Prince Andrew & the British Tradition of anti-Monarchism
The current discussion about what Prince Andrew may or may not have done in his dealings with an alleged Chinese ‘spy’ who seems to have been hiding in plain sight rather a lot for a spy is occupying the media and Sinophobes alike. It’s also a reminder of one of the great British traditions
A tradition of republicanism in Britain, whether defined on the left or the right, is difficult to pin down and mostly very much a minority trend. However sentiments of anti-monarchism have often been popular and sometimes part of the political mainstream.
We need only think back to the death of Princess Diana in 1997 to see all of these trends very much in the modern political mix.
Yet historically Britain- or more strictly given the date, England- can claim to have been first in the anti-monarchy stakes. It was after in Whitehall on 30th January 1649 that King Charles 1st had his head cut off and a Commonwealth under Cromwell was created. It lasted only to the restoration in 1660 and the work of modernisation had several more turning points from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to something which almost was a revolution, the 1832 Great Reform Act.
It is difficult to sustain an argument that a genuine anti-monarchist tradition can be directly traced back to 1649, although if one looks at the efforts to ignore or play down the history of Cromwell and the New Model Army in many places in England- particularly churches and castles-it is obvious that the ruling class have never quite forgotten the significance of that day. Its equivalent in France is a national holiday. Not here.
Anti-monarchism was certainly alive in the early nineteenth century with the Queen Caroline affair and the wider traditions of republicanism was given a huge boost by the revolutions of 1848 across Europe.
It was this that sparked the left Chartist leader George Julian Harney to start his Red Republican journal.
The historian Antony Taylor makes the point that while it is often difficult historically to find a coherent and unified republican tradition the anti-monarchist movement is better defined and more popular.
In the anti-monarchist mind it was not the principle of a monarchy as such that was the problem but the behaviour of individual monarchs, how much they cost, and the whole aristocratic edifice of wealth and privilege that went with them.
In other words it was less an overt programme for political change and more a class movement, seeing the monarchy as a symbol of an unequal and divided society.
The popular critique of monarchy was an extension to the hatred of a society based on patronage and favour, the very real practice of Old Corruption.
As a mobilising political programme this had real strength long after the 1832 Reform Act and arguably up to the reform of the House of Lords in 1911 at the least. A focus on opposition to the aristocracy, including in practice the monarchy, united Fabian socialists and popular Liberals.
Reynolds’s the popular mass circulation radical working-class paper of the second half of the nineteenth century- it sold 350,000 copies a week in the 1870s- had anti-monarchism and stories relating to scandals about the Royals as a cornerstone of both its Editorial policy and its success in attracting a huge readership.
Papers more directly associated with the Labour tradition as the century drew to a close were more audacious and more politically direct still. The Clarion published, and gloried, in lists of aristocrats injured in hunting accidents.
Certainly historically anti-monarchism has been a significant feature of the British political landscape and Prince Andrew may, rightly, spark a revival
