By John Knox
The Queen’s diamond jubilee has set me thinking about monarchy. Of course I am against it. Every democrat must be. “All men are created equal” is a tenet of the modern world. And yet the Queen has done a good job, for 60 years. So I am wondering how I square this particular diamond.
Elizabeth I (Editor's note: the other Elizabeth I of British history was queen of England, not Scotland or the UK) has represented us well, she has held us together, she has given us many happy days of TV coverage, hours of talking points, miles of newsprint and hundreds of web pages. A visit from her is a magical moment of reflection, congratulation, re-dedication for towns, schools, hospitals, worthwhile projects, even factories. Yes, the same could be done by a president but somehow the Queen does it so well. Perhaps we just have to accept that it is one of the endearing twists of history that Britain has hung on to its monarchy. And we are not alone, currently 44 of the 196 countries in the world have kept their monarchs, in one form or another.
The cult of celebrity has, no doubt, given the role a new lease of life. I think, though, that this is one of the cruel aspects of the institution. The Queen and the other royals have to live their lives in the goldfish bowl of publicity. That must be hard to bear and the Queen has borne it patiently for 60 years. Those in line for the throne have no choice of career, no freedom of movement, a strict series of duties, a lot of swotting to do and the fear that a madman or terrorist could attack them at any moment.
It is easy and shocking to look back on the monarchs of the past and shake our heads over their mistakes, their extravagance, their cruelty. But perhaps any form of leadership might have been as awful in those times. The kings and queens of the past were surround by some pretty nasty people. Not all nobles were noble and life in those pre-democratic days was often poor, lonely, nasty, brutish and short.
Take our own Scottish history, for instance. Scotland has had 39 monarchs, only 5 of whom have been of good quality - Canmore, Bruce, James VI, Victoria and Elizabeth.
It is not a good record and underlines the fact that monarchy is a very human institution. Emperors are even worse - Edward Gibbon could only recommend 5 out of 140 in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Presidents come somewhere in between - five of the 44 American Presidents have been of high quality - Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson and F D Roosevelt.
The first real king of Scotland was Gaelic-speaking Malcolm Canmore (or Bighead) who was crowned in 1058. He united a country of five different tribes - the Scots and Celts in the west, the Picts in the east, the Angles in the Lothians and the Britons in Strathclyde. (The Norse lands would join later.)
Malcolm marched through slaughter to the throne, killing first Macbeth and then Macbeth’s step-son Lulach. His wife Margaret was one of the invading Normans from the continent and was a civilising influence. Together they established the feudal system of government and the Roman Catholic religion. Their sons, Alexander and then David, carried on the good work. William the Lion (because he chose the lion rampant as his flag) was less successful and poor old Alexander III fell off his horse on the way to Kinghorn. His granddaughter, the Maid of Norway, was briefly Queen before she too drowned at sea. That left the way open for the usurper John Balliol, the son of the ambitious Countess of Galloway who went about the country building abbeys and gifting colleges to Oxford University.
Balliol was a disaster. He was known as Toom Tabard or Turncoat because in 1295 he signed up an alliance with France that has brought trouble ever since. The very next year it brought Edward I north to punish the Scots at the Battle of Dunbar. It took William Wallace and Robert the Bruce 19 long and bloody years before the English were sent home to think again.
Robert the Bruce was no innocent either. He dispatched his rival Red Comyn in a disgraceful duel in a church in Dumfries. But he went on to establish a working parliament and to organise the Declaration of Arbroath, the founding document of the Scottish state.
When he died in 1329 - some say of leprosy - his son David was only 5 years old and this was a pattern which was to haunt the next line of kings, the Stewarts. It is a recurring weakness in the monarchical system. James I was just 12 when he became king, James II was 6, James III was 8, James IV was 15, James V was 1, Mary Queen of Scots was just one week old and James VI one year. Did the nobles form a council of wise men to govern the country while their kings and queens grew up ? Not likely, they schemed against each other. This is a weakness in the whole system of aristocracy.
It is also a very unpredictable system. In 1603, for instance, an extraordinary thing happened. James VI was invited to be king of England as well as Scotland. Today’s equivalent would be Britain inviting King Albert of Belgium to take over from Queen Elizabeth. The courtiers of England - and Wales and Ireland we must add - had their reasons. Queen Elizabeth had just given them 44 glorious years of prosperity and progress but she left no successor. They were on the look-out for a Protestant, rather than a Catholic, and James had been brought up a Protestant.
But he was curious mixture of wisdom and folly. He commissioned the King James Bible which brilliantly united the religious factions of the day and gave the English language its sure foundation. Along with trade and natural geography it cemented the Union, and the social union, which has lasted ever since. But James also published another book, True Law, which outlined his theory of the divine right of kings in which the king - not parliament - is the true representative of God on earth. His even more foolish son, Charles I, pushed this idea to extremes and lost the support of parliament - and also his head.
What the kings had failed to realise was that the world was changing. It is another weakness of the monarchy, and indeed any system that isolates the rulers from ordinary life (MPs with their expenses, top executives with their bonuses, to cite more recent examples). The Reformation had set every individual free to interpret God, religion, the Bible, indeed the theory of everything, for themselves.
The agricultural and industrial revolutions had created whole new classes of citizens - between the aristocracy and the peasants - and given them spending power. And the idea of human rights was beginning to form in people’s minds in which the same laws applied to every man and woman and that everyone is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
What followed the Civil War of the 1620s therefore was a constitutional monarchy under which parliament wields power and the monarch is only a figurehead. He, or more importantly, she (Victoria and Elizabeth) could only wield influence by setting fashions and being talked about.
I can see the attraction of the monarchy. There is a part of us which wants to leave the troubles of government to the experts. Scientists and engineers are especially fond of this approach. The general public are more sceptical thesedays, they have been misled by the experts so many times … over nuclear power, food shortages, DDT, mad-cow disease, swine flu and, most recently, over the banking system and the economy.
There is also something child-like deep inside us which rather likes the paternalistic approach - leaving difficult issues to a father-figure who will take care of us. We like the idea of continuity and security. We also like celebrity, to follow a famous person’s life and loves and fashions. I guess in countries where there is no monarch, they have to invent one…a movie star, a sporting hero, a president and his family.
But in a way, all this is side-stepping responsibility. It is the lazy man’s way out. And, when the chips are down, it will not do. Republicanism is a braver way of life and brave people take to the streets when the monarch or the aristocracy or any elite class, do something outrageous or govern badly for a long time, as the Soviet leaders and now the Arab leaders are finding out.
In the end, sovereignty lies with the people. So long as a monarch simply represents sovereignty, and does not usurp it or lose touch with it, then he or she is doing valuable work. But I, for one, would not like to do the job. So, thank you Queen Elizabeth for your 60 years of service and do not overdo it in your Diamond Jubilee year.
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