Republican or Monarchist

TofTW Feb 2016

The Royal Conundrum

By Kent Barker

The invitation, when it arrived, posed something of a dilemma.

Of course I’m delighted to see our new batch of Housing Association homes completed and ready for occupation.  It’s been several years since we found the land for them. A village trust administered by the Parish Council owned a field that had been let out for grazing.  In an ideal world it would have remained for agriculture, but affordable housing is urgently needed and we felt the proposal for three homes and a couple of flats was a reasonable one.  Not all the nearby residents agreed and there was a stormy public meeting at which several vented their spleen.

Anyway, here we are with the houses built and just some landscaping to do before the grand opening ceremony.  I’m not quite sure why there needs to be a grand opening ceremony but the Housing Association wants one, and so sent out invitations to village worthies and to me as a parish councillor.  As a local politician – albeit on the very bottom rung of the administrative ladder – I feel it’s good to attend these sort of gatherings whenever possible, so I was about accept when I noticed who was to be the guest of honour. It was the Housing Association’s patron, the Princess Royal, or as I remember her, Princess Anne.

A quick check shows that the first Princess Royal in Britain was Maria, daughter of Charles I and his French wife Henrietta Maria, who wanted to import the Gallic custom of calling their eldest daughter ‘Madame Royale’.  Though perhaps they felt that title suffered in translation and sounded, to English ears, a tad too close to the keeper of a bawdy house. Though I suppose the monarchical title might have provided some fig-leaf of respectability.

Anyway, I fear we are diverting down dangerous by-ways here.  The point is, or was, whether I should attend a function at which a member of the royal family was to be present.

Let me make it clear, I have nothing against any of them personally. It’s the institution I have a problem with.  Put me on the rack (and expressing such views in times gone by might well have resulted in me being put on a rack) I would probably admit pretty quickly that I was, at heart, a republican. Actually, coming to think about it, I’d admit to almost anything in the face of even the most gentle torture.  Personally I just can’t see the point of submitting to the pain.  So beware, any friends or relatives, if I’m carted off to the torture chamber, head for the hills because I am most unlikely to keep your secrets.

But back to the question of whether, in the 21^st century, it’s in any way acceptable for a head of state to hold the post solely because they happen to have been born into the aristocracy?  We in Britain pride ourselves on being a bastion of democracy. We characterise the Westminster model as the “mother of parliaments”. We look round the world and lecture others on the need for free elections and decry one-party states or dictatorships. And yet … our upper chamber in parliament is wholly UN-elected, likewise our constitutional head of state. 

Now, if we ignore a few peccadillos of her children or grandchildren, I’ll own that the current Queen has done a pretty decent job.  And it’s not a job I’d take on for all her money.  But on one level it’s her wealth that is part of the problem.  How can you persuade Google or Starbucks, or even the bloke next door, to pay their taxes if your head of state only does so on a voluntary basis, and sometimes not at all when it comes to inheritance tax? Ok, I know all the arguments about the value of the Monarchy to our tourist income but surely there’s a principle at stake here isn’t there?

So by now you should be asking: ‘is he going to put his principles before the chance of hobnobbing with the Princess?’  Well as I said it’s a dilemma. I’ve met Princess Anne before, when I was a junior reporter in local radio in the North East at a Riding for the Disabled charity event.  I’ve even met the Queen.  Well, when I say met, she passed by me in a reception line at a gala theatrical first night to which, as a teenager, I’d gone with my father.  I had no idea she’d be there and recall being embarrassed I’d failed to polish my shoes.  I doubt she noticed.

Eventually I decided to accept the invite on your behalf.  I’ll be your eyes and ears and tell you all about it in a future column. You may call it a cop-out. I justify it as journalism! 

ends