Royal Wedding Road Closures

Arkady

But there's the non-sequitur again. They might be the best and most valuable monarchy of them all, but that's not an argument for monarchy is it? I don't know what you mean by 'success in conflict'. We don't need the monarchy to have the Commonwealth. The tourism argument was discredited a long time ago. Versailles receives more visitors annually than all the British royal palaces put together. If presence or otherwise of an actual monarch fitted into the equation (which it clearly doesn't) we would logically guillotine the Queen. Finally - a head of state can be what we want it to be. As Jonathon Freedland argued in Bring Home the Revolution, the Speaker of the Commons or an elected ceremonial figure (as in Germany) could perform the political functions with vastly less expenditure and vastly more democratic and meritocratic legitimacy. And they could be removed without constitutional crises, unlike when we had to kick the last one out because of his affections for Hitler. PS - the excellent film *The King's Speech*, which I commend to you all, takes considerable liberties with the role of Churchill and both brother-kings in the run-up to the conflict. Best summed up by The Hitch here: <http://www.slate.com/id/2282194/>;

sincers

I dare say the Palace of Versailles is a question of Architecture rather than of Monarchy. The former knocking the proverbial socks off Buckingham Palace aesthetically; the other royal residences being relatively inaccessible. Although you could argue the point that having no one living there and turning them into places for tourists to visit/holiday camps etc, you could make more money from them. As for commonwealth. You're right that i doesn't take a monarchy to create one, but the commonwealth as we know it today is inextricably linked to the monarchy and I think it would struggle without it. Here many commonwealth nations benefits from membership, where the UK or Australia etc. arguably no longer do.

Arkady

Architecture vs Monarchy - I'm sure it's a factor, and I'm sure you're right in saying more tourist income could be gathered if we had full access to the palaces by turfing out the Hanoverians. But the latter point rather undermines the significance of the first, doesn't it? In other words, we would make *more* money from tourism without the royal family squatting there. I'm slightly in favour of the Commonwealth on internationalist grounds, but again I don't see how its figurehead being a hereditary ruler is of benefit to anyone in the Commonwealth. You'd need to convince me of that. And when you were done, you'd have to explain how that made it worth us in the UK having to have a hereditary head of state. Or maybe the monarch could remain ceremonial head of the Commonwealth while no longer being head of state here, but the symbolism would still grate.

krappyrubsnif

I fell for it hook line and sinker.

I took my Ritalin this morning. I'm quite pro-monarchy today. Brenda!

sincers

Well, as you can probably tell, I lament the days when peasants used to rub themselves with dung and the Bourgeoisie would run around clopping two halves of a coconut together. Much less crowding on the underground back then.

TollingtonTom

Stop press
Thorpdale rd now possible location if Regina falls through (also bands possible in wray cres park )thanks to who put up that great coronation picture taken there. I don't want to dis the political discourse but can we get round to talking about the menus ? Pies obviously but what else ?

taff bach

Enough of all this Krap, Rubsmith, I am defo going to see if the cottage is free. Grat idea.

krappyrubsnif

No taff.......I've had an epiphany........we want more royals, not less......last night I had a dream.........a diaphanous vision of Kate resting atop an enormous pork pie........in Stroud Green Road........the St Teresa of our day. Street parties are go!

ADGS

Arkady: "We should also be proud of abolishing the monarchy, and ashamed at letting it back in again." - I have to disagree here. Charles I was a tit, but Cromwell was vastly worse. On top of which, he was a hypocrite - he abolished Parliament himself when it didn't do what he wanted, and was as harsh on the Levellers, Diggers &c as monarchs had been to those who questioned their privileges. And who succeeded Oliver Cromwell? His son. In all but name he was simply the beginning of another, worse royal dynasty, and it continues to appall me that his statue stands outside the House he so disappointed and disrespected.
Whereas the Glorious Revolution, while not branded as anti-monarchic, had far more of a real, positive and lasting impact on the British political scene.

Arkady

Cromwell was acting in an extremely turbulant period, and prevented Charles from imposing a continental-style absolutism, but I take your point. I was simply protesting about the restoration of the hereditary principle. Though it is fair to say that civil society was insifficiently mature to create and maintain a superior alternative in the late C17th. We had to wait a century for that. We don't have any good excuses now.

ADGS

What 'restoration of the hereditary principle'? The Cromwells were using it too, just like the Castros and Kims of the modern day. And he imposed an absolutism just as unjust as Charles', but considerably less fun with it. It was the sort of 360 degree revolution only commisar17 could applaud.
And surely civil society *did* create a superior (if not a perfect) alternative in the late C17th? By waiting a century, I assume you're thinking of the French Revolution? I'd dispute that being any kind of improvement - even aside from its own terrible excesses, even aside from the subsequent instability and empire and restoration...they've ended up with exactly the sort of monarchic presidency we surely don't want.

Arkady

Cromwell's succession, as with the Kims and Castros of this world, was a return to default due to the inability of a crippled civil society to resist it, and in Cromwell's case in part due to a lack of any obvious or widely-accepted ideological alternative. But I think we must make a distinction between an enshrined hereditary principle and such a default. Re 'a century later', I was actually thinking of the American revolution, as French society was rather more retarded at that point than that of Britain a century earlier. That retardation being due, of course, to the precise form of semi-theocratic absolutism that the Stewarts repeatedly attempted to impose in England. Any society shedding itself of absolutism (which is all of them, at some point), especially theocratically justified absolutism, will undergo a bloody horror followed by a period of reaction. The worse the earlier regime, the more terrible the consequences of its overthrow. But to condemn the principles of the enlightenment due to the consequences of the inevitably unpleasant transition to it in any society is very, very odd. Also, without wishing to be drawn into the merits of particular regimes as opposed to the merits of particular principles, any claim that Bonaparte's regime was worse than it's predecessors (including the revolutionary fanatics) or to its immediate reactionary successors is plainly wrong. Actually I am happy to be drawn on that. If you want to discuss contemporary states with strong civil societies: I am not in favour of the strong presidential model a la France, the diffused power and resulting resistance to demagoguery of parliamentary systems appeals rather more. But if it were a plain choice between a monarchy and a presidential system then I would not hesitate to support the latter. Heredity has no place in a modern political system.

ADGS

Agreed, Napoleon was better for France than either the Terror or the kings, no doubt. But he wasn't better for the rest of Europe! Poor sods are still driving on the wrong side of the road now thanks to him...

I find the idea that a terror necessarily needs to follow a repressive state not only depressing, but unsupported by the evidence. East Germany and the Czech Republic being two gladdening recent counter-examples.

And yes, the American revolution was undoubtedly A Good Thing; even if it was almost immediately compromised by various decisions which went against its founding principles, it remained - as it is today - one of the least worst places in the world for the great mass of its people.

In principle, I'd agree that heredity has no place in a modern political system. However, when I compare the remainder of the hereditary Lords with the careerist, identikit political class scum making up 95% of the Commons, I wonder if they're not the lesser evil. The Athenian idea of election by lottery would probably be better, except then odds are we'd be governed by Mail readers.

Ali

There is no doubt that those who have been elected have been so by Mail readers !

sincers

The careerist principal is an important one when comparing the motivations of ambition over duty. And you can't deny the experience, wisdom and duty displayed by the Queen vs. the parade of Johnny come latelys in the Commons, who I get the impression, are given an early morning history and politics lesson every day, just to catch up.

ADGS

I see very little evidence for or against the Queen's wisdom given how careful she is ever to avoid uttering an opinion. Charles at least gets involved in lobbying &c, though I find his blanket objection to modern architecture rather dispiriting.

Arkady

I disagree that Napoleon ‘wasn’t better for the rest of Europe’. Wherever he went he booted out the feudal system and replaced it with the Code Napoleon. After he was gone the peasantry were returned to serfdom. He may not have been good for the feudal monarchs or the interests of the British state, I’ll give you that. In East Germany and the Czech Republic you are talking about a later historical transition. The transition from semi-feudal monarchy in Bohemia came quite late, with the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918, and was therefore caught up in the nationalist horrors. By 1989 they were able to make the transition to democracy with a relative lack of bloodshed as, despite the best efforts of Moscow, a strong civil society had developed. East Germany is similar, except that the transition away from absolutism was gradual and uneven in Prussia and the Empire from the 1860s through to 1914. German civil society was in relatively good shape for the continent, and able to have a good stab at liberalisation in the 1920s. Versailles and the Depression broke it of course, hence Herr Hitler. I don’t know about the hereditary peers in the Lords – I think it would be tough to objectively judge their sense of ‘duty’. And, like queeny, they have bugger all else to do after all. I do object to the constant slating of MPs though; you don’t go into politics for wealth and fame these days, and it seems to me like a lot of hard-working, ideologically-motivated people have been tarred due to a few bad apples. I quite like the lottery idea, but as you point out a lot of people are paleo-conservatives. Some even support the monarchy... :-)

ADGS

Napoleon installed a variety of his (frequently incompetent) relatives as satraps! That's hardly a great leap forward for democracy and self-determination.

So are you saying that societies which have been through absolutism will have horrors at least once, but don't necessarily need them again even if they subsequently fall back into the darkness before another escape?

I think the problem with the current career structure for MPs is that even those (few?) who are not corrupt, grasping fucks with an eye only for the directorships or insurance ads they might get after their period in office, are fundamentally divorced from the experiences of everyday life by spending so long in certain approved feeder professions. Alan Johnson was massively out of his depth as shadow chancellor, but you at least felt that he had some understanding of his constituents and the people his decisions on the economy would affect. In that sense, there are too few like him anymore.

David

There's something in the way you guys set out these arguments that bores me shitless.

Then again I still snigger at the word 'roundhead'. heh.

Arkady

Re Napoleon – yes he did. But (to greatly varying degrees) the sub-regimes he put in place left room for the growth of civil society, something barely possible, if at all, in an absolutist regime. It was these proto-civil societies that embraced the values of the French revolution and, armed with the newly-developing ideas of the sovereignty of the people and 'the nation', kicked off the revolutions of 1848. 1848 marked the partial transition from absolutism to modernity (note: not democracy) I outlined above. Societies making the transition from pre-modern theocracy and absolutism to modernity will always go through some form of terror, yes. The will often be a ‘falling back’ as you put it, but the ideological seeds are sown, and the economic drivers of modernity that are behind the transition do not cease. Thus the restoration regimes in England and France were replaced by bourgeois monarchies in the Glorious Revolution and liberal monarchy (1830s regime change and Bonapartist coup post 1848) respectively. It took another century for both states to make the peaceful transition to stable mass democracy. In the case of Russia (and later, its western dependencies), where absolutism was only overthrown in the tumult of 1917-18, the new regime had innovative ideological tools which were modern, post-enlightenment. However the *form* of the regime was, by the late 1920s at the latest, totalitarian and therefore (as I’ve outlined before) essentially reactionary and theocratic. To degrees that vary from state to state, this retarded (but did not halt) the growth of civil society. However, the period of 1917-89 can be seen as a necessary to telescope the two-stage transition which took 200 years in the West. 1989 marked the point where most of those civil societies had outgrown the totalitarian regimes. Again, the more totalitarian and theocratic the regime the more retarded the resulting civil society; compare the Czech Republic with Romania, for instance. In the Islamic world, theocratic and absolutist thinking is more deeply engrained, making their transition much more difficult. There has actually been a retreat of civil society in some places. Fingers crossed that we are watching their 1989 unfold before our eyes. Alas they do not have the full support of the West in the way Eastern Europe did.

Arkady

David: how could we do better?

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Arkady

Because going out is more important than learning, contemplating and debating? I like to balance both. I'd wager I could still drink you under the table, though Miss Annie has implied that might be a dangerous challenge.

Emma

@David: I find it arousing.

David

@Arkady - being more concise? Or getting a room?

sincers

I try to pitch in, but to be honest, I have to look up most of what Arkady says on Wiki. Every day's a school day.

ADGS

Sadly for fans of sexual tension expressed through political history, or simply speculating as to the possible effects of laxative tedium, I pretty much agree with Arkady's last response.
(And I would have been out every night this week if a couple of people hadn't cancelled on me through illness)

Arkady

@David - I keep this things as concise as I can. But brevity is the enemy of the truth and all that. Also ADGS is clearly a bright one, and I wouldn't want to short-change him. Arky x

Arkady

@ADGS - good, as this thread contains about 1000 words that really should have been adding to my dissertation rather than SG.org. Many here will surely agree. Back to Kurdish ethnogenesis then...

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