Republicans being arrested in the UK

 

image from here

There's sporadic news of republicans being arrested and detained outside royal properties and at the roadsides as the former queens coffin winds its way through the country. We're in the weird stage where the king is being proclaimed so there are a lot of gatherings by local dignitaries and functionaries in strange centuries old formal attire.

It hasn't been going well but better than the pessimists amongst the royal correspondents feared. The queen was very popular, even with populations who really should know better. Charles though? Not remotely. For decades his popular image has been the butt of many jokes about the absurdity of a grown man spending decades doing nothing but waiting for his mum to die. I've laughed and made up jokes about him actively murdering her to speed it along. And this is the common image of him when he manages to stay out of the scandal papers.

When he has been caught out you add embarrassing sexts to his consort, an affair and messy divorce with the very popular Dianna, and the occasional tax free donation from shady foreign businessmen and it doesn't make for enthusiastic subjects. So I'm not surprised there have been a handful of demonstrations of discontent. Am a bit surprised to see arrests and charges brought up, not because of any ideas about traditional British values, but because this kind of heavy handed and transparent attacks on freedom of protest and speech seems exactly the sort of thing to revive a more militant anti-monarchist movement and confront the public with a choice, royal prestige or personal freedom and I think large numbers will pick the latter.

Even when Elizabeth II was on the throne and quite popular her reign rested on fragile foundations, the best guarantee was to cultivate a atmosphere of passive acceptance and to keep everyone from looking to closely at the reality even for the purposes of defence. Typically the crown relied on the soft power of social disapproval to sap challenges to its existence and tried to avoid the topic as much as possible. The republican movement in the UK is very anaemic but its membership grows every time their is any lengthy display of royalty including those weddings and jubilees. One of the few positive developments I witnessed in the last years of the queens reign was the isolated voices on the chat show circuits talking about how they didn't see any reason for the monarchies existence in clear terms and their opposition who are so unused to having to justify their prejudices flailing quite badly to come up with anything. This may seem strange but that hadn't happened before. Previously anti-monarchists were ever ignored entirely or presented as fringe eccentrics.

I went to Thailand in 2019, I thought I was prepared for the cult of personality over the king but I was not. On a tour of a Bhuddist pagoda one of our group asked a question about the current king's new wife, the tour guide looked over his shoulder and didn't answer until he was sure no one else was around and then politely asked us all to refrain from asking questions about the current royal household, historical kings like Rama V were fine but not the one whose portrait adorns all public places. He explained that questions like that put him in a difficult place and he could be forced to appear at a police station for questioning and lose his job. That's what a monarchy afraid of even light criticism looks like, and if trends continue we could be heading that way pretty soon.

"A Monarchy that cannot survive some booing and a few pieces of cardboard is pretty flimsy thing, isn't it?"