Credit to The Guardian, 1/6/12 for publishing two diametrically opposed editorials on the meaning and significance of the Queen’s Jubilee circus. Simon Jenkins piece was as dispiriting as Polly Toynbee’s was uplifting. The guts of Jenkins article is that the monarchy is a rather harmless affair mercifully free of the grimy politicking associated with elected presidents. Don’t take the thing too seriously, just enjoy the pageantry and the nation bonding that it provides. He could not be more wrong. The monarchy is far from being a harmless, above-the-fray institution.

Based on the hereditary principle, the monarchy reinforces and entrenches the class privilege that permeates every institution the entire social fabric of this country. Jenkins just doesn’t get it but Toynbee certainly does. I’ve not always been a great fan of Toynbee, who has a little too much faith in the reforming credentials of the Labour Party for my liking, but in this editorial I don’t think she could be bettered. I was planning on doing a piece on the Jubilee myself, but to be honest Toynbee has said everything that needs to be said and probably a darn sight more eloquently than I could ever manage.

But let us return to Mr Jenkins. I very much doubt he has any idea what it means to be born on the wrong side of the tracks, both culturally and economically. He has no idea what it means to have your self-esteem damaged from the minute you enter the British school system. He has no idea what failing the 11plus did for countless youngsters in the fifties and sixties. He probably has no idea how going to a secondary modern school compared to a grammar school affected life chances. He almost certainly has no awareness of how going to a bog standard comprehensive limits your life chances compared to those who can afford to sail along in the private independent sector. All this class privilege at school level is underpinned by all the rest of the institutions in this country, the BBC, Westminster politics, the legal system, Oxbridge and of course the monarchy. Jenkins is simply in denial but Toynbee is right on the button.

Let’s be jack blunt about this. There is no god and therefore there is no god to bless our gracious queen. It’s all a cocktail of medieval superstition and social control. History is quite clear about this. The British monarch, like all monarchs, was simply the feudal lord with the most clout. Divine representation had nothing to do with it. Even to this day, the monarchy is one of the biggest landowners in the country, land that was forcibly enclosed and stolen from the commoners. And the monarchy’s other wealth is the result of both piracy dating back to the time of the Tudors and colonial plunder from a bloody empire. Certainly no one from the old colonies of the British Empire should have reason to celebrate the Queen and her sixty years of ‘noble public service.
Once you have been seduced by one piece of the social control jigsaw its easy to succumb to the whole structure that keeps us locked in our place. Politicians of various persuasions might complain about the lack of class mobility but unless you attack the institutions that prop up class privilege then protestations against social immobility are just so much hot air. A quick re- reading of the national anthem, if you can stomach it, gives a poignant reminder of the mind set of the ruling class elite that ran the British Empire for their own gain. This elite has not gone away and become some quaint historical oddity to be dragged out on festive occasions. No, they are very much alive and running our country at every level; the top of the civil service, the military heads, the captains of industry and finance, the judges and top lawyers, the hospital consultants and university professors, and of course, the cultural bigwigs at the BBC. The country is still basically run by a posse of Old Etonians, Oxbridge graduates and the sons and daughters of the old aristocracy. The dim wits that make up our current monarchy fit right into this last category. Collectively they fight neo-colonial wars in our name while upholding a tax system that keeps the inherited wealthy rich and insulated. I feel confident that Poly Toynbee understands all this and I’m equally sure that Simon Jenkins doesn’t.

To defer to a monarch, any monarch, is to accept one’s impoverished, second class status. As the recession really starts to bite, that second class status will become even more pronounced. I’m sure the whole celebrity based monarchy has been a carefully constructed media creation specifically designed to keep people dulled and placid. Religion no longer works so well in that respect, so new forms of social control had to be invented and some old ones dusted off and given a modern veneer. How well Poly Toynbee describes all this and how completely Simon Jenkins fails to see beyond that glossy celebrity surface. If you read nothing else this weekend be sure to read Toynbee’s classic. I think we will be referring to it for many years to come. As for Jenkins, just another apologist for the stultifying British class system.