst the oldest age groups and least enthusiastic amongst the younger age groups. It is most enthusiastic amongst conservative groups and least amongst progressives.
Our next three monarchs will be white men – Charles III, William V and George VII. Given the way our society is changing, if the Royals do not reform themselves, they will have preciously few people left to wave at on the Mall.
Unless they have been hiding their lights under a bushel, it appears that the Prince of Wales or the Duke of Cambridge have little appetite for reform.
So that brings me to Harry and Meghan and the gloriously missed opportunity for them to become the catalyst for change. To begin with they were both enormously popular with the public. The obvious reason being they are both so relaxed in the company of other people. They worked the crowds with enthusiasm and as result were welcomed. Harry, in particular, is a relaxed and open public speaker with a sense of humour. This can only be contrasted with the somewhat wooden Duke of Cambridge. Here was the opportunity for Royals to begin the process of reform and modernisation – the road to having a Royal family that better reflected those considered to be its subjects.
This was not to be. The undermining of Meghan quickly gathered pace in certain sections of the tabloid press. One can only guess that one of the motivators for this was that certain readerships did not want a person of colour so near the throne. Meghan was criticized for everything and anything including the way she rested her hand on her pregnancy bump – most unroyal apparently.
The colour of Archie’s skin question may be brushed aside in the UK, but in the United States and much of the Commonwealth, which is home to people of colour, it has not. Such a question is a reminder of how Britain behaved in the days of Colonial conquest.
When Prince Charles eventually gets to sit on the throne, he could well be the conduit for many countries to drop the UK monarch as their head of state. Australia has already said as much, as have some Caribbean and African countries.
As Hilary Mantel once commented when she likened the Royal family to pandas, “expensive to conserve and ill-adapted to any modern environment.”
If institutions do not modernise, they risk dying and withering away. This is even more important in today’s rapidly changing world. The Royals are not exempt from this.
Instead of sitting on the fence, Boris Johnson should have combed his hair and beetled round to Buckingham Palace. He should have said to Her Majesty that unless your institution modernises it will become irrelevant. The action plan should have been to harness Meghan’s and Harry’s skills and characters to reform “The Firm” – to make it more relevant to a changing UK and wider world. To drop the daydreaming about the days of Empire; to drop the notion that we are still fighting WWII; to associate what the Royals do to the lives of people of Britain today – all of them not just the white ones; scale the monolith down – less castles, less big country houses, less cost and more relevance.
The Royals should be encouraged to openly speak out against the white British class system of which they are deemed to be the figure heads.
By doing this the Royals might just have a long-term future as a relevant constitutional monarchy, but I am not hopeful. There are too many self-interests locked into maintaining the status quo. If that comes to pass it will be fully deserved but it is still not too late to send for Harry and Meghan - just.
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