14.11.2002

Butler triggers royal crisis

What lies behind the trial of Paul Burrell and its collapse? Dave Craig of the Revolutionary Democratic Group describes the death agony of the British constitutional monarchy system

It has been a fascinating few weeks for republicans. The Burrell trial and its aftermath has provided the country with new insights into the secret world of royalty and further confirmation of the RDG's view of the monarchy in crisis. It is a crisis which began in the 1990s and continues to this day. We are not speaking of an odd scandal or one-off event, but rather a whole epoch in which periods of stability are suddenly interrupted and interspersed by yet another drama. It is an epoch drawn out by the inability of the various social classes to resolve or put an end to the situation. In the 1996 RDG programme we argued that "the crisis of the social monarchy creates the objective basis for a new republican movement. But without republican parties this potential will remain latent. At present neither the middle class nor the working class have moved decisively to reject the constitutional monarchy. The middle class retains its illusions in the monarchy and its fear of republicanism. The working class is still dominated by Labourism. Nevertheless republicanism is now on the political agenda." To begin to make sense of the situation, we need to make a clear distinction between the queen, as royal and hereditary head of state, the constitutional monarchist system and what we term the "social monarchy". Americans would not confuse the US federal republic with George Bush. The former represents a constitutional-political system, whilst the latter is merely the present holder of the office of president. It is clear that the American people can get rid of George Bush without abolishing or even changing their federal republic. But in the UK such confusion is quite likely in any discussion. To avoid this we use the term 'constitutional monarchist system' to mean the system of government which includes parliament, the House of Lords, the powers of the executive and the prime minister, the union of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the first-past-the-post electoral system, the 'unwritten' constitutional laws, etc. Abolishing the constitutional monarchist system means radically changing the form of democracy. It is not primarily or simply about getting rid of the hereditary head of state. But, because the hereditary head of state symbolises and binds the whole constitutional system together, the monarchy becomes the symbolic focal point for those who want to change the whole system. Republicanism should not be reduced simply to anti-monarchism, but must represent a more general democratic case against the powers wielded by Blair's elected dictatorship and the failure of parliament to represent the people. It is not so much the powers of the queen, but the powers concentrated in the hands of the queen's first minister. Powers we saw Thatcher use against the miners and Blair will now deploy against the firefighters. 'Social monarchy' is the term used to describe the historical form taken by the constitutional monarchist system when combined with state capitalism and the welfare state. The social monarchy was the British form of welfare state capitalism, as it emerged from World War II and the 1945 'socialist' Labour government. We have sometimes called it the 'Elizabethan welfare state' in recognition that the current monarch, crowned in 1952, came to symbolise this post war re-articulation of traditional British conservatism and state capitalism. The social monarchy was a testament to both the strength and weakness of the working class. After the war their demands for change won social reforms from the ruling class. But the workers were not strong enough either in consciousness or organisation to overthrow them. The ruling class was not strong enough to take back these reforms until the economic crisis of the 1970s and the defeat of the miners in 1984-85. The Thatcher government began the process of dismantling the social monarchy. Mass unemployment, privatisation, attacks on the welfare state and the destruction of the trade union power produced its own shifts in the politics of Labour. Thatcherism reached its zenith with the poll tax, which showed up the failure of parliament to represent the people. The unintended consequence of Thatcherism was the questioning of democratic institutions, the growth of nationalism and the demand for constitutional change. The programme of New Labour has brought constitutional change with continued and extended privatisation. In this sense Blair is 'completing' the process of dismantling the social monarchy, as begun by Thatcher. Class struggle It should be obvious that these social and political changes will not and cannot leave the position of the royal head of state untouched. The queen is neither above nor beyond the messy business of class struggle. 'Modernising' the monarchy and trying to find a new role for it in post-welfare market capitalism is the holy grail which the 'Windsor think tanks' are desperately searching for. The fire at Windsor Castle was the first shock for the royalists - a sign that public opinion had changed. Tory ministers were immediately seen on TV, bowing and scraping and assuring us that the taxpayer would spare no expense to compensate the royal family. But public opinion was having none of it. After all the Thatcher propaganda about parasites living off the state, why would people not expect the monarchy to 'stand on its own two feet' and pay for her own fire insurance? The marriage and divorce of Diana Spencer and Charles Windsor, which are at the root of the current exposures and scandals, have to be seen in the wider political context of a society that has changed. Neither the constitutional monarchy nor the monarchy that symbolises the system has caught up with the real world. Diana Spencer came to represent popular aspirations for a different kind of modernised monarchy. Consequently the Windsors came to see her as the biggest danger to their position in circumstances where social support for the monarchy was withering on the vine. That Diana Spencer was more dangerous to the monarchy than the socialist and working class movement tells us much about our present predicament. The queen has been forced to pay. The Tory plan for a new royal yacht has sunk without trace. The death of the Princess of Wales shed further light on the wars within the aristocracy and the royal family with two rivals courts at Buckingham Palace and St James's Palace. However, the death of Ms Spencer seemed to offer a way back for the Windsors. According to Mohammed Al Fayed, the owner of Harrods, Diana was assassinated by the dark forces of the British state. Prince Philip was a key player. But most British people would not suspect that our ruling class could do such a thing. Certainly there was a motive for such a crime and Ms Spencer was undoubtedly fearful of being constantly spied on. Certainly the post-Diana monarchy appeared to have been strengthened and indeed revitalised. This year was a great political triumph for the Windsors. With the dangerous Spencer now largely forgotten, the Windsors had been going from strength to strength. There were massive royalist demonstrations occasioned by the funeral of the queen mother, with up to 400,000 queuing for hours in what the Daily Mail called the "the river of love". This was topped by an estimated one million out on the streets for the climax to the jubilee on June 4. Then the Countryside Alliance - uniting the rural middle and working classes behind the fox-hunting aristocracy, with Charles and Camilla as unofficial patrons - mobilised hundreds of thousands. The royal 'party' was on the march. Royalists and political commentators were ecstatic. For example, Ros Wynne Jones, a pro-republican journalist on The Mirror said that, whatever you might say about the monarchy, "the royal family is truly for ever". "My republican dream was shattered," she declared, watching the RAF fly-past on June 5. "The celebrations were not just for the last 50 years, but for the next 50, during which the royal family were guaranteed to remain at the heart of public life." Even the queen seemed surprised. With such mass demonstrations of loyalty and affection, republicanism would now slink away and throw itself into the dustbin of history where it surely belonged. Not so quickly. Just when the Windsors thought it was safe to go outside, Paul Burrell appears on the scene and a new round of more terrible blood-letting begins. 'What the butler saw' has kept millions of tabloid readers wondering what will happen next. It has sparked off daily discussions across the airwaves as to whether we should get rid of the monarchy or keep it. The story emerging seems to be as follows. After the death of Diana, all the powerful people were anxious to get their hands on the 'crown jewels' - a special wooden box in which Diana kept tapes and letters for her own political leverage and protection. These included nasty letters from the queen mum (gawd bless 'er) and Prince Philip and the tape about the alleged gay rape. Such letters, if revealed, would blow open a few myths about the royal family and the tapes would expose Charles as covering up a crime. Everybody in the know wanted access to the box. Whilst the Spencer family were busily shredding documents, Burrell went to see the queen. The audience lasted for three hours. The Sun claimed it was three minutes. The palace admitted it was "at least an hour and a half". So three hours is probably correct. Even Tony Blair does not get an interview that long. Most of this conversation was kept confidential. But the queen reminded Burrell that he was closer to her family than almost anybody and knows many of its innermost secrets. She warned him that because of his closeness to Diana, he was in danger from people who wished to harm him. She told him: "There are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge." As Burrell says, "She looked at me over her half-rimmed spectacles as if she expected me to know the rest. She fixed me with her eye and made sure I knew she was being deadly serious." Roy Hattersley makes the point that if the queen tells us "there are powers about which we have no knowledge" how does she know about them? Perhaps the royal 'we' was really a 'you'. The queen knows about these dark powers because as head of state who has access to all the state secrets and all personnel who occupy posts in the state apparatus. She is well aware of what the state is capable of and how ruthless such dark forces are prepared to be in defence of the realm. Diana was a threat to the stability of the state because of the secrets she held and what she might do. Now Burrell was in the firing line for what he knew and might tell. Exposed In January 2001 the police raided Burrell's home in Cheshire. At the start of an intense search the police said to Burrell: "You know what we are after." He was then asked about the location of a "small wooden oak box which contained several documents". The police looked everywhere. The box turned up at the trial, but its contents had disappeared. It now seems the police pursued a malicious prosecution against Burrell based on allegations for which there was no evidence. They told Prince Charles a pack of lies, which were eventually exposed in court. Nobody seems to be asking who put the police up to this and why. The Spencers got such a rough time in court that the Windsors must have become concerned about being exposed when their turn came. The queen suddenly remembered her three-hour conversation with Burrell and the case was dropped. All this has exposed the fiction that the monarchy is above politics or that the monarchy would not use its privileged position to protect its own interests. Far from being non-political, the monarchy is shown to be intensely political. It is not necessary to outline the further twists and turns of this saga. Suffice to say that the public relations triumph of the golden jubilee has turned into a public relations disaster. The crisis of the British monarchy continues. It is not the revival we are witnessing, but the long drawn out death agony. It is not in the interests of democracy or the working class that the crisis of the monarchy should continue. But we need to look at ourselves and not simply watch them. What we see is the weakness of the working class and the inability of the socialist movement in general and the Socialist Alliance in particular to do anything about it. The crisis on the monarchy remains unresolved because of the failure and political impotency of the left. A few weeks ago the Alliance for Workers' Liberty's Sean Matgamna wrote an article entitled 'Notes on the CPGB/WW'. In this he devoted a section to the monarchy headed, "All monarchs are monarchs, but some are less monarchical than others!" It was intended as a criticism of the CPGB's republicanism, but could equally be directed towards the RDG. Indeed CPGB supporter Tom Delargy argued that Sean had mixed up the CPGB and RDG. So in the spirit that Sean's points could equally be directed against the RDG, I want to begin a reply. His attitude to the monarchy is by no means unique. It is representative of a wide spectrum of Marxist opinion. He repeats some of the arguments we first encountered in the Socialist Workers Party in 1980 in the debate between Alex Callinicos (central committee) and the Republican Faction, forerunner of the RDG. The dominant ideas on the monarchy in Britain are the ideas of the ruling class. The Tory tradition is very pro-monarchist, as can be found in Blair's description of Diamond Liz as the "best of British". But there is a strong Whig or liberal tradition that supports the monarchy by proclaiming it to be irrelevant. There is no need to get rid of something that hardly exists. This is why liberals are prepared to tolerate the monarchy. As Beatrix Campbell says, the monarchy "has been viewed with almost total indifference by the progressive portion of society" (The Independent November 10). Liberal and tolerant attitudes to the monarchy have found their modern home in the Labour Party. But it has not left Marxism untouched. All Marxists are formally republicans, but some are less republican than others. In Sean's view this seems to be explained by the fact that some monarchies are less monarchical than others. The queen is not as bad as the tsar is basically what Sean is saying. The Republican Faction thesis against comrade Callinicos - that Marxists are divided into liberal-reformist republicans and militant-revolutionary republicans - is alive and well. Liberal republicans tend to have a more tolerant attitude to the monarchy and generally think it is a minor, if not irrelevant, issue. They view republicanism as a bourgeois issue and think that abolishing the monarchy is simply a minor democratic reform - no more, no less. Revolutionary republicans consider the abolition of the monarchy is best achieved by the mobilisation of the working class. The working class is the only class in society that has no interest in keeping the monarchy and every interest in getting rid of it. Whilst the abolition of the monarchy by working class mobilisation can be considered a 'reform', it will, if history is anything to go by, mark the beginning of the 'British revolution', which makes the abolition of the monarchy a transitional demand. The propensity for British Marxism to adopt liberal republican politics is in part explained by economism - the tendency to see economic rather than political struggles as the means of raising class consciousness. Sean follows that line of thought. But he deals with the monarchy simply as a Russian question. He makes no concrete analysis of the position of the monarchy in British class society at all. He contents himself with the observation that the British monarchy is not the same as the tsar. I hope to examine his arguments in more detail in another article.