I must admit
that I grew up ambivalent towards the House of Windsor, particularly with the pipes
of Culloden ringing in my ears from my Scottish mother by way of Nova
Scotia. That said, I have come to
appreciate the institution and its possibilities going forward.
Without question
money and power needs to be mediated through an electoral system and that has
or is becoming the global norm because it actually succeeds given enough time. And so it has come to pass. Nor any longer is one family called upon to
provide timely leadership but potentially any one of us is called for superior
results.
What the role
now does is focus the flow and ebb of the intangible flux of influence. This may sometimes be about money and power,
but not necessarily. Influence often
faces a vacuum which is something kingship is able best to fill through its
agents
Our polity is an
unfinished enterprise that will surely take centuries to well sort out. After all, the US Constitution is still less
than 250 years old, while a representative parliament with power is around 350
years old. That after thousands of years
of one man rule in its various forms.
This is something that we are only now seriously seeing off with decades
yet to work through.
In my own
writings I have introduced the Rule of
Twelve as a natural tool to facilitate the flux of influence. I posit that
its success will establish happiness as a human norm.
Is telling
however that George will live a good one hundred years. He will know his great grandmother who lived
most of the twentieth century. That is
almost two centuries of institutional memory that is living history. Money and power touch our world like moths to
the flame and are gone. Money is only a
counting tool and power is what is willingly granted. Influence is a test of character and
intelligence.
Conrad Black:
The monarchy’s upswing started with a death, not a birth
Conrad Black | 13/07/27
Nothing could be more natural than the celebrations
that have followed the birth of a healthy baby boy to the Duchess of Cambridge
and Prince William.
But even before the birth, the level of
international interest in this relatively routine event had been astonishing.
The racks of periodicals in supermarkets and
pharmacies have been heavy-laden for many weeks with glossy magazines
proclaiming the child’s imminent arrival. Media reports, not entirely
implausibly, claimed the event would produce billions of dollars of tourist
revenue for the labouring U.K. economy, in part through the sale of trinkets
and mementos and bric-a-brac.
It was only 16 years ago, at the time of the tragic
death of this baby’s paternal grandmother, that the same media, and in some
cases the same individuals, were triumphantly proclaiming the imminent demise
of the monarchy itself.
At the time of the death of Princess Diana, I lived
not far from her home in Kensington Palace, where the new baby and his parents
are now living. My wife Barbara and I walked over to the palace to take in the
astonishing sight of the masses of informal mourners, and observe, since news
film and photos of it were scarcely credible, the flowers piled up to a depth
of several feet, up to 20 feet out from the palace fence.
Many perspectives were represented. A card
asserting: “You were a neat Chick — God be with you” was on a bouquet next to
“Gays of East London will never forget what you did for us.”
And I recall various people solemnly, and no doubt
sincerely, informing tourists from Europe and North America this tragic loss
was not in vain, as it had set in train the republicanization of the country. A
number of people announced quite confidently the monarchy had gone down with
the princess.
In fact, horrible though it was, the death of Diana
was the watershed that marked the beginning of the revival of the
monarchy from one of its periodic dips.
Diana had been running a parallel monarchy: She
declined, unlike her mother-in-law’s great-grandmother, Queen Alexandra,
consort of Edward VII, to be a silent and indulgent pretty face and girlish
figure, while her husband ran an open-plan marriage. The media were thoroughly
manipulated by Diana as she leaked damaging information to selected reporters
while the more irresponsible sections of the press hacked the Prince of Wales’s
cellphone and even recorded his ill-considered descent into scatology in
conversation with his later wife, the Duchess of Cornwall. (“Tampax Britannica”
was the headline in the Spectator magazine — which my associates and
I owned at the time — after he compared himself to a tampon.)
No one imagines the Royal Family is composed of
brilliant people, though some are quite intelligent, but they are solid,
reliable and dedicated
The marriage disintegrated before the titillated and
prurient eyes of the nation and the world.
No one knows what goes on in someone else’s marriage,
but Diana had no difficulty establishing herself as the wronged party and the
popular favourite; and the Palace, unaccustomed to being on its back foot,
looked like a superannuated heavyweight blinking in disbelief at the blows
being rained on it by an agile underdog opponent.
When Diana died, the Royal Family remained in
Scotland, and, as was then the custom when the Queen was not resident in
London, there was no flag over Buckingham Palace to lower. The prime minister,
Tony Blair, advised the Queen emotions were unprecedentedly profound and
visible in London and she had to become more involved. The Daily
Mirror bannered on its front page: “Show Us You Care, Ma’am.”
The Queen returned to London, the royal standard was
raised to half-staff, and she decreed a ceremonial funeral at Westminster
Abbey. She spoke to the nation briefly but eloquently on television and radio
on the eve of the funeral, and expressed her sorrow “as a grandmother and as
your Queen.”
The 76-year-old Prince Philip walked with the Prince
of Wales and the princess’s sons and brother behind the caisson bearing her
casket; the 97-year-old Queen Mother stumped majestically up the aisle, and the
House of Windsor paid its respects with immense dignity and moved into a new
era.
The media got off Prince Charles’ back, the Queen
Mother passed on, and the Queen soldiered through her 50th and 60th
anniversaries as monarch, and closes in on Queen Victoria’s record of almost 64
years, the mother of the nation at last.
The Queen has never offended or embarrassed her
subjects these 61 years, not once, a performance of astounding virtuosity
She is not always the most imaginative or evidently
vivacious sovereign, but she is intelligent and dutiful, and has never offended
or embarrassed her subjects these 61 years, not once, a performance of
astounding virtuosity.
There is not a twitch, whisper, or wisp of
republican sentiment in Britain today. Everyone knows that Britain can’t unite
the roles of chief of state and head of government in the same person, as
France and the United States do.
In the United States, the Constitution established
three co-equal branches, executive, legislative and judicial, and they are entirely
separated, completely unlike, and not adaptable to British traditions; which is
why nobody in Great Britain, even in the asylums for the deranged, advocates
jettisoning the whole set-up of British government.
(In France, Charles de Gaulle ended the 170-year
battle between monarchists and republicans through two monarchies, two empires,
three restorations, four republics, a directory, a consulate, a government in
exile, provisional governments and a “state,” by re-establishing a monarchy in
the form of his presidency and calling it the Fifth Republic. This is not the
British way.)
The enthusiasm over this royal birth goes far beyond
happiness that the next three monarchs — Charles, William and George Alexander
Louis — are now in view; and beyond natural goodwill for the evident pleasure
of this attractive young couple.
It reflects an appreciation for something beyond the
failure, the mediocrity, humbug, and frequent incompetence of the political
class in post-Thatcher Britain.
No one imagines the Royal Family is composed of
brilliant people, though some are quite intelligent, but they are solid,
reliable and dedicated. And the British institutions that are headed by
people of whom the same can be said are so scarce that, apart from the
military, it is a challenge to think of any.
It was not the Queen who ditched Britain’s closest
allies and most selfless supporters in the world, the old Commonwealth of
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, to plunge into a Europe that is now in
shambles except for Germany and its coteries of satellites.
The monarch did not commit Britain beyond reason to
the special relationship with the United States, which ended abruptly when a
new American regime decided it had no interest in Britain and sent back the
bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office.
Her Britannic Majesty has her ministers to thank for
those brainwaves, and they have gone, and she’s still there, and will remain,
even unto the third following generation, and beyond.
There is no need to incant “God save the Queen,” not
because God is dead, as has also been reported, but because the Queen is in no
need of salvation. The people are.
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