On Jubilation

As noted before, I have this memory of floating in a punt on the river Wear with a music box of some kind (portable record player? That doesn’t sound right – a cassette seems so much more likely for all sorts of reasons), drifting past some of the colleges and playing the Sex Pistols at high volume. I’m sure it was the Silver Jubilee in 1977.

We played God Save the Queen (it’s a fascist regime). I wasn’t a punk, but I enjoyed punk music. More importantly, perhaps, I was no fan of the Royal family by that age.

I seem to remember I was more tolerant earlier – Charles’ investiture was in 1969 and I collected the stamps issued for the event. They are sitting in the little album now, looking quite battered (I hadn’t worked out how to look after them and ensure they kept their value at that point).

But even then the royals seemed peripheral at best – other things interested me far more. It was the stamps that held my attention, not the heir to the throne.

In 1977 I suppose I felt vaguely rebellious – and we were also pretty amazed that the BBC had bothered to fiddle the charts to make sure the record wasn’t number one in Jubilee week.

Four years later, for the 1981 Wedding, I felt more strongly, I think.  I sported a 'General Strike Against the Monarchy' badge and a few of us went up a mountain to get away from the general hullabaloo.

Now, as we approach the great beast that is the Diamond Jubilee, I find I have a yet bleaker view of the royal family and indeed the whole idea of monarchy. It seems tied up in a nexus of wholly negative ideas and beliefs that do great harm.

Obvious amongst these, of course, are the ideas of inherited privilege and wealth, and the sense that royalty shores up and normalises the idea of an unequal society. It encourages bad behaviour and a disregard for others.

The one time I was in the same room as the Queen and Prince Philip I saw this at first hand. We were waiting in two lines to meet the so-called Royal party in the British Museum’s Round Reading Room. This was the posh, grand opening of the Great Court, the big open hub at the centre of the Museum. Everyone in the room had been working on the project for many years, and the new, space was the final outcome of all their efforts.

So Brenda spotted someone she knew on the far side of the RRR and ignoring all those who were waiting to meet her, toddled over for a chat. She never did do the handshake thing with the workers. On the other side of the room,

Phil the Greek meanwhile saw one of the new multimedia terminals we were presenting, and went over to look at it. Now, we knew the system was a little flaky, so the deputy head of the team who was demonstrating it had an agreed, safe script she was going to run through for him. To show him some of the gorgeous images and animations in the system (and they really were good).

Instead, with a “what does this button do, luvvy?” he crashed the system. He was then absolutely foul to the woman - who had of course been dedicated to this one project for a number of years.  He berated her and suggested she ought to get a man to sort it for her as she clearly didn’t know what she was doing.  He then strode over to join his missus, leaving the poor member of staff in tears.

Thus, my only experience of the royals so far suggests they are arrogant, selfish, ignorant and crass. Full of an unmerited sense of their own importance and a wholesale disregard for the feelings of others. Just as you might expect if they’ve lived their whole lives in a safe, secure, privileged bubble.

This idea of wealth, power and fame being awarded for no good reason also seems to link to and support the inane celebrity culture we have at present. Children growing up whose only ambition is to be on the telly. The X-Factor generation.

This seemed at its most obvious in the spontaneous, country-wide, outpouring of grief for the death of Diana, the People’s Princess. The whole public response struck me at the time as bizarre in the extreme, and still does. While recognising the great sadness her death will have caused to those who knew her, her family and friends, I cannot get my head around the deep and apparently sincere emotional connection and grief felt by people who had never met her, and indeed weren’t even avid royal watchers. It seems a hard to explain, excessive and overcharged response.

Private Eye got it right...

On the day of  the  funeral, we took the children out to the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway.  Ride the trains and avoid the telly and radio.  But at New Romney station, at 11am, an announcement was made and for the minute's silence all of the engines stopped.  The big, burly drivers stood uptight in their tight little cabs - towering over the trains - and  (I fear) doffed their caps.  Quite, quite surreal.  The resulting image, rather than suggesting respect, was inadvertently and inappropriately funny.

Moving on from this picture, it also appears to me that this sense of privilege, of being able to do whatever they want without consideration of what is right and proper, or of its impact on others, connects in some way to the posh Tory boy’s government we have at the moment. The idea that if you inherit wealth, power and ‘status’ you are entitled. And of course you add to this the banking culture that has caused the financial crisis.   This establishment is immensely strong and infiltrates the culture at so many levels, and there is a small and dwindling sense, it seems to me, of any sense of respect or credit based on merit or morality.

And the Royals contribute to this problem in so many ways.

So what to do? Ignore the street parties and the flotilla of boats on the Thames? Or go along and shout at people? Probably not very wise. 

As mentioned here previously, we managed to get away from the collective insanity of the Royal Wedding, last year, to France – a proper, Republican country that seems to know what to do about royalty and nobility. A smashing couple of days were spent away from the madness.

However, this year we are stuck in London for the event.  No running away this time.

I don’t know. I like parties, meself, and the bread-and-circuses spectacle will at least be interesting. We are celebrating the wrong thing for the wrong reason. (Sixty years in the same job, which as far as I can see she doesn’t do very well at all?  Most of us can’t assume we will keep our jobs for the next year or two in the current economic climate, let alone sixty – aren't we all meant to have portfolio careers and embrace contract culture? And when did she last have a proper appraisal?). But at least we get a party, I suppose.

Anyway, the Trees will remain a little island of Republican sanity.  Hence Marvell's Horation Ode a few days back. 

Now there's an idea: perhaps we might also visit St Mary's church in Putney - home of the Putney debates of 1647. 

Yes, that sounds good...