For the sake of the royals, abolish the monarchy

For a revolutionary socialist to admit to a degree of sympathy for the Royal Family is a bit like a cat declaring himself haunted by images of suffering mice, a sign of irredeemable softness. Yet I do pity the Windsor family. Any relationship of dominating inequality damages those at the top end as well as those at the bottom, albeit in different ways. Marx wrote of the bourgeoise being alienated under capitalism. The financier in front of a laptop screen showing market values is at the mercy of forces he doesn't control, even if the impact of those forces on his life is more cushioned than it is on the rough sleeper outside the cafe where he is sipping coffee. In fact, that the financier lacks a meaningful, equal, human relationship with the rough sleeper is one way is which he is alienated.

Similarly the Royal Family, by virtue of the very social set-up that gives them wealth and opportunity galore, can scarcely function like normal human beings. Their every doing happens under the lens of the paparazzi. Their most intimate moments, weddings, funerals, and so on, are public property. It is, admittedly, not the most tear-jerking tale of woe; many residents of Grenfell Tower, an easy walk from Prince Harry's family home, found themselves the objects of press attention without the compensation of a black tie evening function. Still, it would be better for the Windsors were they not on a pedestal (and not just because if somebody is on a pedestal, somebody else inevitably occupies a more lowly position).

Happily, we don't need to wait for anything as drastic as socialist revolution to relieve the Windsors of their burden. It is perfectly possible to abolish the monarchy, and this should happen. And it is perfectly possible for Labour members to mobilise around a policy of holding a referendum on the monarchy issue. The leadership, lifelong republicans the lot of them, maintain an embarrassed silence on the questions. One of the tensions of labourism is that it commits itself to bring about change through constitutional mechanisms. Attacks on that constitution itself are therefore shot through with a certain dissonance. The radical Labour politician who wants there to be no monarch still has to deal with that monarch on a regular basis, and acquiesce to any number of rites and procedures which speak of royalty's place at the heart of the British order. It takes peculiar circumstances and particular clear-sightedness for the effect to be anything other than quietism on the Crown: Tony Benn's experience of being in government is one example.

I sense scepticism at this point among some of my readers. Surely, they are thinking, the reason Labour isn't calling for the monarchy to be abolished (and won't do) is that there are far more important things on which to focus. We need to save the NHS, repeal anti-union laws, nationalise the railways. Abolishing the monarchy is a distraction. In any case, the monarchy  is popular, and committing itself to even a referendum would cost Labour at the polls and prevent it from doing these things.

The assumption here is that the monarchy is not that important, and isn't tied up with the other things wrong with British society. This is just wrong. Millions of people organised their way around watching two people they don't know get married. Many waved union jacks and threw street parties. As they did so they reproduced the deference that poisons British society. If you think that somebody deserves our attention simply because of the family they are born into, you are more likely to be the kind of version who is happy to vote for a bunch of Etonian Tories because 'well, they know what they are doing'. This is class politics from above. Its product is a mass of people who know their place. The point of socialist politics, on the other hand, is to change our places.

All of this is quite apart from the role of the Crown in the British constitution. Perogative powers allow Prime Ministers to do many things without even reference to parliament, as the victims of many RAF bombing missions over the decades know to their cost.

But what would we replace the monarchy with? The assumption in the background of this question is inevitably that, whilst having an unelected aristocrat as head of state may not be perfect, it is better than the likely alternatives: how would we feel about President Blair? Well, we could at least unelect him, which is not the case with queens. But it's not clear at all that Britain needs a head of state. It probably needs somebody to meet visiting heads of state and open the odd shopping mall. Fine, let the Speaker of the House of Commons do it. Or some more local dignitary. Or somebody chosen at random. The range of possibilities is much wider than debates usually allow.

So please let's allow the Windsors to be ordinary people. I don't want to be having to avoid anniversary celebrations in 25 years' time.