Yves here. It’s getting a little weird to see how so many news and political stories are being painted in overly bright colors. Yes, the British royal family is the apotheosis of its class system. Those who’ve grown up in close proximity to it without being seen as upper crust must find it particularly grating, as in you’ve likely been so deeply inculcated that you’ve wound up absorbing some of its world view, even if you consciously reject it. So I can see why the upcoming coronation could trigger a disproportionate response by bringing those issues to the fore.
Perhaps things have changed a lot on the sceptered isle since I was there, on a four month assignment to McKinsey’s London office in 1984. As an aside, I learned the hard way that studies that need to seek staffing from outside the office are usually the dregs; the locals make sure that they get assigned to the decent ones.
Then, the McKinsey London office was in a former club right by St. James’s Palace. It was full of weirdly resentful Oxbridge types. I never met such an unhappy group of people.
The part that was disconcerting for me as a Yank was that it was immediately apparent all the information I was missing by not being able to work out the class/identity markers embedded in speech. Yes, I could discern gross class distinctions, as well as regional accents. But I could not discern which public school the various professionals and their patrician clients had attended.
For about a week, I was frustrated about the information loss. Then I decided they couldn’t tell what sort of American I was and decided not to worry about it any more.1
So that is a long-winded way of saying that even as an American, with no prior exposure to the whole British class drill, it was immediately and oppressively apparent when parachuted into a British organization.
Back to the discussion of the coronation. The author Adam Ramsay makes much of the power of ritual and group action, such as choral signing and dancing. As someone who grew up without that (Christmas stockings and gifts were about as far as my family went in that direction), I can’t relate.
But I think he’s sorely wrong about the ability of the British elite to project power and influence that way now. To the extent the Royals get much attention these days, the Daily Mail and other tabloids are responsible for their reach. The Kardashians have a plenty big following without having drafty castles, a hoary history, and lots of pageantry to bolster their brand.
The fact that pretty much all of the Global South, including Commonwealth members like South Africa, are siding with Russia (by at least not siding with the Collective West) when Russia invaded Ukraine (regardless of what you think of the West’s provocation) shows how Russia has successfully mined anti-colonialist sentiment. A ceremony like the coronation won’t even slightly change the trajectory of events.
By Adam Ramsay, openDemocracy’s special correspondent. You can follow him at @adamramsay. Adam is a member of the Scottish Green Party, sits on the board of Voices for Scotland and advisory committees for the Economic Change Unit and the journal Soundings. Originally published at openDemocracy
Most of my friends don’t care about the coronation. With the world burning, why should they?
I think they’re making a mistake.
The ritual will gently bend how millions see the world. It is one of the planet’s most powerful examples of how a ruling class manipulates deep, human needs. This must be its last enactment
But we can only understand this once we get why the coronation appeals to so many. There is something moving about being in a crowd. Whether it’s a protest or music festival, sports match or congregation, most of us change when we gather, particularly if we gesture or vocalise together. This phenomenon – the theorist Émile Durkheim called it “collective effervescence” – is central to politics.
Likewise, ritual is deeply human. Every society has greeting customs, death ceremonies, specific festivities in particular seasons. In The Dawn of Everything, academics David Graeber and David Wengrow show that societies are shaped by rituals as well as material needs, from ancient Egyptians growing grain to leave bread for the dead to ancient Britons trekking to Stonehenge. Studies have found they can improve sport performance and even align people’s heartbeats.
And it’s not just human. Dog species bow to initiate play. Birds sing and display. Male pufferfish build seafloor temples. Lizards have dance routines.
In 2019, a multidisciplinary academic team studied ritual in various animals, including humans. Its function, they concluded, is “homeostatic” – to keep things the same as the world changes.
Ritual isn’t the icing on society’s cake. It’s the baking soda that makes it work.
“One of the big mistakes people make,” says Maya Mayblin, an anthropologist at Edinburgh University, “is that they think about rituals as simply a mirror to society, reflecting back at us what already is. Rituals aren’t simply reflections of what already is. They are there to create new realities.”
Rituals are also things powerful people invent for us. Ruling classes use them to manage our moods, to encourage us to accept social hierarchies. Elites rearrange the jigsaw of humanity into beautiful images of the world, with them at the centre.
And because rituals make us feel good, we accept it.
If we shrug our shoulders at the coronation and move on, we miss the true purpose of monarchy. In fact, this attitude is a key reason why England’s left keeps losing.
Accepting Debasement
The coronation won’t just do something to Charles Mountbatten-Windsor. It will do something to us. There is something profoundly humiliating about being declared inferior to someone you had no role in choosing. Accepting this debasement leaves people changed. It warps how they see the world. I suspect it affects how they vote.
But to understand how that happens, we need to think about the way we experience identity; how it is taught and retaught in specific settings.
Some of that will come in the carnival surrounding the coronation.
By February this year, royal spin doctors had announced 7,000 coronation events – street parties and the like – where more than a million people will celebrate. There will be more come May.
While some remain ambivalent, for others these events have become more important over the last decade. There were twice as many street parties for the 2022 platinum jubilee (16,000, involving a quarter of the population) as there were for the 2012 diamond jubilee (7,500).
Historically, coronations ended with vast feasts. Aristocrat guests passed surplus food to onlookers: literal crumbs from their table.
Today, the commodities being shared are conviviality and leisure time. The rituals of monarchy feed us morsels of company, giving us bank holidays and a ‘big lunch’; time to get to know our neighbours.
The resulting pleasant feelings will mentally map up to a sense of national ‘us’, and will forever be associated in millions of minds with the monarchy and the class system. ‘Britishness’ and ‘hereditary power’ will be fused with ‘friendliness’. Our hearts will be bumped to the right.
“In ritual excitement, social differences fall away and we feel more connected to the collective than we do in ordinary life,” says Mayblin. In that moment, we feel “more disposed to social messages than at other points. The symbols that get used become naturalised – we don’t question them in the normal way”.
‘Important Work’
Royalists maintain a cognitive dissonance, claiming that the regent both has no real power, and does important work. Republicans often challenge the first premise, highlighting the financial cost or legislative influence of the monarchy, and of course this matters.
But the monarchy’s real power comes from that “important work”.
In The Enchanted Glass, the philosopher Tom Nairn quotes former French president Charles de Gaulle telling Elizabeth II she is “the person in whom your people perceive their own nationhood”. “Britons,” Nairn argues, “have learned to take and enjoy the glory of royalty in a curiously personal sense,” which makes it “genuinely important for British nationalism.”
Some of this happens through civil society. Windsors are patrons to more than a thousand charities. Millions of people, from birders to nurses, are members of royal societies of this or that. More than 100,000 people got honours from Elizabeth II. All of this fuses monarchy to Britain’s collective notions of virtue.
But much of it happens through the mystery of ritual, the connection to ‘sacredness’ and a mythical past.
On 6 May, Charles and Camilla will ride from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey in a black and gold carriage, then walk down the aisle in their ‘robes of state’. They will be greeted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the current holder of the post being an old Etonian whose mum (and, it recently turned out, his biological dad) was a secretary to Churchill.
The archbishop will ask the congregation to pledge loyalty to the monarch. Charles will swear “to govern the people of the United Kingdom and the dominions and other possessions and territories in accordance with their respective laws and customs,” and that he is a “faithful Protestant”.
Then, he will slip into a simple gown, sit in King Edward’s chair, (commissioned in 1296 to contain Scotland’s stolen Stone of Scone) and be basted in perfumed Palestinian olive oil using a gold jug and an old spoon.
Since 973, this anointment has come with a Biblical reading (Kings 38:40), describing Zadok crowning Solomon. Handel’s choral setting of it is a banger – expect an indoctrinating earworm.
While breathless commentators will likely imply the ceremony comes from some mystical ‘mists of time,’ we do in fact know its origins. As historian Judith Herrin explained to me, much of it comes from the early Christian Byzantine Empire.
The Byzantines adapted Rome’s “outdoor, military ceremony to an indoor ecclesiastical one,” she says. Fifth century emperor Leo I introduced coronation by a priest, and with it the idea that he was appointed by God.
Where Roman emperors struggled to establish dynasties, the new rituals seem to have helped Byzantine rulers hand over to their sons. “The powers [were] associated symbolically with these costumes, with the globe and crown. Usurpers don’t have that paraphernalia,” says Herrin.
Elements of those rituals trickled into monarchies across mediaeval Europe. Now, it’s only Britain that uses them, with a few tweaks.
Once anointed, Charles will be given this hoard of objects. There’s robes and furs. There’s a gold ball called ‘the orb’. These traditionally represented “mastery over the whole world”, says Herrin.
In 1953, the BBC said they represented “the world under Christ’s dominion”. Today, Buckingham Palace says they’re to remind the king (they really mean us) that his power comes from God.
There are two truncheons, each a metre long, known as sceptres. The ‘sceptre with cross’ represents “temporal power” and includes the world’s largest colourless cut diamond, plucked from South Africa in 1905. The ‘sceptre with dove’ represents “equity and mercy”, though the palace website also says that it’s the means by which “uprisings” in the kingdom are controlled (in other words, “don’t fuck with us”).
These are accompanied by four swords, for the monarch’s ‘kingly authority’ plus leadership of the armed forces, the Church of England, and the justice system. There’s also a ring and pair of bracelets, representing “kingly dignity, sincerity and wisdom”, and spurs for chivalry.
The Crown will be put on Charles’s head, to cries of “God Save the King,” followed by the various homages, including the new ‘homage of the people,’ where his subjects across the world will be encouraged to chant their support for the new king. This will channel the collective effervescence of a moment people can get caught up in, into a longer term sense of obligation: psychologists have long shown the power of oaths, pledges and vows to alter our future behaviour.
Finally, he will change into the ‘imperial robe’ and leaves, riding back to the palace with Camilla in the Golden State Coach.
In 1953, Elizabeth’s journey home took hours, taking a triumphant military parade on a five-mile detour. Britain’s empire being not what it was, Charles and Camilla will take a shorter trundle home, followed by some balcony waving.
All of this has a purpose. Like the republican Tom Nairn, pro-monarchy writer Walter Bagehot focused on the royals’ soft power. They exist, he wrote, to “excite and preserve the reverence of the population” – that is, to stir up feelings of deference – so that we don’t try to stop the government doing what it wants.
And much of that stirring up is done through these sorts of rituals.
The coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 clearly had an impact on British society. Later that year, sociologists Edward Shils and Michael Younginterviewed people from London’s East End.
“Over the past century,” they write in ‘The Meaning of the Coronation’, “British society… has achieved a degree of moral unity equalled by no other large national state. The assimilation of the working class into the moral consensus of British society, though certainly far from complete, has gone further in Great Britain than anywhere else.”
They argued that this was greatly enhanced by the coronation ceremony, where “people became more aware of their dependence upon each other, and they sensed some connection between this and their relationship to the Queen. Thereby they became more sensitive to the values which bound them all together.”
What they don’t say is what those values are, who sets them, and whether they are good ones. They do say it had a political impact. Support for the then-incumbent Conservative Party increased, to the point that the media speculated that Churchill might call a snap general election. When the next election did come, in 1955, the Tories won the popular vote for the first time in 20 years. Churchillism was boosted, and the Conservatives have not had such a drought since.
Coronations are the moment at which each generation of British people signs a social contract. On average, they happen roughly every 20 years – if it seems alien to us, that’s partly because it’s the first time we’ve done it for 70 years. And while it is true that the monarchy is in crisis, that there are millions who won’t tune in, it is also true that there are millions who will find it all very moving – many, much more than they expected.
‘An Alternative Reality’
The meaning people take from the coronation will be vital. Studying 1990s Syria, anthropologist Lisa Wedeen showed people don’t have to believe the claims that rituals rely on for them to work. Participants often end up behaving “as if” they are true, reinforcing the system. These “as if” rituals are important in social control.
The coronation says Mayblin, “can’t afford to be a mere reflection of the way that society works. That would defeat the whole object. It would have to show austerity Britain, people going hungry. It’s a ritual that represents British society as it wishes it to be. It’s a moment in which, through symbol and pomp, you can create an alternative reality.”
So what might it be telling us? Firstly, that we – the intended audience – are British. That might seem odd. Charles is being crowned king of 43 states or dependent territories. But what is Britishness but a globalised identity? What Nairn calls this ‘symbolic supranationality’ (much of the ruling class see themselves as British as opposed to English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish) comes increasingly – since other imperial connections have been severed – from the Crown.
Where Britishness once connoted a set of feelings and legal rights pertaining across the empire, now it’s largely shrunk into the UK. But the fact that our monarchs continue to reign over vast chunks of the planet – and over more people outside the UK than in it – allows Britishness to maintain its global vibe. All of this functions to help the British, and particularly the English, feel like they aren’t just from a ‘normal’ European nation, but a temporarily embarrassed empire.
In other Commonwealth realms, the coronation will likely be jarring. Australia already has a ‘minister for the Republic’. Every Caribbean realm is talking about ditching the Windsors. But I suspect, for the organisers, attitudes overseas aren’t really the point. What matters is how their presence makes people in Britain itself feel.
The coronation is taking place in the middle of a period of unprecedented constitutional questioning in the UK. Over the last decade, support for Scottish independence, Welsh independence and Irish unity have all been higher than ever before. Beaming positive feelings about Britishness into the middle of all these debates is an important propaganda moment for unionists.
The second message is that there is something good about wealth and power being inherited genetically.
Obviously, this is anti-egalitarian. Where in other countries there is, at least, a pretence that everyone could reach the highest office, Britain glories in the opposite. There is no embarrassment at the riches: an extraordinary hoard of jewellery will literally be paraded before us. Many will be thrilled – more than two and a half million people visit the Tower of London every year.
Obviously, bloodline nationalism has nasty racial implications.
In more subtle ways, this messaging also celebrates forms of wealth that can be easily inherited – capital and land – over labour, which can’t. As such, it’s a ritualised celebration of Britain’s economic system, an attempt to legitimise rule by capitalists and aristocrats.
It is also a celebration of the British ruling class in particular. Westminster still has 92 hereditary peers. More prime ministers have been to Eton than to all state schools put together: we’re taught to believe toffs ought to be in charge, are ‘prime ministerial’ and ‘competent’.
There are other messages, too. Ancientness awes us with vast spans of time, demanding we kneel at the altar of status quo. There is a display of military might, even if it is diminished. There’s Protestant supremacy. But perhaps the most important of these is the message it sends about centralised power.
Many of Britain’s comparative weaknesses – its economic malaise, its regional inequalities, its peoples’ sense of political alienation – are connected to its over-centralised state. In most democratic countries, ‘sovereignty’ ultimately lies with the people. In Britain, it works the other way around.
Sovereignty is centralised in the crown, administered by Parliament. It doesn’t rise up from citizens but flows down from the monarch, like urine. Local, regional and even devolved national governments can be overruled or marginalised by Westminster in ways that wouldn’t be legal in a federal country.
The coronation of a new sovereign is a vast celebration of this disastrous centralisation of power. It is a glorification of our failing system.
If Britain’s social contract was one worth signing, the sense of solidarity created by national ritual could be positive. Amid environmental crisis, its power to help us preserve things could be vital. But the messages running through the coronation are terrible. The system it preserves is steep class hierarchies, grotesque inequalities and planet-destroying plunder.
Ambivalence is not enough. We can’t just ignore the monarchy. We need to oppose it, overthrow it, and replace it with rituals that really would help us build a better society.
______
1 This office was also male dominated in a worse way than Wall Street at the time, which I also chose to ignore. I had gotten very good at a young age about playing to status markers, like shoes and quality of tailoring, by buying designer goods on sale, and then at at least a 50% discount. I heard grumblings in the London office that they thought I was kitted out above my rank. The usual formulation of the whinge was that I was dressed “grandly”.
My present favourite ‘send up’ of the English tradition of aristocrat worship is Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel, (a fancy term for a well done comic,) “A Study in Emerald.” Basically, an alternate universe telling of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story, “A Study in Scarlet.” Think Sherlock Holmes meets Cthulhu on the streets of late 1800’s London.
I’ll not spoil any of the plot for you. Well worth a perusal for the “open minded.”
See: https://reenchantmentoftheworld.blog/2019/10/11/neil-gaiman-rafael-albuquerque-a-study-in-emerald-2018/
The premise perfectly skewers aristocracy as an institution.
Gaiman is one of our best fabulators in the English language. The new Monarch should make him the Court Bard.
Sovereignty is centralised in the crown, administered by Parliament. It doesn’t rise up from citizens but flows down from the monarch, like urine. Local, regional and even devolved national governments can be overruled or marginalised by Westminster in ways that wouldn’t be legal in a federal country.
Yes, like “urine.” Reminds me of a picture that was making its way around the Twitter Universe, (TU rhymes with PU). It is of a tall and regal looking Rothchild poking his finger with impunity into King Charles chest and looking severely at him.
I certainly would like to know how the money flows and churns within the monarchy. If I recall the Paradise Papers (PP, speaking of urine) both Queen Elizabeth II, then Prince Charles, as well as other royalty, had considerable holdings squirreled away in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.
This is why the saying “they piss on us and calling it rain”?
@Yves on speech, I was told that my accent was an advantage in that I would be able to speak to almost anyone and there would not be the preset restrictions that Britons have when speaking to each other. So there’s a sort of counterbalance advantage, except for those who just didn’t like people with American accents.
I moved from Glasgow to Buckinghamshire at age 17 to start MoD engineer training. I was housed with the rest of that year’s intake in a hostel. How they laughed at my speech! Derisive billowing guffaws. Actually it varied among them and it was the lower-middle class ones that were most cruel. I remember one in particular who seemed a bit sensitive about his working-class London dad. Perhaps he was deflecting attention by taking advantage of someone with more risible speech than his own almost-cockney.
After that year I started study in Edinburgh and set about learning to speak like a BBC Radio 3 announcer. It worked and I didn’t encounter the problem on subsequent assignments in the home counties during summer breaks or after uni.
My Welsh accent still comes in for similar ridicule in some circles, yet I’ve been away from Wales so long some Welsh people don’t even realise I’m Welsh.
I don’t know if it is anti-Welsh / anti-Scottish etc. sentiment, or if I sounded like I hailed from Leeds or Blackpool the treatment would have been the same. I suspect the latter, but since I’m no good at putting on accents I guess I’ll never find out.
I enjoyed watching Miriam Margoyles’s documentary “Australia Unmasked”. If you haven’t seen it, in one episode she spoke to some Australian private school pupils and explained to them that you could tell who was in an English “pubic” school on a scholarship as soon as they spoke, as their accents were very different to those pupils with fee-paying parents. (Something that wasn’t really the case in Australia, where they claim not to have a class system.)
In England, spot the person who doesn’t belong, and make it clear they are not “one of us”. If accents won’t do the job, e.g. with an American, then criticise their poor dress instead. If they dress well, like Yves, then accuse them of “overdressing”.
Funny story about accents: I went to the UK to study, thinking that I had the requisite language skills. However, one of my first lecturers was Welsh and I had a tough time understanding him. Fortunately, it was a topic with lots of formulas ;-) Then, when I got the same lecturer in the second year I had no problems understanding him. He was a character too, so the lectures were entertaining. Good memories.
Celtic fans clearly state what they think of this coronation here
https://youtube.com/watch?v=mJFCTL5rxu4
It’s interesting how this comes just now as we learn from Michael Hudson how the king is the UK’s best chance of escaping ruin at the hands of it’s corrupt democratic ruling class.
Exactly. The article is weird.
I would rather be subordinate to Charles III than Tony Blair, given I have to accept somebody in authority. Charles does not need to make his fortune and does not need to curry favour from any individual (hence the spidery letters privately criticising HMG policy). He does however need popular acclaim to avoid being the last of the Windsors. Michael Hudson’s argument that kings/tyrants are the people’s defence against oligarchy is a good one. Let’s see how Charles does.
A lot of the rest of the article just seems to chippiness about social class. I don’t see more than lip service to socialism and redistribution in the article.
And the comment about the role of labour is odd. A large part of the ceremony is precisely about feudal homage and service to one’s liege. Cut down this time but still there.
Agreed. I also find it hard to read articles that make such heavy use of The Malcolm Gladwell We, as in sentences like “And because rituals make us feel good, we accept it.” Makes me want to shout, “Speak for yourself!”
On this one it’s clear that Hudson is wrong. Big Ears will do nothing except protect his own advantages, as he always has done. How could he do otherwise? It is all that his heavily indoctrinated consciousness can encompass – he is an integral part of the corrupt ruling class (kingpin, if you like). And I would rather have Blair then Windsor – at least Blair could be got rid of after a few years.With Windsor, all we can do is hope that he lives a short but effective life where he f*cks it up spectacularly and thus brings about the possibility of getting rid of all these parasites. The good news is that support among the young is very low.
“democratic ruling class”? In what universe? In a properly set democracy it should be very, very hard to develop a “ruling class”. This indicates that the “democratic” layer is just lipstick on a pig snout…
“democratic ruling class”? In what universe? In a properly set democracy it should be very, very hard to develop a “ruling class”. This indicates that the “democratic” layer is just lipstick on a pig snout…
If Scotland breaks away for Independence – how many traditionalists would then want to resurrect their earlier Royal lineages such as the ‘pretenders’ from the Houses of Dunkeld, Balliol, Bruce, and Stewart? For many Scots the very essence to justify their becoming independent.
Also what this guy misses is that these UK Royals – as with for example several current European ones – are nowadays figureheads with little direct influence on day to day life. No longer absolute monarchies unlike in the days of the Scottish Royals.
Yet how many now Republican countries; previously with absolute monarchic rulers – now yearn for these kinds of monarchies? In the US how often do we hear of political dynasties like Kennedy’s and Bush’s – powerful families able to corrupt and neuter public administration?
The political choice in these now republican countries being to chose from ex-business or political dodgies and sleazeballs as their Presidents. In some systems like the US and France still actively political, in others – allegedly now neutral during their term of office. Yet all with multiple skeletons in multiple closets and many choosing not to step down after their period of office but dig in and stay ….or rearrange the deckchairs to get a son or daughter ‘chosen’ in their place.
But who will control Scotland’s currency/finances? London or Brussels? The dream of independence is just a stalking horse for those who want to control a newly formed state.
Not sure I would describe the Scottish kings as absolute monarchs, given how precarious their position seems to have been in practice for much of the time and how little of Scotland was often under their control, given the rule of the Lords of the Isles in the West (Inner and Outer Hebrides), the Kings of Norway in the Shetlands and Orkney and the clan chiefs in the Highlands. An extraordinary number of the Scottish monarchs died violent deaths often at the hands of nobles and/or spent long periods of time as prisoners, often of the English kings. James VI did indeed like to think of himself as an absolute monarch but that was very late in the day as he was of course the last King of Scots to reside in Scotland for any length of time.
And of course the idea of a king as an absolute monarch only became possible in Europe post the Reformation as until then kings were, at least in theory, answerable to the Pope.
I live here, and I know of no-one in Scotland who wants to bring back their own ethnically integrated parasites – the notion is absurd.
As long as people cling to the idea that they need a figurehead to look up to, the problems around selecting such a person will exist, along with the associated problem that any elite will want the figure to be drawn from their own ranks. But choice through heredity will always be a lottery, and choice through some kind of considered judgement will always be preferable.
Ambivalence is not enough. We can’t just ignore the monarchy. We need to oppose it, overthrow it, and replace it with rituals that really would help us build a better society.
The Monarchy for the UK is part of their senescent nostalgic dreams of the past, when the UK actually mattered in the world, when it was a great power and a world empire, instead of the aggressive American lap dog that it is today. Probably better to let them sleep, their future as a failed state is grim: break up, economic collapse, and then a dumpster fire.
American Brit here.
The coronation and pageantry are merely a lightning rod to divert attention from the fact that Britain remains a feudal society ruled by people like the Duke of Westminster (who owns 80% of the real estate in London).
I, too, was a devout anti-royalist, until I grudgingly, had to admit that Charles, despite whatever flaws he might have, was actually more in tune with the real world than rulers who actually dwelled therein. Years before anyone else, he was into sustainability, against brutalist social housing – if the royalty had any actual power – Grenfell might never have happened, and pointedly supported the Tibetans in their struggle against the Chinese, while everyone else over here was slobbering all over Chinese ambassadors, hoping that, they, too, would be able to dip their beak into the Chinese money trough.
You cannot help to be impressed if you ever look at the Royals’ calendars, visiting the elderly in care homes, opening libraries, going to primary school celebrations, etc., functions which American royalty like Bill Gates or Elon Musk would never even deign to CONTEMPLATE attending, much less actually doing so.
Whatever your political opinions are, you have to respect the Royals’ dedication to their people.
British Royals have retained their innate sense of noblesse oblige for centuries, whereas American Royals struggle immeasurably to attain their sense of noblesse oublier.
Ps. As America barrels along towards neo-feudalism, perhaps the solution IS a King, who, in a nod to Michael Hudson, would cancel the debt burden of the working classes.
This is a point an American friend made: the reason Meghan chafed at being a normal royal was all the work and having to spend a lot of time with ordinary Brits in hickland. She didn’t understand the job description.
She mistakenly though that among other things, she get to ride on private jets, when the Royals do that only as guests, and pretty much not now (very much in disfavor now that Charles is out to take a strong position on climate change).
By contrast, Diana absolutely loved those duties.
>>against brutalist social housing – if the royalty had any actual power – Grenfell might never have happened,
Anti-Brutalist sentiment caused the fire. It was the cladding that went up, not the concrete.
The idea of working-class families having any housing whatsoever in Zone 1 London is so amazing to me, I don’t care if it is made of cardboard. Council housing was perhaps the thing that most impressed me about London, as an American from a more working class background where family members who lived in public housing were always left a little ashamed of it.
My response to stories of the hard working royals is always the same – it is the bloody least they can do. I’ve yet to hear an excuse or explanation for the ongoing existence of the royal family. The UK would get the tourism dollars with or without the actual people and the money currently pouring into the royal family’s pockets could actually be put to use for the good of the people (I know there are many ways that could be f*cked up). No one deserves the status and comfort enjoyed by the royal family (or any other peer) just because of their birth. Being Canadian, I understand my own birthplace lottery win but it pales in comparison to what the royals have. I always imagined that, had Diana lived, her influence might have been enough to cause William to refuse the crown and end the whole shebang. But clearly he’s drunk the Kool-aid. I don’t blame Harry and Meghan for their departure, although I have to say I wish they’d shut up and go about leading their non-royal lives.
Having some skin in the game, I actually don’t mind the miniscule amount of taxes I pay to subsidize the Royal Family. I feel like I’m getting something in return.
I, am, however, absolutely livid at the huge amount I pay to subsidize the bailing out of the banks and the feudal oligarchy, e.g., last month Barclays made record profits. After being a Premier Customer for decades, a few days ago, I received a letter from Barclays. The first sentence in it read, “In order to serve you better, we are closing your local branch.”
Last year the CEO of Barclays earned nearly $7m by shutting down local branches, cutting services, and raising fees, cozily protect by the powers-that-be.
Now this truly vexes me. And don’t get me started on leasehold.
Leasehold? Like the law that allows leaseholders to force the freeholder to sell up? With exceptions for the Royal Family of course, like the amazing Georgian properties fronting Regents Park in London…
The Royal Family did sweet FA while successive UK goverments sold off the commons: council houses, school playing fields, water rights, railway, and NHS to come… what value do they offer the UK except for some tourist magnetism?
Barclays is particularly inept. I had maintained my account there after student life, but when they lost my signature specimen (yes, I know) for writing checks (non-existent in rest of Europe, but should be familiar to Americans) three times in a row with increasingly outlandish excuses, I gave up and fired them. With their attitude to customer service, they should not be allowed to be in business.
If you think the Sussexes left the Royal Family and not just the family business, you have not been paying attention. I chose that name deliberately. It is possible to refuse a title. I refer you to the hardest working Royal, the Princess Royal Anne. She continues to have a title and makes upwards of 200 appearances a year, although it was lower for lockdown. She is associated with 300 charities and is an active patron of many. IOW she is the epitome of a working Royal. She is also a fierce defender of the Royal family. Still At her request her children are not titled. Her husband does have a knighthood but would probably have ended up with that even if he hadn’t married her, no peerage though.
Not only did “Harry and Meghan” never try to return the peerage, they actively use Duke and Duchess of Sussex. They whined about being stripped of the HRH and Harry’s honorary titles. They fought hard to have their children named a Prince and Princess. If you check you will find what a joke their personal charity is, their charitable spending barely exists even as a percentage of their anemic fund raising. We all might want them to shut up, but since selling their grievances with the Royal family is about their only business plan, they cannot either shut up or lead truly non Royal lives as Harry and Meghan Windsor. Even they know the Netflix, Spotify, and book deals are all because of their being Royal. Eventually they will have to find another means of marketing themselves as their stick is rapidly becoming no longer profitable for anyone but the gossip press they supposedly hate looking for clicks. But they will milk every dollar they can from it as long as possible.
(Unlike Meghan I looked at what the main senior Royals do and frankly while it may not be digging ditches it is imo hard work. It might be considered to being in a perpetual campaign for President with charitable duties rather than fundraisers. Maybe it is too much an anachronism to continue, but it is still a lot of work.)
I understand your point.
But essentially this entire concept (Anne working) is about as contradictory and senseless as e.g. the new German doctrine of “feminist foreign policy” which brakes down immediately if pushed to the ropes under economic pressure and demands for cheap energy and keeping out immigrants.
It´s no more than ornamental.
As much you can only act in ornamental ways yourself being a Royal (re: shutting up and smile). Because if you state the material question it all vanishes into the thin air of hipocrisy.
Nonethelss: how much money would the tourism/entertainment industry in GB loose without Royals as a brand and product to market and sell?
I would assume it is a considerable amount.
While I don’t feel I have to respect the Royals’ dedication to their people, I admire the hard work some of them put in. On the other hand they could be a bit more imaginative in how they deploy the power they have. Regardless how you interpret the constitutional legal situation, who is better placed to advocate for and influence economic and social reform than KC3? Just talking in plain terms to the public about policy and economics and hinting at exercising constitutional power (e.g. choosing to not open parliament or not approve formation of a new government) he could push reforms like we haven’t seen since formation of the NHS. But I hold out little hope. QE2 used her consent powers to protect her property. KC3 may be better but he’s still a Windsor.
Actually, Charles was extremely outspoken in his younger days about many of these issues..
Result?
He was ridiculed and told by all three Estates to “get with the program,” etc. Even though history has proven him right on so many issues, I can understand why, especially now, he would be very reticent to speak on anything that would stir up more controversies,
I remember. And his getting with the program and his desire to have the top job are part of why I hold out little hope. It takes courage, persistence, and sacrifice to do what I would want of him. If you or I were to spend all our courage, persistence and sacrifice into effecting political reform, we would accomplish nothing. If he did, he should be able to get something real done. Hence I hold him to a higher standard.
I have from VERY good sources, that he was NEVER interested in the top job.
You’re right to question and hold out little hope for meaningful change les by the royals I think. How much can a symbol really do? And, again, I question the hard work that the royals are perceived to do. They have staff to handle their schedules and drive them to their appointments. They don’t put in 8 hours days likes us working stiffs. They make appearances, meet and greet and give short speeches. That doesn’t sound like hard work to me. Their leading of their various causes and charities are mostly symbolic and titular in nature. Princess Anne or any of the other royals aren’t actually running the day to day operations of any of the charities that they head up. Anything beyond surface involvement is by their choice not because they have to work. Do they care for their causes? Who knows? Maybe. IMO they’re symbols of a time whose day should have come and gone long ago. They could employ look alike actors and have them all ´working’ even harder. I know I am tilting against windmills here, my best friend was born in England, pretty far left but a royalist through and through. She, like so many others, will be glued to the tv on Saturday. I don’t get it, I never will.
Franz Josef worked like a horse, Nicolas II the same. None of them did good by their peoples….
Your suggestion sounds like a quick way to end the monarchy. A majority of the British public support a constitutional monarchy precisely because the monarch of the day has no real powers. If KCIII wishes to enter the political realm, he can abdicate and seek a democratic mandate.
Most British people accept that a constitutional monarchy is an imperfect solution but better than a President Blair or Johnson or indeed President Trump or Biden. Contrary to what others say here, the royal family accept that, although a hereditary monarchy, they only can continue with the support of the British people.
I do not recognise the class ridden UK issues written about here. In the rarefied atmosphere of McKinsey forty years ago, you may indeed have seen a class hierarchy at work but outside that particular bubble, the working class, often Grammar school educated, were making their mark. I ended up running an LSE publicly listed company, not benefitting from my days on the playing fields of Eton but kicking a ball up against a wall on a council estate in South East London. The class ridden UK is just a myth, an excuse for those lacking drive, ambition and perseverance.
Sorry, I also dealt with working class people via my client in the UK. The big four British clearers were where bright working class boys went. They were less well run and much less well paid than the British merchant banks of those days. The class statification was top to bottom. I saw it in the shops too, as in better shops would not employ sales people with too low class an accent. Perhaps some took elocution lessons to overcome that hurdle.
And McKinsey was not that elite then despite the backgrounds of the people it hired and its posh location (actually very drab inside). It was a wannabe. I think that was a big part of the intense feeling of resentment. These people knew they’d have more stature if they worked for a merchant bank but hadn’t made the cut.
Boring stats: Duke of Westminster net worth around £10bn. Hardly chump change, but minuscule compared to total London real estate, at around £2 trillion. Maybe 80% of Mayfair in value terms?
You’re absolutely right, MD, the figure probably applies to Mayfair and Belgravia [No doubt Lambeth is excluded :)].
https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/hugh-r-grosvenor/#:~:text=Grosvenor%2C%20the%20seventh%20Duke%20of,family%20has%20owned%20since%201677.
And
https://www.itv.com/news/granada/2016-08-10/duke-of-westminsters-extensive-property-portfolio
BUT, as the freeholder, when the the leases expire, title to the land AND all the improvements on it, reverts to the Duke.
thx!
This is the stuff I love to send my friends who like to watch the coronation (German Communists themselves) just to ruining their day.
Thanks, Yves,
As they say over here, “Spot on!”
The ritual is powerful if people on some level buy into it. If people find it ridiculous, I don’t see how it will carry much power. Hence why the media must push the spectacle and the glory.
If one wants to measure how well it works this time, the approval ratings of the royals would be something to watch. If on the other hand one wants to decrease the odds of it working, pointing to the ludicrous details and laughing could be an approach.
‘Ancientness awes us with vast spans of time, demanding we kneel at the altar of status quo.’
I’m struck by this every time I’ve set foot in Europe; it seems to be the purpose of all those ruins laying about the countryside. Everywhere my eyes settle I see layers of time often going back hundreds of years. It’s a humbling stranger-in-a-strange-land experience. ‘I’m only an egg’.
That’s not an American experience, especially not out here in the West. Our oldest neighbors are cottonwood trees, the developments at this end of town went in around them. They’re older than the buildings in our downtown corridor. The oldest town in the state only goes back to 1851.
We are a very young nation with what is now the oldest serving president in our history. We seem to be symbolically searching for certainty in personage in these strange times. I imagine in their own way the Britain’s are doing the same. Decades of austerity have left them wondering who they are and the Royals are happy to remind them.
>> We are a very young nation
That’s because the previous inhabitants were living in the stone age and were annihilated from the face of the earth.
Lots of people will see the ceremonies and the plush costumes and that will be it but there is power behind what is happening. In his book “What’s It All About”, Michael Caine described when he was at one of these events while sitting in a church. Now Michael Caine was born a London Cockney and never forgot his origins. There came a part to the ceremony where these old boys in their ceremonial garb were marching down the main aisle and Caine reported how his neck hair rose as these were no longer just fellow British citizens but were a part of an order that welded power behind the scenes and knew it. They were part of a class and they were on display here.
Meant to leave a link from The Duran talking about the condition of the rest of the country while all this is going on-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tau7fGHiNxc (20:31 mins)
That’s an important observation from Caine. I learned a bit about the hidden side of the aristocracy/royalty and its ties to another hidden subculture and power structure, the London mob, when I was preparing for a podcast about the movie Performance. What do mobsters and royals share? Impunity and invisible private lives. It makes sense that Caine would recognize these types. Occasionally the invisibility is penetrated as in Princess Margaret’s affair with John Bindon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIVyKS4EPVA
if I may ask, what about the podcast?
I hesitate to paste links like this owing to policy and/or moderation algos https://gasgiants.substack.com/p/performance-1970
It didn’t stop him from accepting the offer to become Sir Michael Caine though.
Pink slip them, before or after you effe with their heads. Oh wait…
Growing up in a middle class family in Wales, it was clear that the monarchy was a deeply unpopular anachronism that was supported only by the media (the BBC in particular), presumably out of a sense of duty, and a dwindling bunch of English toffs, presumably out of self-interest (since they’d be next on the chopping block).
I well knew that these people despised me and mine; the only question was whether they realised the feeling was mutual.
Then I moved away, and met lots of English people with very different views to mine.
Staunch royalists with highly-rehearsed arguments in favour of the monarchy – they bring in money, they work very hard, would you prefer President [insert name of whichever vulgar chancer was currently “Leader of the Free World”]?
My wife’s family know the names of all the spouses and children, together with all their major and some of their minor titles, and can rate all of them on their level of “public spiritedness”. Any mention of Prince Harry is met with a sad shake of the head and a wonder as to where it all went wrong for him (they are far too polite to say that in fact they know exactly the point at which he decided to stop doing his duty, and the person responsible for it). It’s a vastly different world to the one I grew up in.
I won’t be watching any of the coronation. My wife will watch all of it. Only time will tell which one of us is more attuned to the feeling of the nation – but the BBC will report the coronation as a national celebration that brought the country together, regardless of the actual situation.
the over-rated Netflix series “The Crown” has however an interesting episode, which shows the act of the coronation from the POV of Edward VIII.
Edward is watching it on TV with American millionaire guests who look at it in disbelief and with much amusement.
Not so Edward. He is engulfed by the entire process and hunted by his own past.
In detail while watching the live TV event he explains to his guests (and Netflix audience of course) the entire religious logic behind the various steps of the ceremony.
In essence the eschatological dimension where religion, power, art and ornament, merge to a singularity not only in terms of world dominance but also in the individual minds of people/citiziens.
Like an attempt to stop the progress of time.
p.s. @The Rev Kev:
Edward would be the insane where Caine would be the sane guy. Both know the rules and truths behind it all. Show and entertainment.
But then there is a level of quantity where fiction upends reality. And that´s what makes it so dangerous. (re: Fascism)
Yves, you must add Huxley’s Eyeless in Gaza to your to read list.
not being addressed, I still welcome the recommendation re: Huxley.
Even though probably not the same vein, it reminds me of Edith Wharton´s “The Glimpses of the Moon” (German translation admittedly) which I just read, and found terrific until it´s very last chapter which messed up eveything.
That aside, it´s a nice take on the very same English ennuis rich by real estate, accompanied by US nouveau riches friends, rich by company shares and oil.
(F.S.Fitzgerald avant-la lettre)
“In 2019, a multidisciplinary academic team studied ritual in various animals, including humans. Its function, they concluded, is “homeostatic” – to keep things the same as the world changes.
Ritual isn’t the icing on society’s cake. It’s the baking soda that makes it work.
“One of the big mistakes people make,” says Maya Mayblin, an anthropologist at Edinburgh University, “is that they think about rituals as simply a mirror to society, reflecting back at us what already is. Rituals aren’t simply reflections of what already is. They are there to create new realities.”
Rituals are also things powerful people invent for us. Ruling classes use them to manage our moods, to encourage us to accept social hierarchies. Elites rearrange the jigsaw of humanity into beautiful images of the world, with them at the centre.
And because rituals make us feel good, we accept it.”
Are these conclusions applicable in the United States when it comes to elections, Earth Day and Black History Month?
But I could not discern which public school the various professionals and their patrician clients had attended.
You ask. With a Public School accent. It is considered polite to ask discretely.
Hah! You don’t have to wait more than five minutes before they will tell you!
Although Mumsnet (the best British anthropological resource since Mass Observation…) had a brilliant thread about Westminster School and how one poster’s husband had a 100% record in identifying other alumni in the first three minutes of a telephone call (other than by name, of course!).
I have been told that everybody who went to Cambridge sounds the same. Lightly sceptical was one description. As opposed to Oxford, they are all sceptically light….
They often wear their old school tie and they all know which tie indicates which school.
A crowd at a game in Scotland singing, “You can shove the coronation up your………”.
https://twitter.com/WeeIzabella/status/1652749326991360001
I think that whatever good will Elizabeth had, it does not carry over to Charles.
I get the feeling that the UK is a government in search of a country. In a time of disintegrating empires, etc. Charles is probably as horrified as he is conflicted – because how could he be anything else? He’s the sovereign. What a godawful thing to have to be right now. What else can he do? The only thing that makes me cringe is the truly delusional ceremoniousness. I personally think it is pathetic but on the other hand Charles might be the only glue left keeping the “country” from falling apart. I’d love Charles to modify the homage he is asking from the people by clarifying his own loyalty to them. Maybe that gets done in all the ritual, but it is indirect at best. It would be good if the king acknowledged his own subservience in response. Sovereignty is just an archaic word for cooperation.
Oh, it’s Ramsay again. I’m always amused at the spitting fury of some Scots about the British Crown when Union was a Scottish idea in the first place.
The saddest thing is the incapacity of some critics to even imagine tha people could find something of interest and value outside the confines of their own ego, as though there were anything else in the world but Me. But that’s forty years of neoliberalism for you. And anyone who thinks Charles represents the Ruling Class now is a generation out of date.
Zadok the Priest is only bit I’ll watch/listen to. It’s wonderful music to sing/listen to and they should have used most of those 2000 seats for an expanded choir!
Handel composed it for coronation of George II on instructions from his boss George I. George I was widely disliked (being one of those “periodic German imports” we needed from a side branch of the Royal family and who was perceived to have made insufficient attempt to Anglicise) and vowed his successor needed to be seen to be much more “native”.
Indeed the article is remiss in not expanding upon the point of just how little of most coronation services predate even the USA. The “creation of new realities” happened again with Edward VII (the last King to follow an extremely long reigning mother): Victoria’s years of retreat from public view was worrisome to the powers that be. Even worse, a lot of the detail from her coronation had been lost in the mists of time and loads of the pomp and ceremony surrounding the Edwardian age was simply invented.
I’m sorry. What are these deep human needs answered by a ruling class and a coronation?
So well explained; I guess I now know why I avoid rituals and the like. A form of inculcation? Have always had my own mind about things. Lived long and seen how these things work. Never wanted to celebrate Xmas. Would rather give when I saw something that made me think of someone I love. The other is far too contrived, like the British rituals, for me.
sry too late for this party but may be someone sees it:
a few worthwhile BW-slides from TATLER photo-magazine on 1980s British aristocracy
text by former Tatler editor Tina Brown
photos by Dafydd Jones
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-photographer-who-captured-englands-last-hurrah