Not my king
I shouted myself hoarse yesterday at Republic's anti-monarchy demonstration opposite Westminster Abbey.
King Charles and Queen Camilla, accompanied by the Prince and Princess of Wales, were attending the Commonwealth Day service being held there. We had positioned ourselves in a strategic spot opposite the Abbey, as close as the police would allow, but absolutely in the frontline where our yellow and black placards and shouted slogans could not be ignored by any of the guests, including members of the royal family, even though the pipe band tried valliantly to drown out our booing. How the royals must dread the sight of a swelling sea of yellow at every event they attend these days!
Not content with this, we had brought along for good measure our mascot, Chuck the Rex, a fifteen foot high crowned model Tyrannosaurus, to make the point graphically that the institution of monarchy is a relic that belongs with the dinosaurs. Britain's may be a constitutional monarchy but an hereditary head of state is not something that belongs in the constitutional settlement of any self-respecting modern liberal democracy. It is a fossilised system, an anachronism no longer justifiable today, if it ever was. Despite this, many bystanders at yesterday's event tried to make the case for it in debate with us.
Chief among the monarchical apologists was a group of young people attending a conference at the nearby Methodist Central Hall. Their views were admirably and politely articulated and their sincerity undoubtable but the lines they trotted out were hackneyed and easily refuted by anyone who had done their homework. The trite starting point for monarchists is usually the supposedly positive impact of the institution on tourism (in reality undetectable), followed by its crucial role in maintaining tradition.
Let's tackle these arguments head-on: Firstly, the response to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests of VisitBritain by Republic failed to prove a positive impact on tourism and the organisation has since withdrawn its unevidenced claim that the monarchy adds £500m of revenue to the economy annually. In fact, statistics show that visitor numbers to the UK actually declined in 1981 and 1986 when there were royal weddings.
According to Statista* "the estimated economic benefit of tourism related to the Royals in the UK tumble[ed] from £680m in 2012 to less than £60m in 2022". Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) also show a slight dip in economic activity for the royal wedding of 2011. Attractive to tourists it may be (especially those from countries that have abolished their own monarchy) but what rational country chooses to base its system of governance on its attractiveness to tourists?
Another fallacy is that the main attraction of Britain's royal palaces depends on having a royal family. The Palais de Versailles was last lived in by royalty on 6 October 1789 yet 10 million visit it annually. Similarly the Musée du Louvre, a former royal palace, became a state museum on 10 August 1793, following the revolution, and now attracts 9 million visitors annually. Buckingham Palace, on the other hand, currently attracts around 578,000 paid visitors annually and hosts 50,000 invited guests to garden parties etc. Windsor Castle has 1.5 million annually and Kensington Palace some 400,000.
The claim that having a royal family attracts more tourists to visit their palaces is thus clearly false. No-one in their right mind visits Buckingham Palace in the expectation of bumping into the king rounding a corner. In reality, royalty impedes public access, limiting it to times of year when they are not in residence. All the while, the British taxpayer forks out a fortune maintaining these historic properties - £369m to refurbish Buckingham Palace alone - and then has to pay again (exorbitantly) to gain limited access. These palaces contain fabulous furniture, works of art and gardens that should be readily accessible to the public year-round.
Secondly, as regards maintaining tradition, some traditions are simply not worth keeping. Ducking stools, stocks and pillories, scolds' bridles, heretic-burning, cock fighting, bear baiting, fox hunting, bare knuckle fighting, public hangings, slave trading and sending little boys down mines and up chimneys were all traditional in the UK. You don't hear many people nowadays seriously advocating for their return. Good riddance to these outmoded practices.
Monarchy is unquestionably a thousand-year tradition in this country but is longevity alone a good enough reason for retention? Clearly not when it is an anachronistic, undemocratic and indefensible institution. Far from being harmless, it is determinedly secretive and regressive, sustaining a social pyramid redolent of the 19th century by reinforcing a class structure and culture of deference that has no place in the 21st. And don't even get me started on the monarch's role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, which effectively means we live in a theocracy. Who wants Iran as a model of governance?
It also enshrines an outdated hereditary principle meaning that no child born in the UK (other than into the royal House of Windsor) can ever aspire to become its country's head of state. Worse, no child of colour could realistically expect it within the existing structure either. Only were the monarch's consort to be a person of colour could a non-white heir possibly ascend to the throne of a multi-cultural UK, and even then the baleful experience of Harry and Meghan hardly inspires confidence. There can never be a British equivalent of Barack Obama as things stand. Effectively this makes the British monarchy a white supremacist institution.
*Impact of the British Royal Family on tourism in the United Kingdom - statistics & facts. Published 31 May 2024