To Be Scottish Citizens not British Subjects
‘Now is not the time’ – so we’re told for talk of constitutional change. Later, maybe we can discuss things. Not now. But it’s never the time. It’s never the time for a democratic referendum and it’s never the time now for talking about a republic. Note that the establishment doesn’t wait for permission. It’s seamless and unquestioning in its move to replace one member of the same family with another as head of state.
Now is exactly the time.
Don’t be cowed, don’t be silenced, don’t be shut down by the suffocating orthodoxy of the moment. This is propaganda at a massive and insidious scale.
The need to create an alternative narrative to this sweeping, all-encompassing infantilism is urgent.
The hysterical monarchism is now stepping into new levels of delirium in which the new message is not just respect and remembrance but a message that King Charles should be given a new role and new powers. This is a profoundly anti-democratic moment. Monarchism normalises hierarchy and landed-power, celebrates grotesque inequality and re-writes colonial and imperial history and crimes.
There are real dangers for the powerful in Britain at this moment.
There’s a real danger for the scribes, editors and producers who are curating this propaganda in the ridiculous over-hyped commentary about Elizabeth that they overshadow King Charles with their messaging. By cultivating her own excessive cult they risk exposing his own weaknesses.
This is also a moment in which the ‘Green King’ has to work with the new Prime Minister who is issuing licences for new oil and gas fields and giving her backing to fracking and abandoning the partial and woefully inadequate ecological safeguards that have been put into place in a desperate bid for populist backing.
Just as the accession is exposing the bizarre nature of Britain in 2022 it is essential that people resist the infantilism of the whole phenomenon.
Mammas and Pappas
Charles’s first speech was of course wildly celebrated, despite it being chock full of cloying language before today in an orgy of pageantry he became the monarch in ceremonies in St James’s Palace and the Royal Exchange in London.
For the official period of mourning Bella will be taking pitches and making commissions on the need for a Scottish Republic, the need to radicalise the independence movement, the need to make common cause with other movements within the other four nations and beyond.
As Broken Bottle Boy writes of the astonishing media coverage: ‘Decorum’ is a cosh, ‘propriety’ and the cry of ‘too soon’ are there to ensure that no effective criticism happens until it’s too late. The first change of monarch in 70 years is exactly the moment to ask questions and look unflinchingly at the state of things.”
Assuming that accession and the seamless handover of power in the suffocating atmosphere of Britain is all inevitable is wrong. The desperation of the current moment reveals they know this too.
We have an unelected monarch, an unelected House of Lords, and an unelected prime minister, and a new king who promises to uphold it all.
Now is precisely the right time.
We are supported only by our readers. We don't have corporate backers and we don't take advertising, so we rely entirely on your support.
Help to support independent Scottish journalism
Marx referred to religion as the opium of the masses, perhaps in the dying days of this disunited kingdom the monarchy, pomp and circumstance have become the preferred opiate of choice for the English and indeed some of our citizens.
Thank you for articulating what many of us are thinking at this moment.
Great summary of the situation, Mike. Spot on.
Of course it’s time.
But beware mass hypnosis by the British Media..crocodile tears…breast beating…old farts in black suits….etc etc
From St Liz to Charlie the Chimp..there is hope….we just gotta keep our nerve.
Chic the Third , has a ring to it ! Like Defender of Faiths ! Jeez !
A man proclaims to be a stalwart of a Church while carrying on an affair with a married woman , before during and after his marriage .
So having betrayed the tenets of one faith he wants us to see him as the Defender of ALL faiths . Good luck with that , Chic !
O/T He has just installed his son as the new Prince of Wales , a man who is President of the English Football Association !
Well , that will go down like a lead daffodil when Wales play England in the upcoming World Cup .
Did no one have the commonsense to think that there might be a problem with this appointment ?
2022 and still crowning Kings what a load of shite, you are right squigglypen hold the nerve and fight on and leave them to it .
Thanks for this! 100% with you
It has been 2 and a bit days and I for one cannot stand any more of this sickening, cloying commentary. All printed media , internet and television are pumping this out 24 hours a day every day. I can only use about 3 channels on the t.v before it’s interrupted again with updates of these people. They have a cheek to criticise the Kremlin and they would give North Korea a run for their money. It’s terrible.
Well, unsurprisingly I agree with this rational viewpoint. Charles III’s carefully-written speech cries out for the Downfall treatment. There’s a sequence in Jack London’s People of the Abyss where he records his amazement on how London’s precarious made-poor dutifully throw themselves into Victoria’s death rites. This stage-management has been going on for a long time.
In effect we see a vast establishment plan enacted to replay, even if temporarily, Tudor totalitarianism: there is only one approved version of state events, and it’s the Crown’s. The funeral we might be mourning is Pluralism’s. The BBC was designed as a royalist propaganda machine, as recently admitted by David Dimbleby, himself a beneficiary of the greatest enshrined British value: nepotism. Clearly, dissenting views must be muzzled (the Guardian appears to have banned comments on its royal coverage).
For some background, I recommend Norman Baker’s book And What Do You Do?: What The Royal Family Don’t Want You To Know, and some general history of the real British Empire, like The Blood Never Dried: A People’s History of the British Empire by John Newsinger, or Mark Curtis’ Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World (though there should be more up-to-date histories available which take advantage of recent declassifications). Baker provides interesting insight on royal sealed wills, the means by which they hide and pass down their ill-gotten riches, much of it plundered from imperial subjects; it also suggests that the royal piss-poor performance in charity (how can you be patrons of so many and so bad at doing it yourself that you continually enrich yourself to the tune of billions without contributing anything of value?) extends to their legacies. This is only a tiny part of the draconian system of official secrecy surrounding British royals and their imperial role (for more background on official secrecy, The History Thieves: Secrets, Lies and the Shaping of a Modern Nation by Ian Cobain is a good start). And of course, royal ‘charity’ never extends to actual reparations. #RoyalReparations
I agree with the substance of the Broken Bottle Boy article, but the truth is even worse: the Queen was a horrendous war criminal who was never held accountable for any of her crimes (she was a co-conspirator in Suez, ordering the military action that killed perhaps 10,000 Egyptians, and that was small compared to some other imperial death-counts). The contrast with the Pope, who visited Canada over the summer to offer some kind of apology for the atrocities carried out by Catholic-run indigenous residential schools, and the British royals (the Queen’s Anglican Church ran the next-largest group, all under her imperial oversight) who refused invitations to turn up and say sorry, could not be starker.
With so many other non-UK organisations buying into this narrative of mourning, this is a dark blot in our information age. Charles III could be about to make it darker; he could do a great many things, like torch the royal archives at Windsor, or exert influence through the Privy Council or royal lawyers or secret services which would be hard to detect. We recently learnt that vast ministerial powers were secretly granted to Scott Morrison through the Queen’s governor-general:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/15/scott-morrison-was-sworn-in-to-several-portfolios-other-than-prime-minister-how-can-this-be-done
This is how the British Empire is geared: secrecy, autocracy, centralisation of power and unaccountability. The extensive royal prerogatives available to (inherited by) Charles III are anti-democracy in extremis, this private form of government the antithesis of republican openness. The Queen was an abomination even by the government’s own standards for public office (sometimes called the Nolan principles).
Royalism is a political stance, it is not somehow ‘apolitical’. If you choose royalism, you are by definition right-wing, an opponent of democracy. In this decaying world, support for corrupt court politics is to place yourself as an obstacle to the living good and the competent, evidence-based and inclusive government we need to tackle the extreme global threats, like climate catastrophes, we all face.
The Divine Right of Kings, Tories and Press Barons to rule over us.
Unelected…………or…………the Elect of God.
Like all human constructs, it is a great steaming pile of ordure.
The ballot box is able to overrule them all.
Which is why——-“now is not the time”.
But it is precisely the correct time.
Time for Scotland to join the world.
Altering an old rhyme…
Charles the third
Ought never to have occurred
One can only wonder
At so grotesque a blunder.
I agree. The whole picture is warped. Way past time for change..
The journey to Scottish Independence is evolution not revolution! ….albeit we have an opportunity to make it reality in the very near future !
To do so requires over 1 million of our fellow citizens to be informed, inspired and convinced that the different path , choices, challenges, opportunities and security that are enabled by Independence is in the best interest of themselves and their communities.
Radicalising the Independence movement, whatever that means, or a debate about a monarchy we cannot influence or alter until we are Ibdependent will in no way help to persuade.
Instead it will reinforce the binary division so carefully created and sustained by the establishment and its media.
Independence for Scotland itself is radical enough for now for those whose current preference is to remain in the Union.
The preferences of our fellow citizens as expressed in , for example, our Citizens Assembly, Social Justice and Fairness Commission, Poverty Alliance Manifesto etc are the radical changes they believe will make an even better Scotland…..
So let’s talk about that!
Feel as though a black cloak of propaganda has been thrown over the country……She is to be visited in Holyrood ….what about Wales and Northern Ireland.?
Thank you for a breath of sanity .
I have been an independence supporter my whole life, however, if I was given the choice of an independent Scotland with a Royal family, any royal family, or a republican Britain I would choose the republican Britain in a heartbeat.
Though that is a vey unlikely scenario and in my opinion independence would be the opportunity for a new young country to look and laugh at al that and rewrite the archaic rules that govern us.
I applaud you Mike for raising your head above the parapet at this time, I want to live in a country where the views of so many who would like to see a republic can at least be discussed in a mature manner by our political representatives in parliament.
I know that there is an argument for not scaring the horses prior to an independence vote but we should at least acknowledge that an independent Scotland could make that choice.
Just watched episode 3 of fictional “The Capture” and then read this. News management is real, full on and here now in now in this “United Kingdom”. We have a full fortnight where there is no real news but stories about our “wonderful” monarchy. During most of this year we have had a succession of documentaries put out several times a week on various channels on different aspects of the monarchy from praise for the Queen to less than glowing stories about Harry and all the others of the clan in between.
Enough!
I cannot stomach a continuation of this charade. I have often wondered about Scotland as a republic and, while I like the idea, have difficulty in thinking about who we might have as head of state and what their role would be. Maybe, when we are allowed, we really should have a grown up debate about it.
Charles I (of Scotland), please.
Not that its that important, but the Kingdoms of England and Scotland joined together in 1603. Charles I succeeded to the throne in 1625, and therefore Charles Windsot(Saxe-Coburg) will be Charles III of Scotland too.
You make some good points, as you rightly say, why is this not a good time to discuss Scotland’s future? Not that dissimilar to the efforts to shut down debate on gun control in the US after a school shooting “it’s not the time”, when of course the truth it the opposite. However, the suffocating coverage of the Queens’s death and Charle’s accession you rail against is actually quite effective, and for this reason alone, it might be wise just to take a breather for a few months until it all settles down and the seriousness of the problems besetting the UK become ever more apparent – as Liz Truss and the Tories dig us ever deeper into our own economic and social grave. By the way, I think you meant to write “cloying” not “clawing” in regard to King Charle’s speech. I actually thought it was a good speech if you ignore the wider issues that so concern you. He appeared genuine and heartfelt, and as the Queen’s eldest son, he should be allowed room to express his feelings in his own way..
Hi John – thanks for the correction – yes I knew as I wrote it that I had got the word wrong but somehow couldn’t summon it. It was a good speech politically to offset the criticisms that have beset him, and it was I’m sure heartfelt. I’m interested in the psychology of elderly men calling their parents ‘mamma’ and ‘pappa’. I sit just an aristocracy thing? It feels very child-like.
In calling his pater and mater ‘papa’ and ‘mama’ respectively, he’d have been aiming for pathos with a view to eliciting sympathy from his audience.
Mama,, Papa, Daddy, Mummy are commonly used words of adult family familiarity in the posher parts of society in London and the south of England, and tends to go with the now more old-fashioned posher English accent. There’s nothing particularly “childish” in that sense about this, actually I find it quaint, amusing but also quite affecting..
What you need to a political party dedicated to constitutional change in Scotland. Shame there isnt one
But would such a party flourish given the ambivalence of the nation towards constitutional change. A ‘Scotland’ branded version of the current establishment is perhaps the most we can expect to coax from an essentially conservative or ‘canny’ Scottish electorate.
Of course, such a party might project to ‘radicalise’ the electorate, which might be fun for and give meaning to the lives of its activists, but how realistic would such a project be?
‘Hysterical monarchism’ is on show in the media. The public mood – in so far as it can be ascertained – appears to be calm and reflective. Writing about ‘the desperation of the current moment’ ignores the latter, the ordinary people of Scotland and the rest of the UK.
This was my feeling too. Not seeing anything hysterical. I was in Aberdeen when it all happened and then travelled to Yorkshire yesterday. I felt no material difference in the mood – muted and quiet. It is always a big mistake to gauge everything by looking at the media and especially the media you don’t trust anyway. Even the crowds lining streets today were mostly standing there paying respects somewhat solemnly. And has the media been hysterical? The BBC coverage is inevitably huge and deferential (and personally I do find some of it irritating at best) but is that ‘hysterical delirium’? Is the reality that to be a monarchist is simply hysterical by default to those who hate the idea in the first place?
And I think the critique of monarchy and all the rest, is already surfacing in the media in numerous places just a few days after her death (e.g. Guardian today has several critical articles and I even heard critical voices on BBC radio earlier) so I do not fear some kind of closing down of debate, a debate which I welcome (and it would be interesting to see Bella propose alternatives as there are many different types of republic). It really is very early days, so describing it as ‘suffocating’ and ‘sweeping, all-encompassing infantilism’ seems, well, somewhat hysterical.
There are indeed many kinds of republic, and little annoys me more than the sort of dichotomous thinking that uses ‘republic’ as a binary opposite term to ‘monarchy’. A republic is just a state in which public and private affairs are distinguished and in which the proper business of government is restricted to the administration of public affairs (‘res publica’). In this broadest sense, even monarchies can be republican.
A discussion of how our public affairs in Scotland ought to be administered after our government becomes independent of that of the rest of Britain would be interesting, but we’re advised that we should leave such a discussion until after the fact has been accomplished.