Don’t think for a moment that the British monarchy is a benign force. No monarch from any epoch can ever be described as a friend of the people. Emperors, Kings, Caesars and Pharaohs of the classical slave owning societies were tyrants all. The kings and queens from the feudal epoch were tyrants too bloody barons that usurped power without a shred of legitimacy. The kings and queens of Britain in the early capitalist era were no less tyrannical – all aristocratic thieves, enclosing the common land for their own gain and stealing foreign wealth at every opportunity.

As for today’s crop of monarchs and their ever expanding circles of hangers-on, the best we can say of them is that they are a parasitic growth on society, clinging to their privilege by virtue of an archaic constitutional settlement and the nostalgic longings of the general populous who care to imagine a kinder, less brutal place.

Never forget that dear old Elizabeth II, that kindly old lady who wouldn’t harm a flee, presided over some of the most shameful, post empire episodes, that were every bit as brutal as the British Empire itself. While pretending to rule benignly over a voluntary Commonwealth, the Windsor family condemned Nelson Mandela and his ANC liberation movement as terrorists and common criminals, while at the same time giving succour to the neo-fascist apartheid regime in South Africa. Only when the global movement in support of Mandela became deafening did the royal household do a quick u-turn and welcomed Mandela as a great statesman.

A similar story was replicated throughout the old empire. The Windsor’s failed to stand up against the racist regime in Rhodesia, and, by their silence, were complicit in the fascist barbarism unleashed by the British government on the Kenyan freedom fighters. While the heroic Mau Mau were being rounded up, tortured and murdered in British concentration camps, the Windsor’s were busy hunting at Balmoral, land that their forefathers had criminally expropriated from the Scottish peasants. Wherever there was a genuine struggle for national independence after the Second World War, be sure that the British monarchy was on the side of reaction and colonialism. Even in Australia, the promised land down under, the monarchy was silent to the abuses being committed in Britain’s name – government sponsored child abuse that is coming home to haunt them to this day. As for the plight of Australia’s indigenous peoples, once again the head on the Commonwealth remained predictably silent.

And closer to home, while the loyalist thugs in Ulster were burning Catholics out of their homes in the colonial six county statelet, the Queen of England sided with the fascist loyalist thugs. And as the civil rights movement in Ulster forced itself onto the British mainland, the Royal family bunkered down in their palaces and cursed the Irish nationalists as the British aristocracy had done for centuries. Even the intense sufferings of the hunger strikers could not soften the stone-cold, callous heart of the British monarchy. Shame upon them. But when Mountbatten got swept aside by the storm there was much wailing, hand wringing and public grief.

The domestic comings and goings of the modern day Windsor family has not been an edifying affair either. Virtually every time Phillip opens his mouth some racist or otherwise bigoted comment crawls out. Edward VII was undoubtedly a Nazi sympathiser and if I recall correctly, didn’t Phillip’s grandson, Harry get his rocks off by dressing up in Nazi regalia? Childish pranks? Perhaps.

The Windsor’s collective dismissal of the Spenser interloper was tardy to say the least, and the continual stream of marriages of convenience, quickly followed by divorces of convenience, hardly sets the Windsor’s up as moral guardians for the nation. The suspicions surrounding Diana and Dodi’s death will probably forever remain suspicions but be sure that the mere thought of Egyptian/ Muslim blood creeping in to the royal line was most unappetising to these unreconstructed British/German aristocrats. (Remember that it was not until 1917 that the German aristocratic House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha that was the British monarchy, morphed into the more Anglo-friendly ‘House of Windsor’).

While Charles, current heir to the throne, professes some progressive ideas, he, along with the rest of his clan, just cannot resist some blood sport to wile away the days. So much for a modern monarchy.

But all this is tangential to the real point. Even if our current royal family were the most progressive, liberal thinking, outspoken democrats, the very concept of a royal family, any royal family, somehow set above the rest of us, is totally abhorrent and anathema in a supposedly modern democracy. I defer to no one on the basis of aristocratic inheritance and nor should I be expected to. Full credit to Gerry Adams, for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the Queen as a prerequisite for entering Westminster. The only people an elected MP should defer to is their constituents. Gods, bishops and monarchs have nothing at all to do with democracy yet still these archaic, undemocratic practises persist, including an unelected upper house of Lords.

The main opiate that is force fed to our young people today is a mind-numbing cocktail of endless consumerism, crass celebrity culture, demeaning sexual titillation and of course, the never ending global sporting circus. But the ever cunning British ruling elite always have an ace up their sleeves. Just in case our youth become a little jaded with the regular drip drip drip of the corporate anaesthetic, they can always churn out yet another royal wedding.

And it’s not just the youth that are susceptible. Whole swathes of the population buy into the sickly fairytale, complete with street parties, royal trinkets and much ooh-ing and aah-ing. Marx dismissed it all as the false consciousness of the working class an opiate, like religion itself, to weaken the democratic pulse. For me, I can only add; ‘Those with a slave mentality deserve to be slaves!’