10.10.1996

Royal repair job

Alan Fox reviews The Queen by Ben Pimlott (Harper Collins, pp651)

The ruling class never gives up trying to portray the British monarchy as a benevolent institution, serving the interests and aspirations of ordinary people. Now a new book, to be released next week and already serialised in an edited form in The Independent newspaper, claims that Queen Elizabeth II has acted as a “leftwing influence” on British politics.

Ben Pimlott, author of The Queen, published by Harper Collins, writes:

“Contrary to what might have been imagined, on a whole range of issues the monarch’s thinking was left of centre. Like her eldest son she was worried about race relations and inner-city decay in Britain - and shared many of Charles’ ideas about the government’s duty towards less privileged people” (all quotations from The Independent, October 3, 4 and 5).

Pimlott is at pains to point out how capitalism’s “system of checks and balances” is in fact completely even-handed. Whereas it has usually operated to hold back the ‘excesses’ of the ‘left’ (the restraining influence of the monarchy on the Labour governments after both world wars is cited), during the present queen’s reign it is Conservative administrations which have been held in check.

Elizabeth was apparently very concerned by Britain’s role in the invasion of Egypt during the 1956 Suez crisis, extremely disturbed by Margaret Thatcher’s lack of enthusiasm for ending apartheid, and “furious” over the US invasion of Grenada in 1983.

All this fits in very neatly with the current thinking of the British bourgeoisie. With the discredited Tories in disarray and the establishment looking forward to a radically reforming rightwing Labour government, such a notion of the “welfare monarchy” plays two important roles. Firstly, it helps shore up ruling class support for Tony Blair - the sensible, ‘moderate’ leader who can come up with the goods after the extremities of Thatcherism. Secondly, it attempts to regain some of the ground the monarchy as an institution has lost through all the royal scandals of the last decade.

Of course, whatever might be said of Thatcher’s personal style, the main planks of her extreme agenda are now seated at the very heart of the new consensus of ‘centre’ politics: the dismantling of the welfare state, a relaxing of government controls over capital through tax cuts and privatisations, the curbing of union power and the virtual destruction of working class ideology - all these are wholeheartedly endorsed by New Labour.

Nevertheless it is useful for the ruling class to offer us the possibility of a ‘caring’ government and monarchy, once again acting in harmony in their total dedication to serving the nation.

According to Pimlott, this harmony had been shattered by the abrasive relationship between Thatcher and the queen. On the one hand, “the ‘welfare monarchy’ ... did not find it easy to embrace a leader and an administration that treated welfare policies as soft”. On the other hand, the new, radical, “lower middle class work ethic” of Thatcher “regarded aristocracy as decadent”.

Pimlott even goes so far as to imply that an eventual threat to the monarchy would come, not from the republican left, but from the Thatcherite right: “A new generation of radical Conservatives found less and less reason to link their political commitment to an automatic support for the monarchy.” Another reason to fall in behind Tony Blair.

All this is balderdash, of course. Mainstream bourgeois opinion regards the constitutional monarchy as the mainstay of its rule and would never give up what The Independent calls “the practical fiction of the ‘Crown’”, unless it was forced to ditch it through a movement from below: “Stripped down from its imperial pretensions, the monarchy provides a historically valid symbol of unity”, which “might even serve as a sort of sheet anchor”, as Britain approaches the necessity of constitutional reform, both internally and in relation to the European Union (The Independent October 5).

It is true that the monarchy does not quite see itself in that way. Monarchs have always viewed themselves not as a useful tool in the armoury of capitalism, but as purveyors of stability in and of themselves. Ever in touch with their subjects, they must fulfil the mission bequeathed to them by history, if not by god.

The queen sees her duty as using her influence and vast wealth for the benefit of the ‘underprivileged’ through paternalistic charity and wise guidance. Like the old aristocracy, monarchs have never equated their fortunes with the exploitation of those who have toiled to create their wealth: they have simply ‘taken charge’ of it and distributed a proportion to their subjects as they have seen fit. Just before the queen’s private income became liable for tax in 1993 it was estimated that a rate of 40% would yield more than £200 million a year from her income alone.

The queen may well prefer benevolent charity to crude oppression as the best way of maintaining ruling class stability. But to describe this as “leftwing” is stretching credulity to its limits.

Similarly, with international issues, her priority is not the welfare of ordinary people. For example, her main concern over Thatcher’s South Africa policy was not her empathy with the black masses, but the worry that it was putting at risk the future of her beloved Commonwealth.

Although in 1980 the royal family was still described by the mass media in terms of “total adulation”, their rather less than regal behaviour, combined with the tabloids’ circulation war, meant that within a decade every move they make, however negative the image, has become liable to intense scrutiny.

Desperate to clean up the picture, the establishment is looking to make a quick-fix repair job. It wants to reform the institution to bring it more into line with the needs of the capitalist state at the end of the 20th century. And Ben Pimlott is playing his part in that scheme.

Alan Fox