Britain’s cultural identity: A royal mess.

British Culture is built on hierarchy, abolition of the monarchy could be a big next step away from this.

Two pretty sizeable statements there, so given the grandiosity of my claims I shall preface this article with 2 more smaller, kinder statements: This is an opinion piece, specifically my opinion as a republican and a socialist, and secondly: I’m very welcome to critique and would love to hear opposing arguments so I can reconsider my conclusion.

Part 1: Why is British Culture built on hierarchy?

Firstly, how do we define a country’s culture? I think a good place to start is what is British but not European, or not English speaking but still British, or not white, but still British. Basically, what sets Britain apart from other countries? Both historically and now.

A disastrously incomplete list might go as follows:

1066, the Glorious Revolution, the Women’s suffrage movement, the rise and fall of the world’s largest empire, the Industrial Revolution, the Welfare State.

Now, if we can find what links them, maybe we’d have a better idea of what British culture might be based on. I think that what links them is hierarchy, and I shall explain why:

The British Empire, the largest ever, and probably that ever will be, is potentially what Britain is most well known for, and it was built on the idea that we, as Britons, are superior to other races and cultures, and therefore we have a right to own their land and people. ‘No flag, no country’. Here we see how a perceived hierarchy built what put Britain on the world stage.

Of course, the fall of the British Empire is just as related to hierarchy. As people came to their senses about the fact that no one race is superior to any other. We realised we should stop desperately trying to oppress people, because they get quite upset. [1]

Of course, claiming the empire is built on hierarchy is easy. Same with Women’s suffrage and 1066, but what about the Industrial Revolution?

Well, the Industrial Revolution is linked to hierarchy, specifically through the birth of another aspect of British culture: the modern class system. With population booming and concentrating in newly developing cities there was now a large working class all being employed by a much smaller ruling class of businessmen and industrialists. The old ruling class of landowners now also joined this new ruling class. As George Orwell famously said: ‘England is the most class-ridden country under the sun’, and the truth of that statement is in no small part due to the Industrial Revolution.

Out of this hierarchy came the first working class and workers’ rights movements: The Chartists. They were the organisers of the largest general strike of the 19th century, in 1842 there was a nationwide general strike for a 10 hour working day, a living wage and reduced rents. They would go on to form Britain’s trade unions and then the Labour party.

With the formation of an organised working-class political party, we could be granted the Welfare state, both its roots in 1906–14 when Lloyd George’s Liberal Party[2] was in power and put into action their ‘Liberal Welfare Reforms’, and also the modern Welfare state, built by Clement Attlee’s Labour party in post war Britain. This has been one of the main points of contention in British politics, and its roots are once again, hierarchy.

Part 2: So, what on earth does the Queen have to do with it?

Currently, Queen Elizabeth II is our head of state. According to Wikipedia:

‘A head of state is the public persona who officially embodies a state in its unity’

To qualify to be ‘the public persona who officially embodies’ Britain you have to do two things:

1. Be born (to the right person)

2. Not die (before the right people)

Is that really how we should select who embodies our state in its unity? There are plenty of other excellent reasons why the monarchy has to go but I’ll be focusing on the cultural impact of having an unelected head of state.

When prominent world leaders come to Britain, they’re most often hosted by the residents and servants of Buckingham Palace. They’re often invited to a state banquet where they can chat with the royal family. Their impression of ‘Britishness’ is from a family who employ over 700 servants, who live in 4 palaces/castles with over 300 bedrooms, and who spent nearly 70 million pounds last year. This is one of the last remaining relics of feudalism and is in no way representative of modern British culture or any other aspect of modern Britain.

Now don’t get me wrong, I definitely think we should show our best side to the rest of the world, Buckingham Palace is a perfectly wonderful place to show state guests, it’s a wonderful building. And why shouldn’t we provide a banquet fit for kings and queens? But that one family has access it is out of date, and they’re out of touch.

Britain has been at the forefront of social and political progress for so much of its history, over 800 years ago the Magna Carta was written, one of the first official constitutions came from Britain. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 a modern form of constitutional monarchy emerged, and Queen Victoria was the last monarch to use real personal power.

So why have we lost our progressive nature?

I think it is because the monarchy in Britain is emblematic of hierarchy in its most feudal form. For as long as we have a royal family and having ‘royal blood’ still gives anyone more power over others, we’re limiting ourselves to be subservient to this ancient hierarchy. We are all still subjects of the monarchy, a system that has its roots in feudalism, on of the most hierarchical ways of structuring a society. Once we abolish all remnants of that system, we’ll be closer to the country modern Britain wants to be.

Part 3: What might a post monarchy Britain look like?

With all of the events listed in Part 1 that make up some of British culture, there are some clear pairs, one event that wasn’t as equal, democratic, or beneficial, and then a second event that sought to improve measures. For example, the rise(first event) and fall (second event) of the British empire. Women’s suffrage was the second event after disallowing women to vote for so long, the Industrial Revolution (first event) led to more widespread disease, population concentration and a new form of ruling class, the welfare state (second event) sought to give everyone access to healthcare, higher quality, affordable housing and a decent education irrespective of your place in the class system.

I don’t think it’s too crazy to assume that absolute monarchy was the first event, and constitutional monarchy is the second. Now we can take that one step further and say the next event is abolition of the monarchy, it’s more democratic, removing any importance of ‘royal blood’ is more equal, and it hands ownership of a large part of the country’s history to the people. Palaces and castles can be open to the public full time (much like the Tower of London) and the incredible royal art collection would become publicly owned and available for viewing. A new head of state can also better represent modern Britain and with that, our cultural output may also modernise.

Of course, just abolishing the monarchy won’t accomplish that much on it’s own, but it could represent a much larger movement characterised by progressivism, a focus on the working class rather than the ruling class, and a better understanding of our nation’s history, preferably told through the eyes of the common man rather than one family and their affairs.

During the enlightenment, after western Europe had set aside the church as an authority on science and politics, a new wave of scientific and political progress was made. I believe that abolition of the monarchy as our head of state and system of government could have a similar effect. Once we set aside monarchy (and in essence hierarchy) as an authority on our culture and politics, we can begin to focus more on collaboration than subservience, to truly embrace people first policies in our politics and to understand that the world is bigger than our little island.

The world is facing new problems, not just certain countries, not just certain communities but the whole world; we need new solutions to these. Why are we holding onto ‘the good old days’ when every day is more modern than the last? We need an internationally collaborative system that’s not focused on profits or on GDP growth but on problem solving and the future of our planet. Communication and travel are easier than ever; this should be the best time yet to embrace a new system, but the EU’s collapsing, China and America are on the verge of a new Cold War, and many millions more people are now seeing that huge, multinational corporations don’t have their (or the planet’s) best interests at heart.

There are so many new (and old) ideas around that would allow us to move forward. Things like Universal Basic Income as a solution to food insecurity and a brutally exploitative job market, workplace democracy as spoken about by Richard Wolff and Yanis Varoufakis, fairer systems of voting than the UK’s FPTP system and the US’s electoral college. More investment in renewable food and energy sources that don’t cut down millions of acres of rainforest and can provide new jobs and incomes to the billions living in newly industrialised countries like China, India, Brazil and Russia. Jobs that won’t need to be scrapped in 30 years when we can’t sustain our carbon output any longer. A new wave of intersectional feminism that sets out to achieve legal and social equality for all groups around the world that currently have to work against a system that wasn’t designed for them. An international court that’s guided by morality, not geopolitics, and a permanent end to US imperialism and proxy wars over oil and other rare resources.

There is, of course, no perfect solution, but the current system is failing to keep up with the demands of our ever changing world. Whether we have a monarchy or not really isn’t that important, but it’s emblematic of old-fashioned systems that don’t listen to the people, have their own self-interests in mind, and aren’t willing to change quickly enough, no matter the price paid by billions of others.

Lots of hope,

Clara Batty ❤

Footnotes

[1] I should mention I don’t think the British empire was a good thing at all and there should be no gold star for stopping committing genocide. I have tremendous respect for the American revolutionaries of the 18th century, the Indian revolutionaries of the 20th and every other person who died trying to liberate their country from colonial rule.

[2] David Lloyd George wasn’t ever leader of the Liberal Party, but he was its dominant figure.