The crown rules Britannia
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Saturday June 02, 2012 00:07
by pat c
The role of the elaborate jubilee is to draw attention away from the power and nature of the crown itself
Behind the pomp and ceremony of Lizs Diamond Jubilee lies the real power, the power of the Crown administered by the British Ruling Class and their CEO: Cameron. This article casts a jaundiced eye on both the Royal Family and the real rulers. Full text at link.
“Monarchy is only the string that ties the robber’s bundle” - Percy Bysshe Shelley
The jubilee is an obvious time to reflect on the distinction between queen and crown. Many people think these terms mean the same thing. It is much better to see them as opposites, albeit interconnected - the monarch and the state. Louis XIV famously said, “I am the state”, which is a definition of absolute monarchy. In contrast we see a hint of separation when Queen Victoria used the royal ‘we’: “We are not amused.” This means two of them are not happy - the person and the institution - me and my shadow.
This distinction has its origins in the doctrine in the middles ages that the king has two bodies. One is the ‘body natural’ - the living human being. “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?” said Shylock in The merchant of Venice (Shakespeare’s reference to Jews also reminds us that monarchs are not deities). But the second body is the ‘body politic’ - the institution of monarchy, which never dies. The king is dead - long live the king. The English revolution of 1649 made that distinction sharper
Today we live in a capitalist world when everything is business. So our distinction is between two enterprises - the Crown Corporation and Royal Family Ltd. The latter is called “the firm” by the Duke of Edinburgh and has its HQ at Buckingham Palace. These are separate businesses which go together like a horse and carriage. The relationship between them is more like ‘state capitalism’ than the much vaunted ‘free enterprise’.
The Crown Corporation - hereafter simply called ‘the crown’ - is, like any capitalist firm, a separate legal entity. It is the largest and most powerful multinational ‘corporation’ in the country. It has offices, or embassies, in nearly every country in the world. It has power not only in the UK, but the various tax havens or secret banking jurisdictions, such as the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey, the Cayman Islands, etc. It also has a very extensive information-gathering network, which enables it to keep ahead of most of its rivals.
Comments (4 of 4)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4Eoghan Harris attends Jubilee celebrations in Kingston.
first the royal barge sails up the Thames on her....royal barge...
Then Phil the Greek(betcha he's a trojan bondholder)comes down with a ....blather infection..musta caught it from the beeb.
Don't forget the enduring power of the mass media - radio, TV and the mass circulation newspapers, even magazines like Woman's Weekly and Cosmopolitan which fawn over members of the monarchy and boost their semi-divine image. The mentality of the British people is continually conditioned, sapped and massaged by repetitious bilge, lies and half truths about the real world. Empire nostalgia is a regular dessert on the prolefeed menu.
Irish media are not unaffected by similar mentally debilitating characteristics.
Tony Greenstein vents spleen at the monarchy. Full text at link.
The absurdity of the Monarchy and its Diamon Jubilee hardly needs pointing out. Do doubt the Queen does do a good job. The question though is what that job is. The Monarchy isn’t about opening hospitals or acting as a royal patron for charities. It is about being the symbolic representative of the British state. That is also why Her Maj also runs the State’s prisons (at least until they began to be privatised!).
It symbolises the reactionary and irrational and mystical nature of the British state. A state based on persuading people that they should put their trust in the British Establishment that has such contempt for working class people. The very nature of the Monarchy, with its emphasis on fealty, obedience, a ‘natural’ order where some are born to rule, is something any half-decent socialist and indeed democrat should oppose. As Shelley wrote, the Monarchy is ‘the string that ties the robbers’ bundle.’
It is the State in person, the human representative of all that is most ghastly about the capitalist system. At the same time as working class people are expected to see their pensions slashed, jobs cut, living standards lowered, benefits abolished, the NHS privatised – all in the name of tightening our belts, the Jubilee will cost about a hundred million pounds or so.
The reactionary nature of the monarchy should have been clear to anyone left in doubt when it invited to the Jubilee celebrations none other than the bloodstained King of Bahrain Hamad Al-Khalifa. But why not since the Monarchy has always rested on coercion when required. The corrupt and banal Prince Andrew, in his efforts to secure a little cash on the side for himself, was recorded denouncing ‘absurd’ obstacles to the arms trade, such as human rights considerations.
Through the years the Duke of Edinburgh has given vent to his racist and reactionary outpourings. The Royals are against (working class) ‘scroungers’ whilst having done their best to avoid tax (until it became too much of a political embarrassment). Their palacess are subsidised by the taxpayer, they receive a Civil List, have a Royal fleet of planes, a train and until recently the yacht Brittania. This is in fact an imperial monarchy not a Dutch bicycling one.
Anti-monarchy protesters gather on the banks of the river Thames at city hall, London. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/PA
A variety of tyrants and pretenders. Queen Elizabeth II with her royal guests pose for a picture before her Sovereign Monarchs Jubilee lunch in the Grand reception room at Windsor Castle Photo: AP
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