[Readers of 'Socialist Press' may have been umpleasantly…]

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Readers of 'Socialist Press' may have been umpleasantly reminded of the existence of the monarchy in Britain by the continual references in the press and elsewhere to the fact that at the beginning of June we celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the demise of the previous incumbent.

All socialists will feel a combination of disgust and boredom with the froppery of the media-stimulated 'patriotic festival' recalling nothing. more than the re-enactment of a best-forgotten imperialist past.

Socialists will of course recall that these twenty-five years have seen the beginnings of the greatest depression . the history ot capitalism, with waste, unemployment and brutal exploitation on a scale never known in history.

They will remember that the British military, so closely associated with the monarchy has been actively involved in the slaughter of North Koreans, the torture of freedom fighters in Kenya, Cyprus, Aden and Northern Ireland.

WHITEWASHING

As each successive imperialist outpost was surrendered, the press and media nave been devoted to whitewashing everything from the comic opera invasion of the Suez Canal in 1956, to the murder of sixteen Mau Mau detainees in Hola Camp in 1959, and the numerous acts of brutality against the nationalist populations of Cyprus, South Yemen, and Ulster.

The monarchy has had to change as the British army has successively been driven from these centres of imperialist exploitation. Though the bourgeoisie in other capitalist states have managed without such an institution, in Britain the monarchy provides an important, though not indespensible role in the maintenance ofpost-imperialist links and capitalist rule.

For this reason it is worth devoting some attention to the special position that it occupies in social and political life.

EXTREMELY RICH

One most obvious point about Elizabeth Windsor is that she, together with all her relations, are extremely rich. On top of this wealth, they all receive enormous grants from the taxpayer. How has this extraordinary position come about?

Before Victoria became monarch in 1837, her personal wealth was not large compared to a great many landowners and large capitalists. Victoria's husband Albert, however, built up their estates with miserly care, and Victoria herself continued this, especially after an enormous bequest of £250,000 from an eccentric millionaire.

PAID NO TAX

The great advantage that Victoria had in her accumulation of wealth was that she paid no tax. As the modern fiscal system was built up, it began with income tax, and developed taxes on inheritance and on capital gains.

Many sections of the old landed aristocracy, as they lost political influence during the early 20th century suffered under these developments.

The current sale of the estates of Lord Rosebury, Liberal. Prime Minister around the turn of the century shows this. Only the Royal Family escaped.

The Windsors must have saved many millions of pounds in recent decades simply from their failure to pay income tax, death duties and so on. This alone would make them one of the richest families in the land.

However, on top of this, they have numerous estates on which they draw tax-free incomes, such as the peculiar Duchy of Cornwall, on which Charles Windsor draws enormous rents.

RICHEST PERSON

They own many houses, and live in some of them. There has never been a serious investigation by Parliament or anybody else of the extent of this wealth, which makes the Queen the richest person in the country, and certainly no study, by Parliament or anybody else, on whether this wealth performs any useful function at all.

Yet why is it that such an enormous mystique has been built around the monarch that allows it to get in this special position?

The modern cult of the monarchy was invented by Benjamin Disraeli, Joseph Chamberlain and the Tory imperialists of the late 19th century.

Trotsky 1897.

It was in this period that for the tirst time, there was generally painted a picture of the royal family replete with all the petty bourgeois virtues of sobriety, marital faithfulness, and so on.

It took a while for this image to stick, since Victoria's eldest son was well-known for his whoring and gambling, and her eldest grandson was visitor at the male brothel in Cleveland Street, broken up by the police in 1889.

The press covered up the latter story, and Victoria's grandson Albert died before his father did.

Thus Edward was followed as monarch in 1910 by his younger son, the somewhat dull and stupid man known as George V. He played a role in reconciling some sections of the ruling class to the existence of Labour governments and smoothed the way to the treachery of Ramsey MacDonald in 1931.

MYTH By this time, the myth of petty bourgeois respectability had begun to stick, and the top echelons of the Tory Party forced the abdication of Edward Windsor in 1936 when he threatened to undermine it.

His well-known sympathy for Disraeli fascism was no bar to the kind vI stability he was sup poed to represent.

The most cringing and uncritical defenders of this view of the monarchy have always been the Labour leaders. Ever since Henry Broadhurst, General Secretary of the TUC, was "received' at Windsor Castle in 1886, a succession of Labour leaders have donned the necessary fancy dress, and joined in all the cringing propaganda surrounding the institution.

It was the fact that the Labour Cabinet of 1924 was prepared to go through the necessary rituals in this respect that showed they were "all right.

NUR leader Jimmie Thomas tried to use the monarchy in his efforts to sell out the 1926 General Strike. This tradition has been followed right down to Harold Wilson and Callaghan, who show all the same fawning sycophancy, and have been known to wax lyrical about the virtues of the monarchy, and its cheapness.

The lack of a republican tradition in Britain is to be accounted for as much by this attitude of Labour leaders as by the oceans of doctored press coverage, and the hundreds of children ritually dragged out of school to wave imperialist flags.

INSURANCE POLICY

The institution of monarchy has been built up in this way, and very serious efforts to cultivate universal confidence in it have been made, partly because the bourgeoisie needs an insurance policy. a last resort. Trotsky put this point clearly in Where is Britain Going?:

"Royalty is weak as long as the bourgeois parliament is the instrument of bourgeois rule and as long as the bourgeoisie has no need of extra-parliamentary methods. But the bourgeoisie can it necessary use royalty as the focus of all extra-parliamentary, ie real focus directed against the working class. The British bourgeoisie itself has Delhi. i spite of the fact that by this time this title had become only a nominal one: the British bourgeoisie understood that under certain conditions the Great Mogul could become the focal point of a struggle of Indian upper class circles against British rule"

WRAPS

In recent years, the Tories have obviously thought seriously about forms of extra-parliamentary rule, and the recurrent talk of 'national government' during various short term crises shows that they still keep the monarchy under wraps for serious confrontations that may face them in the future, when the institutions through which they have so far ruled do not function so effectively.

But there are more short-term calculations as well. Since the 1920's, the political position of the monarchy has been used to maintain the continuity of capitalist rule.

In the Tory leadership crises of 1957 and 1963, it was the monarch who acted as messenger, boy and umpire in the disputes that built up between different factions of the If the Tories have now found other methods of dealing with these problems, there are even greater Ramsay MacDonald difficulties now faced by the political institutions of smooth bourgeois rule.

WHEELING AND DEALING With sharp changes in electoral loyalty in recent years, as millions of Labour supporters are fed up with the betrayals of their leaders, as increasing numbers of nationalists from Wales and Scotland are returned with many fragments of the ultra-right from Northern Ireland, General Elections in themselves may not necessarily decide who is to be in government.

There may be many more situations like the one that tollowed the first election of 1974. when the wheeling and dealing oi the leaders made essential the existence of a fixed point in whom they all had confidence to call on X to form a government' The purpose of all the ludicrous jubilee nonsense is to try to make sure that the monarchy can fulfil such a position during political crisis in the future, when the whole system could be at stake as a result of the action of the working class.

Workers in this country know very well that they built their unions by defying the law, by facing the threat of transportation, imprisonment and many bitter struggles.

They must not also forget that the foundation of many of the democratic liberties which they. now enjoy was won in 1649 by chopping off the head of one of Elizabeth Windsor's more tiresome predecessors, Charles Stuart.

The continued existence of the monarchy in 1977 is utterly incompatible with the further extension of democratic liberties. Who knows what further surgical operations might be necessary for the creation of a system of government that is truly democratic?

If you thought international capital had taken another slap in the face with the revelation of multi-million pound bribes from Leyland to oil the wheets of foreign trade then let Mr.

David English. editor of the 'Daily Mail' put you right.

On the day that the Dam:

Mail broke the bribes story and before he became preoccupied with grovelling hard enough and long enough to offset the libel claims coming his way, Mr English found time to place the blame where it belonged-on Socialism.

"The hypocritical face of Socialism has replaced the unacceptable face of Capitalism" , he wrote.

"The root cause of this kind of bribery is state control. Wherever official whim and not the individual preference of the user dictates the choice of the product, there . are bureaucrats who may be bought.

That is how Poulson rose and fell.

That is how Prince Bernhard was disgraced."

The news that socialism had come to British Leyland must have come as a big shock to the workers there as the news that Poulson and Prince Bernhard had been nationalised.

Ferdinand Mount writing in the Mail on the same day quite liked Paul Johnson's book Enemies of Society. In fact he thought it was the greatest thing since the middle classes emerged.

In a long hymn of praise for the hard working, much abused middle classes. Mount wrote: "Freedom, capitalism and democracy-the three inventions which have shaped our world-are middle class inventions.".

"Even Marx and that much...

"Never before has the world so undeniably demonstrated the indispensibility of the middle classes, for every nation which has a large and vigorous middle class is prosperous and free and every nation which hasn't isn't."

A quick flip through the decline of Rome, China and the Netherlands (all due to the demise of the middle class) and Mount found the source of that lack of self confidence from which the class is suffering.

"But the alert questioning bourgeoisie could see other things too. They saw little children down the mines and up the chimneys. They saw poverty and filth and disease. They saw for the first time the terrible age old gulf between the rich and the poor-and they began to think they were to blame for that gulf."

At the end of a lengthy article Mount concluded. that Paul Johnson (ex editor of the New Statesmun and according to Mount therefore a Socialist himself) was not a 'pseudo scientist' like Marx.

'Will he be allowed his say beside Karl Marx's tomb in Highgate Cemetary? Will Enemies Of Society be prescribed as a set book along with the Marx Library by the Open University?

"I doubt it. I doubt much."

Postmen do in fact have the right to strike, whether the Times likes it or not.

United, they can take that action over any issue they choose and there is nothing that the Times, John Gouriet or the Attorney General can do about it.

Recognising this in its leader of May 17 the Times suggests a barely concealed trade off. Amend the law to make industrial disputes bet vete noa ban on 'political' stoppages.

This would ban the blacking of South Africa and sympathy strikes -Grunwick in particular.

The Times is wrong. Mass action by the working class makes any curbs on strikes unenforceable. The problem is that what the Times suggests looks to be precisely the sort of 'barrier' that the postal union leaders are looking for.

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STRIKE COMNITEL /APEX