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Showing posts with label British royalty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label British royalty. Show all posts
Dr John Coulter ✍ Today is my 35th wedding anniversary and a chance to reminisce once more over our marriage photos from 1989.


There were relations and friends who could not come to the wedding even though they were invited, so I wonder what would have happened if we’d asked our wedding photographer to photoshop them into the family photos?

Former UUP leader, the late Jim Molyneaux, was a guest at our wedding and appeared in wedding album photos. Could you imagine if I was to photoshop Jim out of those photos and, when showing the album today to family and friends, replaced Jim with an image of current UUP boss Doug Beattie?

I don’t think there would have been all the fuss and furore which has engulfed the Royal Family over the Princess of Wales admitting she had edited the picture of herself and her children.

If ever there was a storm in a teacup, it was the near hysterical reaction to the evidence that the Royal snap had been supposedly ‘doctored’. It forced Kate into making a grovelling apology and reignited the speculation about her health.

We’ve had to listen to loads of moaning about trusting the Royals. But what was the big deal? It wasn’t as if Kate had edited in Prince Harry’s youngsters or changed the backdrop to a ski resort in the Alps. All she did was - albeit in a fairly amateurish way - adjust a few bits of the photo. It still remained a photo of her and the kids.

Then again, given the looney woke society in which we now live, there seems to be a body of opinion which looks for any chance to bash the Royals and especially the monarchy.

Basically, we could dismiss all the who-ha about Kate editing her photo as a bunch of eejits with nothing better to do with their time. Then again, were there more sinister undertones to the criticism over Kate’s actions?

Even in asking this question, have I too fallen into the wokery pitfall of seeing an issue where none exists? Have I too inadvertently become a conspiracy theorist?

What for Kate was simply a do-it-yourself tidy-up exercise of a family photo, has turned into a full-scale political row questioning the very future of the monarchy!

Given all the pomp and pageantry of the late Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in 2022 and King Charles’ Coronation events last year, it is clear the British Monarchy is as popular as ever. So where is all this anti-Royal clap-trap coming over an edited photo?

The hard reality is that there is a republican element within British society which just want any excuse to call for an abolishment of the Monarchy.

Ironically, because one of the hallmarks of British democracy is freedom of speech, the anti-Royalists can have a platform to churn out their honestly held, but totally nonsensical rants.

Whether this small band of vocal republicans like it or not, the British Royals - and indeed Monarchy throughout the globe - are big business.

It’s been one of the main planks of the United Kingdom culture and heritage since the Monarchy was restored by King Charles II in the 1660s following the brutality of the earlier English Civil War of the 1640s, the execution of King Charles I and the Cromwellian era in British politics.

Then again, because of the evolvement of the so-called snowflake society, those folk classified as celebrities, or who live their lives in the glare of publicity and the public domain, can now expect to have every aspect of their lives poured over with a fine judgemental tooth comb looking for an excuse for someone to either criticise or be offended.

Politicians are having to watch off the cuff remarks; clerics are having to monitor the language used in live-streaming sermons; sporting stars are having to think about where and how they are being photographed - and now the Royals have to watch how what many of us ordinary folk indulge in, using modern technology to adjust family pictures.

Kate’s trivial editing of a photo is now being branded as a public relations disaster for the Royals. It has sent the memes industry into hyper-drive as folk make their own editing adjustments to the photo and share them online.

Maybe it says something about the kind of society the snowflake brigade have converted our once forgiving communities into. Are folk being hounded by the so-called wokerati who would be offended if a pin fell the wrong way onto a floor?

Is this happening to such a degree that people in the public gaze have to say sorry for comments or behaviour which a decade ago would have been laughed off as silly?

And not content with the present day, the snowflakes are trawling back over years, even decades, to find material to be offended about by challenging people in the public domain if they still held these views.

Unfortunately, it will deteriorate to a situation where people in the public arena will have to employ a new post know as a Comment Censor to vet every word uttered.

It won’t be just the concept of freedom of expression that will be under threat; the very idea of freedom of thought will also come under the scrutiny of the snowflake society.

Perceptions will merge with reality. Snowflakes will say - that person looks like they could make a racist or offensive comment! False stereotypes will be created and folk could end up having to apologise for wearing the wrong colour of clothing.

Wait, I’m bald! Maybe I should start wearing a wig or toupee. The snowflake society might perceive my baldness to be a sign that I’m from the skinhead culture, that I’m a fascist, racist, transphobic, homophobe! Dare I say it - Bald Folk Matter!
 
Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online.

Wokery Has Gone Ultra Woke Over Royal Snap!

Simon Pirani ☭ On 30 January 1649, King Charles I was beheaded, having been found guilty of being “a tyrant, traitor and murderer, and public enemy to the Commonwealth”.

4-May-2023

The execution sent shivers through the royal palaces of Europe.

Charles, the Stuart monarch of what since 1603 had been the united kingdoms of England and Scotland, was tried by a specially-convened English court.

The execution of Charles I on 30 January 1649: from a contemporary
engraving. See “About the main picture”, below
After the execution, the new regime in England abolished monarchy and the House of Lords. It declared England to be a Commonwealth, or parliamentary republic, and went on by military conquest to incorporate Scotland and Ireland in a new unitary state.

The revolutionary forces that had defeated Charles’s army in the civil wars of the 1640s had divided aims: radicals pushed for deeper-going social and political reform, while conservatives sought a new compromise with the monarchy, nobility and church hierarchy.

Oliver Cromwell, who had led the New Model Army that fought for parliament, was made head of state, and in 1653 was declared Protector, or virtual dictator.

Cromwell’s death in 1659 triggered a political crisis. After his eldest son Richard had ruled as Protector for a few months, the English parliament invited the executed king’s eldest son, who was crowned king of Scotland in 1649 and been in exile on the continent since then, to return to London as King Charles II.

The restoration of the monarchy after the republican decade did not put out the flame of anti-royalism. The divine right of kings to rule with unlimited authority was buried with Charles I. Charles II often sought compromise on matters of state and religion – and presided over a court in which one courtier, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, could get away with writing:[1]

Monsters which knaves “sacred” proclaim,

And then like slaves fall down before ’em.

What can there be in kings divine?

The most are wolves, goats, sheep or swine.

–

Then farewell sacred majesty,

Let’s put all brutish tyrants down;

When men are born and still live free,

Here every head doth wear a crown.

–

I hate all monarchs and the thrones they sit on,

From the Hector of France to the cully [good mate] of Britain.

There is no need to take Rochester, an aristocratic playboy and libertine opponent of the Puritanism of Cromwell’s time, too seriously. But republicanism was characteristic of the times. It was understood as a serious option in England, a century before the French revolution. In 1650, John Milton, for many the greatest English poet after Shakespeare, had published The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, a much-read and popular justification of regicide.

And absolute monarchy was finished for good. In 1685, Charles II’s brother, a devout Catholic, succeeded him as James II. He sought to rule more as Charles I had done – and the ruling elites in 1688 found a way to replace him with William of Orange, a Dutchman. He had hereditary legitimacy through his Stuart wife, but was a Protestant, amenable to a constitutional settlement based on compromise between king and parliament.

The execution of Charles I in 1649 was the culmination of a social and political earthquake which is usually called the “civil war”, or more recently the “war of the three kingdoms” (England, Scotland and Ireland), but which Marxist historians have insisted should also be characterised as “the English revolution”.

The English parliament had in 1628 already challenged Charles’s “divine right” to rule as he saw fit, raise taxes arbitrarily and punish opponents through arbitrary courts. From 1629 he tried to govern unilaterally. In 1638, his attempt to impose the Anglican prayer book on the Presbyterian Scots led to the signing of a National Covenant in Edinburgh and a military mobilisation north of the border. This forced the king to recall the English parliament after and 11-year gap. It refused assent for war, impeached Charles’s key advisors and resolved not to be dissolved without its own consent.

The trial of Charles I, from an engraving in “Nalson’s Record of the Trial of Charles I”,
in the British Museum. First published 1684. Source: wikimedia commons

The question of who held the ultimate power in the state came to a head in October 1641, when an anti-English rebellion flared in Ireland. King and parliament agreed that the Irish had to be drowned in blood, but parliament refused to trust a royal nominee to do the job. England lost control of Ireland – and regained it only at the end of the civil war (1649-53), by Cromwell’s reign of terror that began in Drogheda.

But in 1641, all this was still in front. Parliament had to settle its quarrel with Charles. It adopted the anti-royalist Grand Remonstrance, a long list of grievances against the king’s ministers; Charles entered the House of Commons, intending to arrest his leading opponents, but failed; he left London and the civil war began.

This far, it was an intra-elite conflict. But outside parliament, in the New Model Army formed to fight the royalists, and in the country at large, people saw the fight for the Commonwealth as something far broader and deeper.

It was about ownership and use of land, which was turned upside down under the republic. Crown lands and royalists’ estates were confiscated or sold to new owners. Parliament resisted the monarchy’s encroachment on forests.

Poor people fought for their right to use those forests communally, and against landlords’ enclosures of land, building on the struggles of protesters and rioters in the Rockingham forest (1607), the Gillingham forests (1626-28), the Leicester forests (1627), and the Forest of Dean (1632).

The revolution was also about challenging the power of the church, then an instrument to enforce state authority.

In April 1640, when parliament had defied Charles I and was dissolved, the Convocation (an assembly of Church of England clergy) continued to meet, which was constitutionally unprecedented. They voted to fund the king, which parliament had refused to do. Once civil war broke out, the republic struck back, mobilising priests to propagandise its cause, limiting the church’s role in parliament, and weakening the power of the Bishops and church courts.

The changes in the church – which, in an age before newspapers, broadcasting and urban working-class communities, dominated the public sphere – ran still deeper. The Protestant Reformation had brought with it the idea that people could communicate directly with god, without taking the word of priests or other intermediaries.

This revolutionised the way people thought about the world – not only in continental Europe and Scotland, where the reformation overlapped with tumultuous social struggles, but also in England, where it took the form of a top-down act of state, that in the 1530s enabled Henry VIII to free himself of Papal authority over his marriage(s) and to pillage the monasteries’ wealth.

The challenge to the church’s authority in turn opened the way for great leaps forward of science and technological innovation.

Christopher Hill, the Marxist historian of the English revolution, concluded that it was “a great revolution”, but also “a very incomplete revolution”.[2] A great revolution because:

Absolute monarchy on the French model was never again possible. The instruments of despotism, Star Chamber and High Commission, were abolished forever. […] Even James II in his wildest moments never forgot what happened on 30 January 1649 [i.e. Charles I’s execution]; nor did his ministers or his subjects. Parliamentary control of taxation was established, as far as legislation could establish it. Ecclestiastical courts lost their teeth. The Clarendon Code after 1660 could not destroy the nonconformist sects. Bishops never again controlled governments. The country had managed to get on [under the republic] without Kings, Lords and Bishops; but it could never henceforth be ruled without the willing cooperation of those whom the House of Commons represented.

But the revolution was incomplete. A proposal to confiscate royalists’ estates wholesale and hand them to peasants was not adopted.


Nor was the Army used, as Hugh Peter [a parliamentarian preacher] wished, “to teach the peasants to understand liberty”. A society of the career open to the talents was not established. There was no lasting extension or redistribution of the franchise, no substantial legal reform. The transfers of property did not benefit the smaller men, and movements to defend their economic position all came to nothing. Tithes and a state Church survived; religious toleration ended (temporarily) in 1660. Dissenters were driven out of political life for a century and a half.

One of the revolution’s lasting legacies is the ideas of those dissenters, and the political radicals, whose visions of the Commonwealth went far further than parliament’s.

The Levellers, who were strongly represented in the New Model Army, proposed a wider franchise; abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords; election of sheriffs and Justices of the Peace; law reform; the throwing-open of enclosed land; abolition of tithes and of the link between church and state; abolition of conscription, excise, and of the privileges of peers, corporations and trading companies.

In October 1647, at the Putney Debates on the future of the Commonwealth, Colonel Thomas Rainborough, speaking on the Levellers’ behalf, said:

The poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he, and therefore … every man that is to live under a government out first by his own consent to put himself under that government.

Christopher Hill commented that, for the Levellers, “free” Englishmen were those who could freely dispose of their labour: in an age of small household industrial and agricultural units, the Levellers thought that the head of the household represented servants, just as he did women and children.[3]

[R]hetorical flourishes apart, most of the Leveller leaders wanted the vote to be given only to “freeborn Englishmen”. Unless they had fought for parliament, servants and those in receipt of alms – that is, wage labourers and paupers – were excluded from the franchise, because these two groups were not economically independent.

An essentially communist view of the Commonwealth, far more radical than the Levellers’, was advanced by Gerrard Winstanley, a spokesman for the Diggers, who in 1649 began communal cultivation of the land at St George’s Hill near London (now in Weybridge, Surrey).

The Levellers believed that the “Norman yoke”, imposed after William the Conquerer’s invasion of England in 1066, needed to be thrown off; England needed to return to the laws of the free Anglo-Saxons.[4] Winstanley disputed this, arguing that laws had to be based on moral principle, rather than dubious historical precedent:

The best laws that England hath are yokes and manacles, tying one sort of people to another. […] All laws that are not grounded upon equity and reason, not giving a universal freedom to all but respecting persons, ought […] to be cut off with the king’s head.

But Cromwell and the leaders of the republic had not completed the revolution.

While this kingly power reigned in one man called Charles, all sorts of people complained of oppression. … Thereupon you that were the gentry, when you were assembled in parliament, you called upon the poor common people to come and help you … That top bough is lopped off the tree of tyranny, and the kingly power in that one particular is cast out. But alas, oppression is a great tree still, and keeps off the sun of freedom from the poor commons still.

In 1652, Winstanley warned that what had been won by executing the king could be lost in political process. To “you Army of England’s Commonwealth” he declared:

The enemy could not beat you in the field, but they may be too hard for you by policy in counsel if you do not stick close to see common freedom established. For if so be that kingly authority be set up in your laws again, King Charles hath conquered you and your posterity by policy, and won the field of you, though you seemingly have cut off his head.

And here we are, more than three-and-a-half centuries later.

The British empire has come and gone into terminal decline. The United Kingdom, which held together under the assaults of anti-imperial movements in its old colonies and the labour movement at home, is being battered by that wrecking-ball, the extremist, xenophobic Tory right.

 
A plaque, unveiled in 2015, depicting Gerrard Winstanley, in Wigan, where he was born

And this coming weekend, Charles III will be crowned. For all the monarchy’s claims that it will be a modern ceremony, he will still be presented with the Sovereign’s Orb, representing Christian power over mankind, and the Sceptre, which has the 530-carat Cullinan diamond, a memento of the British empire’s bloodthirsty adventures in southern Africa, stuck on top.

Most of these baubles were made on Charles II’s orders, for his coronation in 1661, after the monarchy had been restored.

That followed what the Royal Family web site describes as the Crown Jewels’ “disastrous fate following the execution of Charles I”, when Cromwell ordered that the Royal regalia “be totally broken” as being symbolic of the “detestable rule of kings”.

Charles III at his coronation will sit above the Stone of Scone, a symbol of medieval English monarchs’ unsuccessful attempts to conquer Scotland. In 1296, Edward I’s army stole the stone from the northern kingdom, where it had been used at crowning ceremonies for centuries. It was only returned in 1996, in a desperate attempt by John Major’s corrupt government to deflect the mounting demand for Scottish home rule – and then only on the ludicrous condition that it be returned to Westminster Abbey for future coronations, at taxpayers’ expense, as a sign of Scottish allegiance to an English-dominated UK.

One way for socialists and republicans, north and south of the border, to mark the coronation would be to think about how to revitalise the history of the Diggers, the Levellers and the other radical factions that fought to make the Commonwealth more democratic, even communist.

The Wigan Diggers Festival in 2019, from the festival facebook page
 (It’s an annual event – back again on 9 September 2023)

Many of their ideas were renewed and developed in the working-class movements of the late 18th century and during the Chartist movement of the mid 19th century. Christopher Hill and other radical historians in the 20th century made a huge contribution to our movement by reinterpreting the history of the 17th-century revolutionaries.

In June 2020, Black Lives Matters protesters in Bristol offered us a brilliant example of how to bring the history of the British empire to life, by dumping that statue of the slave trader Edward Colston in the harbour. As the historian David Olusoga wrote at the time: “this was not an attack on history. This is history.”

Let’s also bring alive the history of those who resisted British imperial domination, in slave revolts and national liberation struggles – and of the working people and radical thinkers in Britain itself, who dreamed of a better world without kings, nobles, Bishops and hierarchies of all kinds. SP, 4 May 2023.

🔎 I recommend these books, which I read or consulted: Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: radical ideas during the English revolution, The Century of Revolution 1603-1714, and Puritanism and Revolution; Peter Linebaugh, The Magna Carta Manifesto: liberties and commons for all; Brian Manning, The English People and the English revolution; and Geoffrey Robertson, The Tyrannicide Brief: the story of the man who sent Charles I to the scaffold. / Thanks to Terry Brotherstone for comments on a draft of this post, although all the opinions, and any mistakes, are my own. SP.

🔎 About the main picture. This is a detail from a print, “The execution of Charles I” by an unknown German artist, now in the National Gallery in London. Images portraying the execution were suppressed in England but were widely available in continental Europe: this one is a close copy of the Theatrum Tragicum, produced in Amsterdam a few weeks after Charles was beheaded.


[1] Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: radical ideas during the English revolution (Penguin, 2019), pages 322-323

[2] Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution 1603-1714 (VNR Ltd, 1988), pages 161-162

[3] Hill, The Century of Revolution, pages 110-111

[4] These quotations are from Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, pages 95-96

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The Execution Of King Charles 🪓 ‘Let’s Put All Brutish Tyrants Down’

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh ☭ writing in Socialist Democracy on 6-May-2023 mocks the deference shown to British royalty. 

On May 6th an anachronistic, atavistic ceremony was held for all the world to see. 

A man whose only merit in life is to have been born into right family was crowned King Charles III. He is of no merit. He wouldn’t even be king had his great uncle not ran away with an American divorcee. Had the royals been as tolerant of his relationship as they were of Charles’ the blood line would be different. That in itself tells you everything you need to know about his merit. None. But then royal families themselves have no merit, ever, anywhere.

Clown show
From the word go, the great and the good were rushing to get seats to the invite only privileged soiree, held at the expense of those who cannot pay their electricity bills. Photos abound of those getting to meet him, smiling as they did so. Amongst the invitees are a rake of kings, crown princes and others from head chopping, hand chopping, women raping and torturing regimes, such as Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman. Keir Starmer with his Sir in front of his name was all full of praise, the Labour Party was proud to say God Save the King. \

And in the midst of it, Alex Maskey and Michelle O’ Neill grinning like two over fed Cheshire cats. Instead of standing with British republicans who seek to abolish the monarchy, they threw their lot in with royalty, reaction and Loyalism. Even some conservative Irish politicians have been better on this than Sinn Féin, with one saying he wouldn’t go to the back door of his house to see it.(1) Social media has been full of memes and comments about the occasion, many predictably with quotes from James Connolly, who resolutely opposed the monarchy at all times. But perhaps one of the best quotes is from Keir Hardie, the founder of the Labour Party:

If we are for the Queen [Victoria] we are not for her subjects. The throne represents the power of caste – class rule. Round the throne gather the unwholesome parasites who cling to the system which lends itself to their disordered condition. The toady who crawls through the mire of self-abasement to enable him to bask in the smile of royalty is the victim of a diseased organism.

And yet Sinn Féin dragged themselves through a swamp of slime to bask in Chuck’s smile. The Communist Party of Ireland hailed them as brave for doing so and putting politics aside,(2) whilst simultaneously speaking out both sides of their mouths and expressing their solidarity with those arrested. (3) 

Lost in the discussion is any sense of what the royals are. And there is likely to be less discussion of it, or at least what happens will be curtailed even more. The British state brought forward the implementation of new police powers and demonstrators were arrested before they even got to demonstrate.(4) Sinn Féin instead of standing by these republican protestors was stuffing itself on the metaphorical and literal gravy train of the pomp and pageantry of the day. A pageant with all the precision, show and ideological message and propaganda worthy of a Nuremberg rally in other times, without the classy uniforms designed by Hugo Boss, of course.

New thought crime legislation is in place and in the south of Ireland it has passed the first stage in the Dáil and is now being discussed at the Seanad with all its provisions for thought crime. People can be arrested for having material on their computer that could be used for incitement to hatred. What hatred is, is not specified. Could calling for the abolition of the British monarchy be a hate crime? Yes, it could. In the modern world of identity politics Loyalists and even British royalists include the parasites within the world vision, their cosmo-vision as trendy types like to say when talking of the “exotic” cultures they pretend to value. Joking about a French or even Cromwellian solution to the monarchy could be construed as such, though my personal real preference is for them to be given jobs at Sainsbury’s as Arthur Scargill once suggested.

The laws are there to make sure we don’t question our betters; the coronation is the remind us that our betters exist and we should bow to them. There is no putting politics aside and representing all as Sinn Féin claim, though their message is consistent with the Good Friday Agreement when, politics was defined as an immutable identity and all the identities were worthy of respect, no matter how politically reactionary they were. The idea of representing everyone is reactionary nonsense. After the civil rights campaign in the US, black politicians did not run around claiming to also represent the KKK, they understood that there are people you don’t, can’t and shouldn’t claim to represent. But then Orange sectarianism itself has been dressed up as a quaint cultural fest and Michelle O’Neill marks the mass slaughter of the European working class that was WW I, when the cousins George V, Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Russian Tsar Nicholas II, respective countries found themselves at war and millions died for king and country.

The coronation marks a new low in the decline of critical thinking and a rightward shift by former radicals. It is also part of the rise in identity politics. Royalty is another identity we are meant to take seriously, lest we offend someone, somewhere or somezee, somewhere. It is an act of mass propaganda in favour of a political set up and paid for by those that set up aims to keep in their place, on the dole, at food banks, with worsening working conditions, should they even have a job. It is in essence unadulterated raw sewage.

Notes

(1) MSM (05/05/2023) I wouldn’t go to the back door to see it – Irish politicians have their say on coronation of Britain’s King Charles. Maeve McTaggart

(2) See Socialist Voice.

(3) See here.

(4) The Guardian (06/05/2023) Head of UK’s leading anti-monarchy group arrested at coronation protest. Daniel Boffey.

⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist in Latin America.

King Chuck

Dr John Coulter ✍ As an ardent Royalist, I stood to attention in my home last weekend and repeated the public allegiance to King Charles III, but as for the ceremony involving the former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles, to use the phrase - I was spitting feathers!

Princess Diana may be long since dead since that fateful crash in Paris in 1997, but for me as a life-long Monarchist, she is now my Queen ‘in abstentia’. At the risk of being thrown in the Tower of London as a traitor, I will never curtsey or bow the knee - even pay allegiance - to the former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles.

But then again, am I being a modern-day Biblical Pharisee in calling myself a Royalist, but at the same time point blank refusing to demonstrate any form of ‘loyalty’ to the former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles?

There can be no doubting that the House of Windsor and the Westminster establishment have played a magnificent public relations game since the turn of the new millennium to integrate and promote the former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles to her present position within the Royal establishment.

The former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles has gone from the perception of being one of the most hated women in the UK in the late 1990s, to being called the Queen Consort, and now ‘Queen’.

Would I come across today as being seemingly bitter towards the former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles if the then Prince Charles had been allowed to marry her in 1981 and not the late Princess Diana?

As a Princess Diana Loyalist, it was personally sickening to see the former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles given the role and recognition which our late Queen Elizabeth the Second performed with such dignity, dedication and professionalism.

But no doubt, supporters of ‘Queen Camilla’ will be quick to point out to me that it was the late Her Majesty who gave the nod of approval to the former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles taking on the title of ‘Queen’ when Prince Charles was formally crowned as King Charles III.

However, the former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles is no Queen Elizabeth II. Indeed, it is my honest opinion, as an ardent Princess Diana Loyalist, that to mention the former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles in the same sentence as our late Queen, is a complete insult to the memory of Queen Elizabeth II. That’s my honestly held opinion no matter what spin comes out of Buckingham Palace.

So what, in reality, can we who fondly remember and revere the late Princess Diana do to combat the promotion and elevation of the former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles?

Or, is it simply a case that we just have to ‘suck it up’ and wait for the latter to die, praying that each of us lives long enough to see Prince William’s wife, crowned as Queen Catherine?

King Charles III is now in his 70s age-wise and is one of the oldest Monarchs to have ascended to the Throne. If he enjoys the same longevity as his mother, our late Queen Elizabeth II, and his grandmother, the late Queen Mother, we could have him as our King for the next three decades.

But could it be a case that we Princess Diana Loyalists could start a campaign which would end with King Charles III abdicating and allowing his son and heir, Prince William, to ascend to the Throne much sooner rather than the Prince waiting for his dad to die?

Or is the mere mention of such a notion stinking of ‘gun powder, treason and plot’? Is there the danger that in questioning or even mumbling opposition to the former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles making us Princess Diana Loyalists looking like modern-day Guy Fawkes? Maybe we just need to grow up and smell the coffee in the wake of the recent Coronation.

In terms of spectacle and pomp, last weekend’s Coronation events were a superb public relations coup for the Monarchy in an era where the concept of Monarchy is facing a global threat.

Queen Elizabeth II was a brilliant Monarch, but we must be realistic as Royalists - who will better guarantee the long-term survival of the British Monarchy as an institution; Charles III or Prince William?

What could we Princess Diana Loyalists say if the former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles turned out to be the saving grace of the Royal establishment? There is now a strong body of opinion which maintains the former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles has been the ‘making’ of King Charles.

Likewise, as trendy Royals, William and Kate represent a vibrant couple in touch with the people, while King Charles III and the former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles represent the stuffy establishment of the past. Maybe the tens of thousands who attended Coronation events across the UK would differ from this analysis.

Maybe this column is too soon in the writing. Perhaps I should wait until the Royalist euphoria is over to echo such seemingly Jacobite sentiments?

The compromise could be that the Westminster establishment gives King Charles III and the former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles five years as a reign, with the guarantee that Charles III abdicates in 2028, handing over to his eldest son. That would also give William and Kate time to raise their family as a proper couple.

It is not the first time the Monarchy has been faced with an abdication situation. It happened in 1936 when King Edward VIII, who followed on from the death of his father, King George V.

Edward VIII wanted to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Eventually, he abdicated, handing the Throne over to his brother Bertie, who went on to become the UK’s wartime hero Monarch, King George VI. Edward then became the Duke of Windsor, but was always regarded with suspicion because of the former King’s links to Nazi tyrant Adolf Hitler.

So what is now needed is another Commonwealth Champion, like the ones who appeared in the mid-17th century to topple the reign of King Charles I.

Charles I’s reign was marked by the bloody English Civil War which lasted from 1642 to 1651, with Charles executed for treason in January 1649.

Likewise, are we looking at those who later that century following the disastrous reign of King Charles II saw that King succeeded by James II? Those Royalists organised a coup to have James toppled by his son in law, King William III, who is revered by the Protestant Loyal Orders, especially the Orange, who celebrate his victory at the Boyne in 1690 each year during the Twelfth.

Whilst we can only speculate, but Princess Diana - had her marriage to Charles remained intact - would have made a truly superb Queen Diana. It would have been an absolute privilege to curtsey before a Queen Diana, addressing her as ‘Your Majesty.’

But let’s be realistic. The House of Windsor and the Westminster establishment have now ensured Princess Diana will never be crowned ‘ Queen Diana in abstentia’. So the time has come for the Second Glorious Revolution - with the aim of replacing Charles III with Prince William, no matter what title Prince William choses when he ascends to the Throne.

Maybe in penning this article, I am viewed as being no better off than those Parliamentarians who toppled Charles I, or the Williamite conspirators who toppled James II.

Those of us conspirators behind the Second Glorious Revolution do not care what title is given to the former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles, as long as when she stands down, it does not contain the word ‘queen’.

Perhaps, like the former King Edward VIII and his American wife, the former Mrs Wallis Simpson, they could be given an honorary Dukedom and Duchess title and packed off to some far-flung corner of the Commonwealth to live out the remainder of their days on a beach and hosting garden parties.

So for me as an ardent Royalist, or maybe I’m a Williamite or Parliamentarian traitor, I say God Save King Charles, but God save us from the former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles!

Maybe you’ll see my head on Traitors’ Gate in London after being jailed in the Tower! I await my writ for High Treason! The question is; how many other ‘Royalists’ in the British establishment who know the value of the Monarchy are thinking the same thoughts?
 
Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online. 

Me Bow The Knee To A ‘Queen Camilla’? Get Stuffed!

Micheál Choilm Mac Giolla Easbuig ✍ Irish speakers and those native speakers in wider Gaeltacht community will see right through this cynical PR stunt on behalf of the Royal establishment to use the Irish language to advance its nefarious imperial agenda. 


We are wise to the fact that British imperialism sought to systemically obliterate spoken Irish on the island as part of their brutal colonial agenda which necessitated the demise of our ancient language and culture in order to facilitate their political, economic, social and cultural subjugation of Ireland. 

This brutal history cannot be rewritten or concealed by the patronising weasel ‘cupla focal’ from this indefensible relic of feudalism, whose merciless empire caused and causes persistent destruction across the world. 

This disgracefully lavish ‘coronation’ will cost the taxpayer millions of pounds and act as a clever ruse to direct people’s attention away from the real crisis in capitalism which is preventing working class communities from heating their homes and putting food on the table.

In the context of the most recent savage economic onslaught against the poor in the form of vicious Tory attacks on public services and social welfare as well as the current rollback on fundamental human rights, it’s unlikely that there is has ever been worse time to welcome such a repulsive Royal coronation of this kind. 

The Irish language was also used cynically during a Royal Visit to Ireland by a British Queen back in 1849. However, the words ‘Céad Míle Fáilte’ couldn’t conceal the fact that Ireland had been brought to its knees by one of the most brutal empires on the history of the European continent. 

The Great Hunger, which was facilitated, aided and abetted by the ruthless colonial regimes in Ireland, had claimed the lives of a million and half Gaels and saw nearly 2 and half million more emigrate in poverty and destitution. The Ireland of the 1880’s was a place in the throes of a horrific population shift unparalleled in European history. The Irish language was on its last legs, as a demoralised people had been brainwashed through hundreds of years of British colonisation to blame their hardship on their own barbarism and backwardness.

Contempory activists in Gaeltacht communities like my own are still dealing with the legacy of this cruel onslaught as the Language is still starved of crucial resources by the neo-colonial Free State government. 

The Irish language revival movement, embodied by Conradh na Gaeilge who were formed back in 1893, was the first step in a process of decolonisation; claiming back what was being lost, encouraging people to organise again and stand up on their own two feet, rebuilding the minds and bodies of a battered people. 

People followed because they knew they weren’t barbarians turned loyal British subjects. People followed because they hoped to revive their own native culture and build a sense of identity and hope. 

By 1900, Conradh na Gaeilge had become the fastest growing social movement in Western Europe with 800,000 members. This cultural movement for decolonisation inspired the movement for Irish independence from British Rule. It inspired The Rising in 1916 and was an engine upon which the revolutionary movement depended. 

This legacy of resistance is what progressives should be celebrating rather than praising the cynical use of the Irish language in this obscene royal coronation. All of these cruelties of Imperialism, continue, especially for its many victims who have yet to receive the justice, truth and recognition to which they are entitled. 

Lives, communities and cultures were destroyed under the dominance of this monarchy and it continues unabated. There was no transitional period when the horrors were recognised, with appropriate compensation, reparations or apologies. Slavery and colonialism have merely become neo-colonialism, neo-liberalism and neo-liberal globalisation. 

All of these rapid forces are destroying our planet Republicans, socialists, activists and progressives of all kinds must stand together against every aspect of this coronation, including the cynical use of the Irish language in underhand attempt to defy the facts of history. 

Contrary to the propaganda in the mainstream media, the use of Irish by a newly crowned British King does not bring history to an end and close the chapters of shame on British imperialism. History hasn’t ended. The newly unelected hereditary emperor’s use of Irish in fact a disparaging ploy by our native political elites to garner legitimacy for their selfish politico-economic agenda by using our native tongue to provide a cloak of integrity to their nefarious imperial aims. 

Language activists recognise that An Ghaeilge is still endangered because of the power processes of cultural colonisation in Ireland and this obscene coronisation shouldn’t deflect us from the ongoing project of decolonisation which requires a complete break from British Imperialism and is feudalistic monarchy. 

As Gaels, we must retain our integrity and independence rather than become willing pawns in a political agenda to rewrite our history, conceal current economic hardship and celebrate the very empire that continues to subjugate.

 ðŸ–¼ Micheál Choilm Mac Giolla Easbuig is an independent councillor on Donegal County Council.

Hereditary Emperor

Tommy McKearney ☭ What on earth was going on here last month? 

4-October-2022

To all appearances a supposedly sovereign independent republic immersed itself in sympathy and affection for the British monarchy.

Within hours of the announcement of Elizabeth’s death, RTE had a crew broadcasting solemnly from London. The Government fell over backwards in its determination to offer heartfelt condolences. Micheál Martin, leader of the so-called republican party, ordered every council building in the 26 Counties to fly the Tricolour at half mast on the day of the funeral.

Perceptions are often deceptive, though, and the reality is that many Irish people were not only unmoved by England’s royalist pageant but were deeply uncomfortable at the craven response to it. Ireland has a centuries-long history of a republicanism based not simply on sentiment but on lived experience. For too long the British Crown presided over so much misery and repression that its transgressions cannot easily be forgotten or forgiven.

While it is understandable that socialists and republicans would deplore the unprincipled forelock-tugging from the Irish establishment, it is important to reflect more deeply on the underlying significance of these events. Was it merely an embarrassing display of nostalgia for the old empire, or was there a more hard-headed calculation at work?

There may well be an amount of grovelling involved. With so many Irish people having served in Britain’s armed forces (including the Taoiseach’s uncles), it would be a surprise if it were otherwise. Nevertheless it is becoming increasingly obvious that, in a rapidly changing world order, an influential section of the Irish ruling class believe it is necessary to reset the connection with Britain. Promoting tolerance and even affection for the “Royal Family” is just one step along the way.

The monarchy is more than pomp and ceremony. As an institution, it serves to reinforce the permanence of existing power structures. What better way to legitimise a rigid, class-based capitalist society than having the office of head of state as a hereditary entitlement, an office that may be passed, tax-free, from the richest woman in the world to her academically challenged 73-year old son.

As for a funeral cortege consisting of 6,000 uniformed members of the armed forces—well, it hardly indicates a significant change of thinking from the nineteenth-century era of gunboat diplomacy.

And that’s exactly the point of it all: to preserve power and privilege for the few. Without doubt, maintaining the status quo is also a matter of real concern for Ireland’s ruling class.

The Irish establishment is now faced with a number of threats to its power base. From an establishment point of view, two issues in particular are deemed threatening. One is the age-old matter of the Six-County state, with its potential for creating destabilisation. Results from the latest census have done little to assuage the fears of the Southern bourgeoisie as the continued existence of that dysfunctional political entity is put further in question.

The second issue is a growing challenge to the Irish establishment’s dependence for its wealth and privilege on the promotion and practice of neoliberalism.

That neoliberalism is failing its authors, suggesting a period of instability for capitalism, was shown in the August issue of Socialist Voice, in an article by Greg Godels, writing for Marxism-Leninism Today.¹ Significantly, a remarkably similar assessment has appeared in an opinion piece published recently on its editorial page by that gospel of the markets, the Financial Times.

Prof. Larry Kramer, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, pulled no punches in his Financial Timesarticle when describing neoliberalism’s failings.² In his words, it has “fostered grotesque inequality, fuelled the rise of populist demagogues, exacerbated racial disparities and hamstrung our ability to deal with crisis like climate change.”

There was much in his critique that socialists would agree with. However, and in spite of that, the professor’s recommendations for dealing with capitalism’s crisis remain fixed within private-sector parameters. Fearing that China’s economic model may prove an attractive alternative, he stated that if capitalism is to survive it will need to adapt, as it has done in the past.

Therein lies the problem for capitalism; because, while we know that the system has proved itself capable of adapting, it has rarely done so with a seamless or painless transition. Conflict arises when economic change is being enforced or resisted, and always with traumatic disruption and pain for working people. On some occasions such adjustments have even led to war or revolution.

It would appear that Britain at present is experiencing the working out of this process of change. Having spearheaded the neoliberal onslaught during the Thatcher years, Britain is now struggling with all the consequences identified by Prof. Kramer. While other developed capitalist economies, such as the United States under Joe Biden, France, and Germany, have been moving in favour of greater state intervention (in the short term at least), Britain has bucked the trend.

In keeping with a ruling class steeped in the myth of empire, its new prime minister has decided not to change but to reinforce policies from the past. The September mini-budget introduced by the chancellor of the exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, was just such an attempt to serve the gods of Thatcherite neoliberalism, a package designed to provide more for the already rich coupled with a promise to further restrict trade unions’ right to withdraw labour. That this initiative has caused the English pound to slump appears not to have dented Tories’ confidence in its strategy.

That Britain’s governing party is so determined to adhere to the most extreme form of neoliberalism is a source of comfort for Ireland’s comprador ruling class. Unsure of how to deal with a developing economic challenge, emphasised by thousands marching to protest against the cost-of-living crisis, England can become a point of reference for the Irish establishment. Hence their need to construct a new affinity with British institutions, starting with obeisance to the Crown.

Socialist republicans can take some comfort from the fact that our history alone shows that they face an uphill task. Nevertheless, we must take every opportunity to ensure that the 26 Counties does not revert to abject colonial status.

  1. A century has passed since Liam Lynch said, “We have declared for an Irish Republic, and will not live under any other law.” Surely we can at least agree with him on that.Greg Godels, “Towards a New Political Order,” Marxism-Leninism Today, 17 July 2022.
  2. Larry Kramer, “The market must not become an end in itself,” Financial Times, 17/18 September 2022.
Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist. 
Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney 

Preserving Power And Privilege

Dr John Coulter ✒ as the United Kingdom prepares to bid a final fond farewell at her state funeral today, our ardent Royalist columnist looks back on his memories of Queen Elizabeth the Second and his hopes for the reign of King Charles the Third.

Today is a day which every ardent Monarchist, like myself, knew would come, but always dreaded - the funeral of the greatest Queen the UK has ever been blessed with.

Just as some people can vividly remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard that globally-known characters, such as JFK and Elvis, had died, so too, I will always picture the scene in my life when I learned the terrible news that Queen Elizabeth the Second had died.

September 8th 2022 was already a depressing day for me. It was the fourth anniversary of the funeral of my late dad, Rev Dr Robert Coulter MBE. Earlier that day, a schoolboy chum had telephoned me to tell me of the sudden death of a friend I had known since primary school days.

Surely the day could not get any worse? Media bulletins had carried news about the Queen’s failing health. While I feared the worst, we all prayed for a recovery in spite of her age of 96.

Sitting in the kitchen of my home eating my lunch of pork chops and chips the tragic news was released - the Queen had died. My reaction was instantaneous; tears and sobbing at the loss of a sovereign who had been a part of my life since I was born in 1959.

I have only physically seen the Queen ‘up close’ on one occasion - when my dad was at Buckingham Palace to receive his MBE. I was in the audience along with other members of our family; a matter of feet from the Queen.

Given my weak bladder, before leaving the Palace, I needed to use a bathroom. So after the formal proceedings, off I set through that grand building to find a toilet. No, I didn’t ask Her Majesty’s permission to use the bathroom! And no, as I dandered along the corridor trying to find my way out, I didn’t encounter any of the Royal Corgis!

In the Seventies, when I was a member of the First Ballymena Company of the Boys’ Brigade, based in First Ballymena Presbyterian Church, I gained the BB’s highest award - the Queen’s Badge - giving me the privilege (in BB terms) of being called a Queen’s Man.

As a journalist, many a time I covered Loyal Order and Unionist events at which I stood for the singing of the National Anthem, which ended with the phrase - God Save The Queen.

I have made no secret of the fact that as a political and religious commentator, I am an ardent Royalist. But I have also stood for the singing of the Soldier’s Song when, as a reporter, I have covered republican events.

If there was one attribute the Queen was known for, it was showing respect to others. As a born again Christian, I always admired the Queen’s deep personal Christian faith. In terms of peace and reconciliation in Ireland, the Queen shook hands with the late Martin McGuinness, the former Derry IRA commander and former Stormont deputy First Minister.

If the Queen can speak cordially with representatives of the republican movement, an organisation which bitterly opposes the Monarchy, then as an ardent Royalist, I should follow her example.

Perhaps, too, one of the reasons I dreaded her passing was the fear that our new King, Charles III, could not live up to the sterling Christian example the Queen set and the future of the Monarchy would be in danger.

Realistically, this fear is fuelled not so much by King Charles’ personality, but who his second wife is - the former Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles. I have always been a Princess Diana loyalist and a photo of the late Princess still hangs in my study.

Had Princess Diana’s marriage to Charles remained intact, she would have been a brilliant Queen to the future King Charles and the Monarchy would have been guaranteed to continue as a major pillar in the life of the UK and Commonwealth.

In this respect, I could never warm to the former Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles.

She has personally never done me any harm, and if I call myself an ardent Royalist, perhaps I should just ‘bite the bullet’ and accept the reality that the former Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles is now the Queen Consort and I should have the good manners to give her the proper title.

Before Charles unveiled he would be known as King Charles III, I had hoped - perhaps - he would take the title King George and possibly remain part of the late Queen’s House of Windsor. The reality is, King Charles III is now part of the Carolinian age.

But it doesn’t have a good history! And that’s tough for me as an ardent Royalist to admit!

Charles I was the only British monarch to have been publicly tried and executed for treason, heralding in the era of the Cromwellian Commonwealth, led by Oliver Cromwell.

Charles II - known as the Merry Monarch - spent many years in exile, had 13 illegitimate children and numerous mistresses. His reign also featured the Plague and the Great Fire of London and effectively paved the way for the unofficial second civil war between the Catholic King James II and the Protestant King William III.

Although Charles is Charles III, the Jacobite traitor Bonnie Prince Charlie - The Young Pretender - was known to his supporters as Charles III.

So I will again shed many a tear during today’s funeral service for Queen Elizabeth, whilst at the same time praying our 73-year-old King Charles III takes the Monarchy in a direction which guarantees we will see a future King Billy on the throne.

Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online. 

Remembering Good Queen Bess

Anthony McIntyre ✒ The death of the British queen has led to a deluge of genuine grief running parallel to a torrent of opportunistic posturing.

Thrown up by the pot-pourri is a blend of skulking, sulking and sobbing, from the thieving, the seething and the grieving in that order. 

In the midst of the tears shed have been quite a few crocodile ones, and not just from those whom Arlene Foster some time ago typologised as voracious reptiles. Weeping virgin statues are renowned for their tears, but reason needs to be abandoned before we can believe in them.  

The British monarchy has long served its purpose for status quo ideologues as a feedback loop which has helped maintain the social cement securing the ideological anchor that holds in place HMS Mirage with its passengers journeying as a society as one despite being kept on separate decks, upper and lower. 


The monarchy is the ideological foil to Disraeli's two nations. The new head of the monarchy, Charles, said of his mother that hers was a life well lived. No doubt it was: the splendour and vast wealth would have guaranteed a life in the lap of luxury. Those outside of royalty who benefitted from the wealth seem to have done so by threatening to sue the queen's delinquent son, Andrew. Why wasn't he arrested instead of those who hurled invective at him over his behaviour?

My own son asked me this morning if the queen lived a life of sacrifice. He had heard some servile rim licker spout that falsehood on the television. My answer, if not concise, was waspish: 

Did she fuck. Your mother lived a life of sacrifice, holding things together with barely a cent left at the end of the week, while standing her ground in the face of powerful institutions. Vicky Phelan lived a life of sacrifice as did Bobby Sands.

Not once in the queen's life of privilege did she acknowledge the sacrifice made by this brave young Irishman while those who built their careers on that authentic sacrifice have been fawning over both the monarchy and the memory of the queen in recent days.

My republican and secular sentiments allow me to have no respect for the monarchy, and I am not going to feign deference towards it. What I will do is behave with a dignity so often denied me by the queen's regiments, police and jailers. That means acknowledging that there is genuine grief out there which I refuse to piss over with hateful outbursts.

Against that background I think it wholly objectionable for football supporters to be chanting Lizzie's in a box. I fail to see how that can be passed off as something to be expected from a minority of soccer fans while maintaining outrage at the obscenities chanted about the late Michaela McAreavey, 

There is no need to behave respectfully, just respectably.

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

Respectably

National Secular Society ✒ has pressed the future monarchs to confirm their stance on homosexuality after the Church of England affirmed its opposition to gay sex and marriage.


The NSS wrote to the Prince Charles and the Prince William last week to ask if they agree with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby's affirmation of a Church resolution which said same sex marriage was wrong and "homosexual practices" are incompatible with scripture.

The NSS said that as future sovereigns, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge will be "oath-bound to maintain and preserve the doctrine and worship of the Church of England".

But it highlighted that Prince William has previously spoken up for the rights of LGBT people.

In 2019 the duke told an LGBT youth charity he would "fully support" his children if they were gay, but would worry about the "discrimination that might come".

The NSS asked whether the duke agreed with the Church's stance and for his message to his "future gay, lesbian and bisexual subjects".

The British monarch, as well as being head of state, also holds the title 'Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England'. 

Continue reading @ National Secular Society.

NSS Probes Future Monarchs Over Gay Marriage Stance

Mick Hall ☭ The UK MSM have been wetting themselves over the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. 

According to them the whole nation came together and joined in the celebration. 

We were told everyone loves the Queen, her family and the institution she represents, which is debatable to say the least. It's true in some big cities like London there were some large crowds but nothing special. They weren't much bigger in central London than you would get at Pop concert in Hyde Park or a fireworks display on New Years Eve. Compared to the numbers at previous jubilee's it seemed to have been a damp squib.

This was reflected in the TV news coverage when news outlets used the same footage over and again. In my local area I counted only two houses with buntings. It was much the same when I travelled further afield. Beyond one small village I haven't heard from anyone who had a street party, I'm sure there were some but they seemed thin on the ground.

Yes most people welcomed an extra Bank Holiday which wasn't surprising given the UK have less of them than our European neighbours. The majority of people went about their business much as they would on any Bank Holiday weekend. I doubt bringing the country together and joining in the jubilee celebrations crossed their minds.

⏩ Mick Hall is a veteran Left Wing activist and trade unionist.

A Damp Squib?

Mick Hall ✒ is fed up with all the sycophantic  fawning over the death of Philip Mountbatten. 

 The media coverage of the death of the English queen's husband is well over the top. Elderly men die.  It's part of the process of life. Admittedly in the pandemic some were helped on their way due to the gross incompetence of Boris Johnson, but Betsy's husband wasn't one of them.

After he fell off the perch in his gilded cage BBC radio and TV, ITV, Talk Radio, and Sky News were awash with interviews and programs about the life of this man, whose only real job since his marriage was to walk two paces behind his wife. No respect whatsoever has been given to the millions of us who have no interest in him or his dysfunctional family.

So what is going on? The ruling class never miss an opportunity to nail down their privileges and stamp their feet and this ridiculous charade is an example of this. The front page of last Saturday's Times said it all: Phillip Battenberg is dressed in finery which harks back to the British Empire - need I say more?

Whilst the usually suspects like Johnson, Starmer and their toddies, along with court jesters like Keith Richards and Mick Jagger are praising him to the high heavens, others who really should know better are doing like wise. Amongst the worst of these is the Sinn Fein leadership in the North of Ireland. Alex Maskey said this:

I am very sorry to learn of the passing of the Duke of Edinburgh after a long and full life of public service. I express my sympathy to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth on the loss of her husband and the rest of the Royal Family for the loss of a father, grandfather and great-grandfather.

 Michelle O’Neill went further and said: 

I wish to extend my sincere condolences to Queen Elizabeth and her family on the death of her husband Prince Philip. Over the past two decades there have been significant interventions by the British Royal family to assist in the building of relationships between Britain and Ireland.

I did wonder if they were both doffing caps, genuflecting to the crown as they spoke. Still I'm digressing from the subject.

Let me be clear the monarchy sits at the pinnacle of the British class system and has done for hundreds of years, the unelected position they hold have given the ruling classes the legitimacy to plunder other people's lands, and grind the British working classes into the ground.

It's not a coincidence the current holder of the crown is the richest woman in the world. She pays little tax on investments and properties while her family and forbearers have carved out countless acres of land for themselves. We're told she has no real power, just a figurehead. Oh really - then how come she gets a veto on all new legislation which impacts on her family? Indeed this family have made an artform out of tax dodging, not paying death duties, manipulation, conning the working classes and filling their boots with other people's money. It's high time they all went into the dustbin of history.

⏩ Mick Hall is a veteran Left Wing activist and trade unionist.

Prince Philip Of Plunder

Mick Hall discusses a royal pantomime. 

If there is one certainty in life it's never wash your family's dirty linen in public: no good ever comes of it. Yet the whole nation was apparently glued to their TV screens watching a member of one of the most dysfunctional families in the land rip his family apart in front of millions of viewers here and around the world.

Calling it a soap opera doesn't do it justice, more like a pantomime. It's payback time for the way the rest of his family treated his Mrs. I have absolutely no doubt all the accusations made are true. Don't take my word for it: Google its members and drill down and you will find some of their opinions would make a fascist proud. This family is full of bigots of every kind, racists, paedophiles, and serial fornicators with other men's wives. To call it a cesspit wouldn't be an exaggeration.

As to the response of the MSM and the political elite it has been hilarious. They all know what this family's foibles are going back centuries, yet they ring fence the crown and then puzzle over this with a straight face as if they might come up with something new. 

In all this debate if it can be called that, there is an elephant in the room, a serious issue they refuse to go near - the fact that the head of this dysfunctional family is the unelected head of the UK state and not one of them is prepared to put their head above the parapet and cry out loud, Enough! Into the basket of history they must go.

Is it any wonder we are such a servile nation. I will let James Connolly explain why.

A people mentally poisoned by the adulation of royalty can never attain to that spirit of self-reliant democracy necessary for the attainment of social freedom.

⏩ Mick Hall is a veteran Left Wing activist and trade unionist.

Dysfunctional Family

Mick Hall advises Meghan Markle to beware of entering road tunnels late at night.

Beware Tunnels Late At Night

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