Questions are being raised about the status of the monarchy of Britain and Northern Ireland while the actual Government of the United Kingdom state tries to find a way of ensuring that the United States does not arrange a settlement of the War in the Ukraine without the defeat of Russia—which is to say, without a general War in which the Russian State, which is well equipped with the most up-to-date weapons, is destroyed.

The Irish Government agrees that the Russian State must be destroyed, having revoked its assertion of sovereignty over the Six Counties when the IRA made a settlement of its War with the British State in 1998.

The monarchy question arose because Prince Andrew—the brother of the King, and a hero of the Falklands War—was accused of rape by a young woman to whom he was introduced by Jeffrey Epstein, who appeared to be in search of sexual adventures at the time but later came to the conclusion that those adventures were not free-will actions on her part.   She had, unknown to herself, been in the grip of paedophile sex traffickers and rapists, and she demanded acknowledgement that this had been the case, and compensation for it.

Prince Andrew said he did not remember having sex with her and therefor could not admit to having raped her, but he compensated her anyway, to the extent of $7.5-$12 million.

But she still felt she had been badly treated and killed herself.  But, before killing herself, she wrote a book about it all and arranged for it to be published posthumously.  And it is of course a best-seller.

That is the American way, in which fantasies are lived out in earnest.  The American way used to be satirised in Britain.  A favourite jibe was that America was always two years late in doing the right thing after Britain had shown the way.  This referred to the two World Wars.  Those times have passed.  [Or have they?  Britain is seeking to repeat history, with a war on Russia this time!]

Prince Andrew, the Falklands hero, was one of the chaps.  The Army, though rigorously hierarchical, is also effectively egalitarian within its different layers.  When Andrew gave a television interview in order to explain himself, and he was asked why he knew Jeffrey Epstein, he said, in effect, that it was only those circles that he could experience something like the camaraderie of the Army, and be one of the chaps.

But the others in those circles made their money, while the money came to Andrew as a free gift from—from where?  It is reported that the funds came from the late Queen Elizabeth’s private funds.  But, ultimately, it came from the democracy.  But the democracy resented that.  And feminist sentiment combined with frustrated republican sentiment in the democracy to complain about Royalty and turned on Andrew as a scapegoat.

Republican sentiment is frustrated in British democracy, especially on the Labour side, because Republicanism was a farcical failure when it took over the state.

Monarchy did not impose itself on Democracy.  Democracy did not develop in struggle against the Monarchy.  Monarchy as the ruling stratum of society, and as the actual governing power, was established by Henry 7 and 8 and Elizabeth 1.  It was destroyed root and branch by the Puritan revolution, which executed the King, abolished Monarchy in fact and in name, and established Parliamentary Government in a Republic.

The Republic lasted about eleven years, 1649-1660.  Something called Monarchy was then restored, but it was not a Monarchical revolution in society that restored it.  It was the Parliament that abolished Monarchy that restored it.

That Parliament, and its Army, though all-powerful, ran out of realisable purpose in a few years, lost perspective, and limped along under the practical authority of a Dictator until he died in 1658.  His son and heir proved to be incompetent Dictator.  If he had been competent, he would possibly have evolved out of the Republican milieu and become de facto King, disguising the English failure to sustain a Republic.  But Richard Cromwell wasn’t up to running the family business.  So General Monk approached the executed King’s son (who the Parliament had failed to catch and kill) and asked him to come back and be King.

Parliament accepted him without question as Charles 2, and he consolidated his position by killing a lot of its Members who had played some part in the killing of his father.  But he was not a Monarch as his father had been.  His killing of the Regicides with the compliance of the Parliament that authorised the Regicide, signified the humiliation and debasement of English Republicanism.

And so it remains.

The aristocratic regime kept up this very strange dependant Monarchy until 1832.  Then the middle class regime kept it on until—until when, until what took over!  Let us say until 1945 when a Labour—or was it a Socialist?—regime took over.

The monarchy might have been abolished as a mere figurehead at any significant moment along the way—1688 to begin with;  or the death of the last fully-pedigreed Monarch, Queen Anne, in 1714.  But it was always preserved.  And its splendour was enhanced over time.  In the 18th century, when a provincial German family was brought in to squat on the throne, obscenely vulgar cartoons were published about it, but in the 19th century it took on the tone of a sacred family.

Degrading it to suburban style was never contemplated.  If it was necessary to keep it, then it must be kept in marvellous style.

Labour understood all of this in 1945, when its leadership consisted of Trade Union bosses and public schoolboys—both of which had been trained for the exercise of power, though in very different ways.

But Labour lost its grip on power. Harold Wilson said in the mid-1970s that it had become “the natural party of power”.  That seemed to be close to the truth at the time.  There was a powerful Labour movement, and its representatives took part in all public discussion as a matter of course.  But that situation did not last because the Labour movement—a movement consisting of a complex of effective Trade Unions committed to maintaining and improving working class conditions of life within the existing social system, and comparatively content with the status quo—did not last.  It gave way to “upward mobility”.  The working class ideal became the ideal of moving out of the working class.

The present Government claims to be the first working class Government.  Its member have achieved upward mobility out of the working class.  There is nobody in it who is there by reason of achievements within the working class.  Their achievement has been to get out of the working class, and getting out seems to begin in almost all cases with success in education, and to continue in education for a long time.

What kind of understanding does education ingrain in their minds about the way in which the existing system of State and Society actually functions?  How far up can upward mobility go?  Is there something up there beyond money and more money?

There used to be many well-established layers of distinctive social existence up there which seemed to make the effort worthwhile.  But now the world up there, before one gets very far up, seems to be full of chancers;  and the only glorious thing is the marvellous Monarchy, that is out of reach.

It is resented, and irresponsible and unearned power power is attributed to it.  Punishment is demanded.

But the Monarchy is neither arbitrarily powerful nor parasitic.  It is the instrument of a State conducted by representative government which lavishes money on it because it serves a political purpose for the democracy and it pays its way economically as a totem, even though it is full of pretentious layabouts.

England, when it was revolutionary, tried to do without it, and failed.               

                            Brendan Clifford