I have frequently written about the British monarchy as consisting of a parasitic bunch of grifters that should abolished. I feel that way about all monarchies and indeed all forms of hereditary privilege since that goes against the egalitarian idea on which democracies should be based. The British monarchy is simply one of the most extreme examples of this kind of privilege. We may never be able to erase all forms of inherited advantages but doing away with monarchies is one of the easiest steps we can take.
Almost always I get a response from some, like this comment in response to recent my post where I pointed out how the monarchy shields itself from the laws that everyone else must follow, and that results in a feudal system for its employees. These responses state that since I am not British, I simply cannot understand the love that the British people have for the royal family and that besides, the institution brings in loads of tourism revenue that justifies its existence. It is an immoral argument that just because they bring in revenue to to country because of tourism, they should be exempt from laws that they do not like and be able to treat their employees like peasants. If that argument is accepted, why should not anyone who brings in money to the country, like exporters of goods, also be exempted?
The British royal family’s ‘private’ properties were basically appropriated from the common weal, claiming land that had originally been held in common by people. The fact that they did so a long time ago and that this makes their claim to the land valid is indefensible. It is similar to the justification that the land stolen from Native Americans and the wealth that white slave owners squeezed out of the blood of African Americans now belongs to white people is acceptable because it occurred so long ago. Returning that land to its original Native American owners is problematic since no single family owns the land that was stolen from them. In some cases, it may be possible to trace ownership and make reparations, like the way that a valuable beach property that was once owned by a Black family and was seized in 1920 under eminent domain, has now been returned to their descendants.
In the case of the royal’s family’s lands however, there is a simple solution to this ancient theft of land that properly belongs to the people. Since it is now in the hands of a single family, the government should just appropriate the royal estates and return them to its rightful owners, the people of the UK. The palaces could all be converted into museums. After all, the Palace of Versailles in France has a lot of visitors even though their monarchy was abolished a long time ago. All the Queen’s castles could similarly be converted to museums and their grounds into public parks for the people to enjoy, just like Versailles and all the other major historical sites around the world that once belonged to royals.
The claim that the royals bring in a huge amount of tourist revenue is often made without evidence and it is worthwhile to examine it. This article fact-checks the claim that the monarchy is a major source of tourism revenue and finds it to be largely spurious. (Many of the points made here were also made by commenter cartomancer and others to a previous post.)
Britain only ranks 10th in the global tourism stakes and the majority of UK visitor attractions have nothing to do with the monarchy.
…[T]he biggest visitor attractions in the UK are not the royal palaces. And royal weddings are episodic events which hardly form the basis for a sustainable tourism industry. In 2019 (pre-Covid) the biggest visitor attractions in the UK were the Tate Gallery, the British Museum, and the National Gallery – each with more than 5m visitors. In Scotland, the National Museum in Edinburgh clocked up 2.2m visitors. Even Chester Zoo got 2m – many more than Windsor Castle. The biggest draw in recent times was the London Olympics, which attracted some two million visitors over several weeks, dwarfing the one-day wedding of Kate Middleton.
In fact, the UK (even with its monarchy) comes only 10th in the international tourism stakes, measured by visitor numbers. France comes top, with 89m visitors pre-Covid compared to the UK’s 39m. Spain clocks up 83m, Italy 62m, Turkey 46m and even Germany gets more than the UK. This might suggest that in terms of a financial return, precious investment funds might be channelled into better tourist infrastructure in Britain rather than the royal family per se.
…[T]here is a legitimate question regarding the sheer scale of the royal housing estate. There are currently some 23 official royal residences – seven occupied by the Queen, five by the Price of Wales, and the rest by assorted family members. There are 10 royal residences in London alone.
While state funding would obviously be required to house any head of state, it is open to question whether the amount of public funding that goes to cover so many royal residences is entirely justified.
What about the supposed great love for the family by the British public that I fail to appreciate? Leaving aside the fact that the history of the Scottish, Irish, and Welsh people at the hands of the British monarchy makes it unlikely that they share that presumed love, that claim too is suspect.
Despite immense coverage in the print media and BBC regarding the Queen’s 70-year Jubilee, there is evidence that the bulk of the UK is unexcited by the event.
A poll conducted by YouGov at the start of May found that 54% of Britons were uninterested in the Jubilee – 29% were “not very interested” and 25% “not at all”. Which suggests the tourism impact of the celebrations might be exaggerated by the media.
Another recent opinion poll found that support for the monarchy as a whole has fallen from 75% of the population to 60%, in only the past decade. Some 25% are in favour of its outright abolition.
What is undoubtedly true is that the media loves the royal family and have a symbiotic relationship with them, largely giving them fawning coverage and persuading the public (including, inexplicably, many in the US) that we should give a damn about who they marry, what babies they have, and what they do, and gives it a vast amount of coverage that makes them seem more loved and significant than they are. This is not unlike the way the Kardashians are covered. Neither family has done anything of note. They are famous for being famous and milk that celebrity status for their own benefit and the benefit of the media. One difference is that the British royals are also subsidized by taxpayers.
Let’s face it. Almost no one actually sees members of the royal family except on special occasions such as weddings or births when they wave from the balcony or drive past. What people see are the palaces and the Beefeaters and the elaborate ceremonies and costumes such as the changing of the guard. Those ceremonies could continue without the royal family.
If you think my suggestions for what to do with the monarchy are harsh, back in 2013, Hamilton Nolan did not mince words in calling for the abolition of the British monarchy.
The Royal Family is no better than a family of mobsters. It sucks its sustenance from the public coffers, enriching itself greatly at the expense of poor taxpaying citizens. It operates not as a meritocracy, but through strict nepotism and strategic alliances. And its strength is a rough measure of the lack of civilization in a particular culture. To be completely clear, we are not suggesting that people should “pay less attention” to the Royal Family, or that the UK should reduce the amount of money it spends on this obscene relic of a brutal monarchical past. We are suggesting that the Royal Family should, as an institution, be completely abolished, and that its remaining members be imprisoned and forced to work for the remainder of their lives to, in some token way, repay the public for all of these years of financial support. Perhaps by making license plates, or breaking rocks.
It is amusing to reflect upon the imperial past of England, and the inherent assumptions of racial and cultural superiority that fueled it, while also noting the fact that the UK still to this very day continues to offer slavish financial, political, and cultural support to a tiny family elite notable for nothing except the lineage of the particular person’s vagina from which they slunk. The persistence of the Royal Family, and the worshipful attention that it draws from the British public, is the sort of primitive superstitious voodoo that puts to shame any of the animist rituals that the colonial British would have derided as uncivilized.
…It is often suggested that the Royal Family is “affordable” or a “bargain” for taxpayers, because their cost is minor compared to other costs, and besides, they help to “generate tourism.” This is incorrect. Tourists would continue to go to the Tower of London and Buckingham Palace whether or not the Royal Family was being subsidized to the tune of tens of millions of dollars annually. Money from the public treasury spent on the Royal Family is a sunk cost, a charity payment to the world’s most undeserving charity. The Royal Family does not “work” for that money. The Royal Family does not sit inside Buckingham Palace from 9-5 every day, posing for pictures with tourists for $25 a pop. And even if they were, we certainly wouldn’t pay them $50 million a year for that. Six pounds thirty one pence per hour, maybe.
The Royal Family did not “work” to acquire its property. The Royal Family did not “work” to acquire its wealth. The Royal Family did not “work” to acquire its prestige. All of these things have been passed down to them, due to the accident of their birth, after being accumulated over hundreds of years during which the humble citizens of the UK were obligated to give these things to the monarchy, lest they lose their heads. Though European history is littered with the corpses of royalty, it is littered far more heavily with the corpses of all of the millions upon millions of regular people who toiled in the shadows of grand castles and died in poverty as their taxes paid for the members of one lucky family to live in opulence.
The Royal Family is a grotesque relic of a less civilized time.
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
It’s a bit more complicated than that, unfortunately…
There’s a fairly important distiction here between the Crown Estate, which is the land and holdings “owned” by the monarch (or, more properly, the Crown) in their official capacity, and the various holdings of the members of the royal family as private individuals.
As I understand it (and I’m sure cartomancer will correct me if I get this wrong) the distinction between the Crown and the person of the monarch as a private individual arises from the trial and execution of Charles I for treason. It was necessary to come up with a means by which the king himself could be guilty of treason against the Crown, and that’s what they came up with -- and the idea has stuck around in British law ever since.
What’s so problematic about the recent revelations you’ve mentioned is that they applied to the interests of Elizabeth Windsor (and other members of her family) as a private individual, rather than the interests of Queen Elizabeth II as an avatar of the Crown. Even if you do accept the continued existance of the monarchy (I’m not in favour, but I don’t see it as a massively important issue in itself) and its constitutional role in the United Kingdom (to which I’m steadfastly oppossed), there really is no justification for this sort of thing unless you tear up that distinction between the Crown and the person.
This does, however, somewhat complicate the idea of expropriation, as they can claim (with some legal backing) that their private assets are just that, and nothing to do with their royal status. This was, of course, a big part of the motivation in the legal shenanigans which came up with the idea that the monarch could own things in their private capacitiy -- which, if I recall correctly, was specifically devised for Victoria’s acquisition of Balmoral, which is a another complicated matter…
Neither family has done anything of note.
Au contraire, at least some Kardashians can sing -- and that’s literally of note.
If any Windsor has attempted the same, we’ve been mercifully spared the outcome.
I have never understood why anyone in the United States would have the slightest interest in British royalty. Yet the morning news/entertainment shows here always seem to find airtime for these people, whether it’s the Jubilee or the travails of Harry & Meghan. Why would anyone here care?
Interesting that you would bring up the Kardashians. I made that comparison myself recently, that they are famous for being famous for having nothing really to be famous for. “Kardashians with more inbreeding,” I believe was my phrase.
I think I inherited my distaste for royalty from my mother, whom I recall way back in the 1970s saying that if she ever met the queen, she would not bow, she would not curtsy, she would stand there and say, “how’s it going, Queenie?”
She always referred to Charles & Diana as “Upchuck & Di.”
I suppose I should give Diana some credit for the causes she got involved in. I think she did have some sense of how useless princesses are, and that she should use her celebrity for something good. The rest of them, I just don’t see the value.
They can do what they want over there; it’s not my country or my history. On this side of the pond, these people really have no use.
The path to abolishing the monarchy doesn’t actually seem that difficult, if enough of the British people support abolishment. The trend is going in that direction anyway. Depriving them of their personal wealth (or, as Nolan suggests, imprisoning them) is far more problematic
What interests me far more (and of course, mileage varies); what is the path to abolishing scum like the Sacklers, and the system which allows them to flourish?
This is a slightly edited version of something I wrote more than a decade ago on the Pharyngula Endless Thread. It was shortly after some of the giant puppet or processional giant tours had been in the news that I had happened to see.
I strongly suspect that the monarchist fan of that time would not approve of the currently revealed royal shenanigans.
=============================================================
So, on the one hand, we have those who think that monarchs ¹ are really just the neatest thing since before sliced bread; indeed, since before bread ², and on the other, those who think that monarchs are a shockingly bad idea whose times has long since passed, now that we have this newfangled ³ “democracy” thing.
Is there room in this argument for a reasonable compromise? Yes, my argumentative friends, there is.
The arguments against monarchs revolve around the ridiculous concept of privileging certain people with political wealth and political power solely due to their having chosen the right parents to have been born to.
The arguments in favor of monarchy revolve around the defensive point that the monarch’s actual political power has recently greatly diminished, and their wealth mostly doesn’t belong to them even though they get to use it that way ⁴ , and anyway, it’s really all about the ceremony and pomp and circumstance and sense of pride in being part of a nation that invests time and money in having an individual member of an institution that formerly had enormous political power, and now has much less, essentially acting as a politically neutral figurehead. ⁴ And oh, oh, the tourism money! We cannot forget how much of a draw the monarchy tourism brings in to the United Kingdom!
So the compromise roughly works like this:
1) Disprivilege the current royal family and peerage (let them retire to private lives and get real jobs, or live off the dole).
2) However, do not abolish the monarchy.
Instead, replace/supplement the current set of servants and other royal staff with an infrastructure of special-effects gurus, roboticists, costumers, various technical and mechanical engineers, and, of course, puppeteers. This group will manufacture a new royalty to act as neutral “Heads of State”; as avatars of the Crown. Many different solutions could be implemented and tested, and perhaps used simultaneously depending on circumstances : a set of animatronic monarchs; an android royalty; muppet, mascot, or mannequin kings; giant puppet princes ; machined queens of loving grace ; light shows of smiling and waving computer-generated royalty that do not exist.
This meets the demands of both sides: On the one hand, it would be understood that these are not actual people and have no actual privilege whatsoever (and neither do they have rights that they are being deprived of). Inasmuch as their movements and speeches would be scripted by the elected government and/or civil service, they would never say or do anything that embarrasses the nation. ⁵ And, the rest of the time, they simply stay in storage, perhaps charging their batteries or being maintained by techs for the next round of figureheading.
And of course, the “pomp-and-circumstance” and “tourism!” crowd gets what they want as well. Perfect humanoid figures that are perfectly capable of all of the hand-waving, genteel smiling, solemn frowning, gracious nodding, sonorous but meaningless speech-making, and so on and so forth that can all be admired from afar.
Just so long as we stay out of the uncanny valley, of course.
Turn Buckingham Palace into a giant dollhouse!
What could possibly go wrong !!??
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1: Human rulers, not butterflies. This is not about entomology, unless of course it turns out that it is.
2: See how cleverly I allude to the history of centralization of political power being tied to the rise of agriculture?
3: Newfangled on the scale of geological time, since the basic concept is used by primitive hunter-gatherers and was at least partially in play in a rather famous city-state a couple thousand (plus) years ago.
4: This was written before the current political implications of the legal exemptions that the monarchy has insisted on came out. Figureheads plus whopping bonuses and benefits!
5: Unless someone in charge of maintaining them gets drunk and takes pictures of them in compromising positions, with each other or with several RealDolls, which pictures then leak out to the public/press. Shame! Shame!
Huh, I am surprised (and pleased) that as many as 25% of Britons are in favour of abolition. I am less surprised by the lack of interest in the Royal Jubilee, with a couple of exceptions people round here just weren’t interested, they just used the special Bnkholidays as extra holidays for seeing faimly and friends.
Owlmirror:
The robot/puppet monarch substitute might not have to be operating very much…. Only when necessary, you know? It would be cheaper (= more tourism profits!!) to go with a Wizard of Oz type of setup that has a few projectors, loudspeakers, smoke machines, and whatnot. Or even better, just make a simple public service announcement like this (from the Loki TV show).
Sorry, Mano. Since you are not a “made” member of the Mafia, you “simply cannot understand the love that” their customers “have for” hookers and blow. Since these crimes are popular, you should not criticize their profit-making from ladies of the night or from unregistered pharmaceuticals.
Besides, it is alleged that the Windsors did no work for their wealth. But who was it who killed the previous English king with an arrow to the eye in 1066. Harold wasn’t going to kill himself, you know. Sure, one invasion a thousand years ago might seem like a thin work history, but can you really blame William the bastard Conqueror and his Viking grandfather?
Do you expect the British to run a ceremonial carriage up and down the street, carrying only an image of the Queen? That has hardly ever been tried, and might not work every time. The real thrill is visiting Buckingham Palace in August, when the queen is in Scotland. It’s just a thrill to be in London, knowing you are so close to her.
What could you know? It’s not like you grew up in a country that issued postage stamps saying Ceylon and always showing a portrait of the senior Viking Norman of South Asia!
I think?
This page has a beautiful image of a stamp from her visit of 1954, showing Elizabeth and elephants. So how could anyone else know what it feels like to have the joy of your taxes going to support her estates?
And whether held by “the crown” or personally, all the wealth ultimately has the single source, because her ancestor knocked off the old guy and so won the Game of Thrones.
https://www.stamps-for-sale.com/ceylon-1954-queen-elizabeth-ii-royal-visit-fine-mint-7368-p.asp
But it doesn’t even show her there, just a little cameo insert of her head. Frankly, that’s rather disappointing to me, although of course I’m not English.
Wouldn’t it be even better to do a photoshop of Owlmirror’s robot landing on the Moon or parasailing over a volcano or whatever?
@consciousness razor
The robot/puppet monarch substitute might not have to be operating very much…. Only when necessary, you know? It would be cheaper (= more tourism profits!!) to go with a Wizard of Oz type of setup that has a few projectors, loudspeakers, smoke machines, and whatnot.
Actually, this was done years ago. The Queen Mothra died from a heart attack brought on by overindulgence, and the consensus was that it was untenable for the public to learn of it. It was decided that it would be best to quietly extinguish the rest of the royal family too, and hide the bodies where they would never be found: the Packington Landfill. Prince Charles is a glove puppet.
Yeah, well, I don’t know all the ins and outs of British politics. I’m an American. I do kind of feel sorry for the poor sap who has to stick his hand up Prince Charles’ ass every day. You guys probably aren’t paying him enough.
“since I am not British, I simply cannot understand the love that the British people have for the royal family”
I get the same bullshit argument from yanks when I question their love of guns.
Bruce @6:
Well, William could at least claim descent from Alfred the Great. I don’t think Harold could. But I’m sure our local historians could fill us in on the laws of succession and suchlike.
cr @12: I feel sorry for anyone who lives in your shithole country.
Re #14: Oops, that should be Bruce @8. Damn failing eyesight.
As you should. But you know, we do have Frank Oz. It was all downhill for the Brits after that, I think…. Just try to imagine all the other stuff they could have done with puppets, like this or this.
The thing is, I actually AM British. I’ve lived here all my life. And I don’t understand the pro-monarchy sentiment either. Or, at least, not viscerally. I’ve seen it, sure. It’s a real thing, albeit far from universal. There are pockets of it here and there. I have the misfortune to live in Surrey half the year, and that’s a big one.
The best explanation for this sentiment I can come up with is that it seems to be a kind of comforting, fuzzy, lowest-common-denominator aesthetic of English identity that can be wheeled out to give people who don’t think very much a sense of their own validity. It’s coloured as traditional, formal, stable, unthreatening -- the sort of thing you can slap on commemorative plates and sell as tourist tat to foreigners on London street corners. It has no real content, it’s just the anodyne wallpaper of performative patriotism. Very occasionally you will get someone in English society who is genuinely, fanatically, excited by royalty, but they won’t be a regressive political firebrand, they’ll be a nerdy collector of memorabilia and inveterate conoisseur of the twee. Nobody here supports the monarchy as a political institution, as an idea, as an ideology -- they like it as a brand.
This is no accident. The establishment -- both the monarchy itself and successive Tory governments -- have been working hard to create this situation for over a century now. Ever since the early Twentieth Century, when the arrival of public mass media like photography, cinema, radio and television meant that the royals couldn’t lead the secluded, private existence they always had. Most of what we now know as “traditional” royal pageantry and ceremonial was invented less than a century ago for public relations reasons. Those gold carriages? put on to give the proles something to look at in the 1910s. The public image of the royal family is carefully managed, and opposition to monarchy carefully sidelined in this country. It is notable that during the recent dreary Jubilee fiasco there was wall-to-wall royalist propaganda on television and the internet, but Republic, the organization that campaigns against the monarchy, was only allowed to purchase billboard ads, and only had the money to spare for that at any rate. They occasionally appeared for thirty seconds on local news to be laughed at, or presented as mean-spirited killjoys out to stop everyone’s fun.
It starts early too. Primary school children are inculcated into the Imperial Cult without knowing it -- being presented with these gaudy, harmless-looking trappings of monarchy without context, without history, without any critique of what they symbolise and what they represent. Older children are fed this celebrity-culture pablum of royal weddings, what’s-Megan-Markle-up-to-now tabloid fodder. And then there’s the Church of England, which reinforces the propaganda for religious types.
The result is a cultivated, deliberate docility in the face of an institution most British people would find indefensible were it not for the constant cultural reminders that it’s supposed to be there. And it’s very effective, not least because we have much bigger social problems than turfing that lot out on their ear. Abolishing the monarchy is not high on anyone’s list of priorities -- if you’re serious about social change then dismantling the exploitative capitalism of Thatcher and her successors, restoring the NHS to its former glories, improving education and hundreds of other things are much more pressing issues. Abolishing the monarchy isn’t going to alleviate any of our most serious problems, so even those who want to won’t get passionate about it. I include myself it that, by the way -- I would definitely want it gone if possible, but my limited time for campaigning is much better spent elsewhere.
Fortunately a lot of the enthusiasm among the royalists, and a lot of the soft-edged, gooey, isn’t-she-a-lovely-dignified-old-dear fawning is focused squarely on Elizabeth. When she dies (and it’s not going to be long), they will have a serious problem on their hands trying to sell us on what remains. The rest of them are entirely unlikeable. Charles is a doddering fool who talks to geraniums and sells overpriced biscuits. William is a younger version of the same with less charisma and less hair. Andrew is a creepy, clueless paedophile who can’t tie his own shoelaces. Anne is an irrelevant horsey stereotype. The remaining female members of the family are stuck-up, entitled clotheshorses with the intellectual capacity of a lukewarm rice pudding (which puts them a few rungs above their male counterparts). Perhaps they have rich inner lives that we don’t get to see?. I very much doubt it.
The bit that annoys me most, though, is that English and British identities could be and are so much more than just the twee, pablum version we are constantly being sold. We have a real depth of history, culture, traditions, art, music, food, philosophy and humour to draw on and be proud of. We don’t need the plasticky, off-the-peg, covered-in-union-flags version with zero content, zero profundity, zero to feel genuinely connected to.
Even conservative traditionalists who want something to feel fuzzy and nostalgic about can find far better in our culture than just being simpering lickspittles for the queen.
cartomancer @ # 18: … it seems to be a kind of comforting, fuzzy, lowest-common-denominator aesthetic of English identity … the sort of thing you can slap on commemorative plates and sell as tourist tat … a cultivated, deliberate docility …
cartomancer @ # 19: We have a real depth of history, culture, …
And hardly any of the latter will serve the purposes of the former. Who do you expect to buy commemorative platters of Chaucer, Shakespeare, or Woolf, huh?
The difference is that we don’t make the head of state out of the most depraved person from Colonial Williamsburg and all of that person’s heirs (who then have to wear the same costume).
The sappy, pious, nationalistic glop is fairly easy to understand. And the US is certainly soaked with the stuff.
But the other part, that’s something else, no? Whose purposes is that supposed to serve, other than the royals themselves?
I mean, it’s arguably much closer to a democracy than what we’ve got here, but … they just put up with that shit? How? They never really got around to it? Huh?? (No offense intended here, Brits. It’s just hard to understand.)
I enjoyed this typo. I also thoroughly endorse all parts of the post except
Simply being a member of the family is not a crime. I don’t know what should be done with the wealth they legally leeched from the taxpayer, but imprisonment should be reserved for those that actually did things against the law. Andrew for instance.
@cartomancer #18
Well put. And there’s irony there, because the patriotic love some have for the Good Ole US of A is quite similar to the misguided English patriotic love of the English monarchy. Not hard to understand at all.
Love the term “anodyne wallpaper”. It’s a good description of all flags, but certainly of the US and British ones.
As John Lydon (Public Image Ltd; Hard Times) angrily put it:
Dead dreams!
Dead dreams flying flags!
Flapping in the breeze!
Wave your coloured rags!
Hm. Upon reflection, I am not certain it was a typo.
A better alternative policy would be to truss up vile Whigs.
It’s pretty hard for many of us to understand too… You could argue that there’s some kind of lingering cultural memory of the last time we got rid of them (it didn’t exactly turn out well), but I think it largely comes down to the fact that you can get used to almost anything if you’re raised to think of it as normal.
cr @17: You’ve never seen Spitting Image?
@cr, 17: I’m confused. Are you being sarcastic?
And “all the other stuff they could have done with puppets” -- you mean like the output of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop? Famously founded in 1979 in the emphatically non-shithole Hampstead, England? Output including The Dark Crystal, filmed in England, or Labyrinth, filmed in England, or The Storyteller, filmed in England. In fact, Creature Shop only relocated to a shithole after Jim Henson’s death in 1990.
Back to the monarchy, though -- I think those above stating that British people simply have more important things to be angry about, things that are costing them more. There’s also the fact that while a lot of people claim to be in favour of the monarchy, what they really mean is, the Queen -- as in THIS monarch. A woman who has made it her business to preserve the institution, and has, to her credit, been very, very good at it, with only minor slips over many decades (bad reaction to Diana’s death being one of them). Thing is -- Charles lacks her drive. He has a more interventionist bent… and that won’t work out well for him. William may, possibly, be able to trade on being his mother’s son a bit, but overall, neither of the next two monarch really have the public’s affection/indifference like the current one. They’re far more likely to tip affection over into indifference, and indifference into active opposition. I don’t think I’ll live to see the end of the monarchy… but I think my children will.