The people's affair*

The anti-monarchy campaign group, Republic, founded by Graham Smith, author of Abolish the Monarchy, is rapidly gaining membership and media coverage in the United Kingdom. Smith and his organisation garnered a great deal of attention, some of it unwelcome, at the coronation of King Charles III in London. He (Smith, that is, not Charles) and his four colleagues were arrested and detained for fourteen hours before being released without charge by the Metropolitan Police. They say there's no such thing as bad publicity. While that was certainly true for Republic it didn't work out quite so well for the Met.

A year on and the movement is growing and organising, with local groups popping up all over the country. It feels like there's been a paradigm shift in attitudes towards the proposition of abolition since the late Queen's death. While Elizabeth II lived there was little appetite for change, or even protest. Most of her subjects were either supportive, ambivalent or apathetic - she had simply been on the throne for so long few could imagine her not being there, much less contemplate an alternative to the hereditary monarchical principle she embodied.

And, besides, wasn't it rather ungracious, churlish even, to contemplate ousting her from the throne she had lawfully inherited as a twenty-five year-old and was destined to sit on until death took her? In the early years of her reign Elizabeth was a young, glamorous woman, epitomising a fresh start for a dreary, war-weary country. It was even optimistically hailed as the dawn of a New Elizabethan Era. In her (very) long time on the throne she grew to become first the mother, then the grandmother, of her people. Criticism of her was tantamount to dissing your Nan. At her death few Britons alive could remember another monarch, or be much-exercised about the succession of her heir, Charles, Prince of Wales.

However, the mood began to shift immediately the curious disjointedness created by her absence began to wear off, at which point the impending coronation of Charles and Camilla focused the minds of the British public on the inevitability of the transition. They had had no say in the matter - no rush to a referendum there - it was to be, as ever, a seamless handover; inevitable, inexorable, time-honoured... And yet, might this not conceivably have been an opportune moment for change?

What had once been almost unthinkable, or certainly unsayable, was suddenly not only being openly discussed but publicly protested. The genie was out of the bottle and the cork had been thrown away. Naturally, after over a thousand years of monarchy, the knee-jerk reaction of the state would be to try to suppress any dissent. New laws brought in to quell protest were misapplied by the police and their subsequent apology for it has not been accepted - Citizen Smith is going to law for redress.

So, it begins here, or, rather, it begins here again. After all, republican sentiment is nothing new in Britain. A republic was declared in 1649 and the interregnum, the Commonwealth, lasted eleven years until the status quo ante was restored under King Charles II in 1660. Hard though it is to believe now, that doyenne of British monarchy, the Queen Empress, Victoria, became hugely unpopular following her withdrawal from public life on the death of her husband, Albert, in 1861. 

It wasn't until her Golden Jubilee in 1887 that the 'Widow of Windsor', as she had become known, re-emerged and, in a dazzling PR triumph, consolidated her position after twenty-six years living out of the public eye. During that time a vocal republican movement had arisen led by politicians, Charles Dilke and Charles Bradlaugh, and this in turn gave added impetus to the Irish Home Rule movement led by Charles Parnell. 

And the 1887 Golden Jubilee is instructive when it comes to considering the continuance of the monarchy today. The British Empire under Victoria modelled itself on that of ancient Rome and the old Roman tradition of ensuring the compliance of the plebians by providing panem et circenses (bread and circuses) worked for her too. The pomp and pageantry of the Jubilee celebrations simultaneously mesmerised and mollified the British public in the same way the arena games had the Roman citizens. It also astounded the wider world. Yes, put on a glorious show, organise street parties, hang out the bunting and you'll have the people eating out of your hand. 

Fast forward to the 21st century and a series of royal weddings, jubilees and funerals, meticulously choreographed and televised globally, apparently secured the future of the institution. Certainly the funerals of the Duke of Edinburgh and then the Queen set the standard for dignified pageantry. The coronation of their son, Charles, however, was of a different order. It was always going to be compared unfavourably to his mother's and slimming it down a little probably ended up satisfying no one in particular. Was it just me or was the interminable ceremonial involving two septuagenarians dressed in velvet and ermine robes and wearing sparkly hats not just anachronistic but a wee bit sad? Bathos verging on the ludicrous?

"We must not let in daylight upon magic" wrote Walter Bagehot of the monarchy in his magisterial The English Constitution of 1867. For him, monarchy represented the dignified branch of the constitution while parliament was the efficient branch. This view may have resonated in the 19th century but, after the many royal and political scandals of the 20th and 21st, the reputations of both institutions have taken a serious battering. Their brands are now badly, if not irretrievably, tarnished. 

We are, I suggest, long overdue a searching reappraisal of both which will ultimately, I fervently hope, result in a revival of that other old Roman virtue, the res publica*. 

Bring it on!

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