As frequent readers of this blog will be aware, I am in favour of the abolition of the British monarchy. I want to explain why, and, rather than boringly explaining this in the conventional way, I am going to make my points as responses to common monarchist arguments in favour of the monarchy.
Monarchist arguments, and my rebuttals
1. Monarchy provides stability.
Inaccurate. There is an ongoing political crisis in monarchical Belgium which has resulted in there being no government for the eleven months since their last general election. Monarchies have fallen in Germany, Russia, Spain, Italy and numerous other countries. It is not true to say that monarchies are more stable than republics. The stability of a nation is based mainly on its prosperity, the unity of its citizens and its geographical location. There is no correlation between type of head of state and stability.
2. Monarchy is good for tourism.
Inaccurate. Of the top 20 British tourist attractions, only one is a royal residence - Windsor Castle at number 17. Windsor Legoland is ten places higher on the list. By that logic, we should have a Lego man as head of state. (Which would be ironic, as we haven't had Danish leaders for nearly a thousand years - in that time we've had French, Dutch and Germans instead...)
3. Monarchy, as a British tradition, is a good thing.
There are two assumptions at work here, both inaccurate. One is that monarchy is a British tradition. In fact, all the great political reforms in history - Magna Carta, the 1640s revolution, the Glorious Revolution, the development of parliamentary superiority in the 1700s - have been as a result of We The People fighting to gain power from an unaccountable hereditary leader. British traditions include democracy, the right to social mobility, religious pluralism, accountability and choice; all of which are incompatible with monarchy. Secondly, there's the notion that tradition is in itself a good thing. If that were true, we'd still have slavery, women wouldn't be able to vote and lords would still own our land. Oh, and we'd still be going around the world invading less powerful countries for their natural resources. (Ahem....) There's nothing implicitly good about tradition itself - the past is only good when it's still relevant in the present and future. Monarchy is not.
4. A hereditary monarch is a unifying symbol.
This is a daft statement. A hereditary monarchy, in going against all British principles, is hardly a symbol that can be considered as unifying the nation. I think we acknowledge as a people that election is the only meaningful way of establishing who has power. So whatever we think about David Cameron, we acknowledge he has the moral right to be prime minister, as he's leader of the Conservative party, which has the most seats in the House of Commons. What physical right does Prince Charles have to become our next king? Also, can you really argue that the monarchy is unifying when the symbolism of the Crown, the flag and the monarch were such a part of the Troubles in Northern Ireland?
5. The royal family work hard for our country.
Hardly. They cut a few ribbons, go on fabulously expensive trips round the world at our expense and invite foreign despots and murderers to their weddings. This argument implies that the royals work harder than our great scientists, our artists, our engineers and builders. Anyone with half a brain knows this isn't true. Furthermore, the royals do nothing that an elected president could not. Or, indeed, anyone with half a brain...
6. Electing a leader would result in president Blair or president Thatcher.
The number of people who've said this to me makes it fairly certain that there wouldn't be, if either of these two ever chose to stand for election as a president. It seems absurd to suggest that these would be the only kind of candidates - the last two presidents of Ireland have been a barrister and a charity campaigner. We have plenty of these, and I think most would make fantastic leaders and role models to our citizens. Monarchists seem consumed with a self-loathing which makes them hate the people they themselves elect, and they therefore seem to think the random chance of birth can make better decisions about who's fit to rule than the people of Britain.
7. The monarchy has no power.
Probably the worst lie of all. In fact the monarchy has a massive and dangerous amount of power, which is vested by tradition in other parts of the government. The royal prerogative means that Tony Blair could go to war in Iraq without consulting parliament first. The monarch can choose anyone he/she wants as prime minister (see 1957 and 1963 for examples. Go on, look 'em up). The Crown-in-Parliament principle means that Parliament can pass any law it likes - meaning our liberties can never be guaranteed. All these intolerable abuses of power could be checked with a written constitution and a president to defend it. Finally, the monarch can legally do no wrong at all. He/she cannot be charged with any crime, impeached or tried in any way. Is that acceptable in the 21st century? I think not.
8. The monarchy is value for money.
Inaccurate. The monarchy costs over 100 times the Irish presidency, and is considerably worse in constitutional terms. In any case, democracy shouldn't be tempered by questions of cost. Democracy is a right, and we should defend it wholeheartedly.
9. People in other countries love our royals.
So it would seem. The sycophancy of the American press regarding the royal wedding is rather worrying. But you don't see Americans advocating a return to monarchy. Why? Because more than a foreign monarchy, they admire their own Constitution, a great document which sets out a republican system that has served the country well for more than 200 years, and has allowed even poor farmers like Abraham Lincoln, born in a one-room cabin in Kentucky, to rise to their nation's highest office. And anyway, are monarchists really suggesting our democracy is of less value than the ability to write fairytales for foreign television?
10. Having a president would result in a system like that in the USA.
No. I'm not suggesting that we move to a presidential system. I would see the parliamentary control over the executive retained, meaning we'd keep the post of prime minister. The president would be an impartial leader who would be tasked with preventing abuses of the constitution. When it gets written. The exact system I advocate is outlined here: http://dft.ba/-modelrepublic.
There are many more arguments for the republic, which I don't have the time to go into here. Any questions, put them in comments - I'll answer them all. Essentially, my view is that election is the only patriotic, democratic, modern and fair way to decide our head of state. For more information on all the questions of this complex debate, go to http://www.republic.org.uk/ and join the campaign to change Britain for the better. Also, if you go back to March in this blog, you can find a two-part rant on the ways that the monarchy retains its power and stifles any debate about itself.
Follow this blog if you like. More politics to come! Twitter: @antmoorfield.
Showing posts with label power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label power. Show all posts
Tuesday, 26 April 2011
Saturday, 16 April 2011
British politics, part one (BSDA #14)
The first thing to say in any debate on this topic is that the British political system, forged from more than 800 years of continuous development, is a hugely complex beast. Today's post is devoted to the easy bit, you'll be glad to know. The Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled is the full title of the lower house of the national parliament. It currently has 650 members, elected from all four corners of the United Kingdom. Nice and easy. The first partially-elected parliament (of England) was called in 1264 by Simon de Montfort, a French nobleman who led a rebellion against King Henry III and became the effective king after his victory at the Battle of Lewes. While he was later killed at Evesham, and King Edward I took the throne, the position of the parliament was now established and over the next few centuries its powers grew and grew until it was acknowledged as the most important part of the constitution during the nineteenth century. During that period, England unified with Scotland in 1707 and Great Britain with Ireland in 1800. In 1922 five-sixths of Ireland became independent (this is just history, you don't need me here).
The current membership is divided between three main parties, and a few others with just a couple of members each. The government of today is what can only be described as an uneasy coalition between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats, while the Labour party, who governed from 1997-2010, provide the Official Opposition. Of these, the Conservatives have the longest history, being ultimately descended from the Tories (they are still often called by this name) who sprung up in the later seventeenth century in support of the right of royal succession to fall to anyone, even a Catholic, during the Exclusion crisis of the 1680s. The party that supported the removal of James, Duke of York from the succession because of his Catholicism developed into the Whigs, and over the centuries these two parties began to solidify into movements we'd now describe as liberal and conservative, with the Whigs supporting constitutional separation of powers (in a broad sense) and the nonconformist tradition while the Tories supported the monarch's power and the high Church of England. These parties renamed themselves into the Liberals and Conservatives in the Victorian era.
From the early 1900s, the incipient trade union movement began to get more and more members elected to parliament, and the socialist Labour party emerged, first taking government in 1924. Labour quickly supplanted the Liberals as the second party, so much so that in the general election of 1951 95% of voters supported either Labour or the Conservatives, and the Liberals won just six seats - in five of those there was no Conservative candidate. At this point, it would be clear to see genuine ideological differences between all three. In 1979 Margaret Thatcher, Conservative leader, became prime minister. She was a radically different leader, moving the Tories into a new era of libertarian neoliberalism based on the ideas of Friedman, Hayek and others. In an attempt to combat this, Labour elected Michael Foot as their leader in 1980, the furthest left leader for many years. This was the last straw for many in the moderate faction of the Labour party. Four senior party figures left Labour to form the Social Democratic Party on the European model. While they hoped to wrestle the mantle of official opposition from Labour, it quickly became apparent that they could not and so the SDP formed an Alliance with the Liberals, who were experiencing a slight revival themselves. This Alliance grew in power over the following years, and the two parties eventually merged to form the Liberal Democrats, despite the opposition of SDP leader David Owen, who remains an independent to this day. Neither Labour nor the Lib Dems could provide a credible challenge, however, to Thatcher, or her successor Major.
In an attempt to become electable, Labour elected Tony Blair as their leader, and effectively renounced socialism, most notably via the elimination of Clause Four of the party constitution, which committed the party to nationalisation of industry. (Note: loads more stuff happens before this, as this is very simplistic, but you can find that out yourselves, I'm sure.) Labour was elected in 1997 and effectively continued the radical policies of Thatcher and Major, deregulating banking, supporting private industry at the expense of the state, and so on. Many felt that the Lib Dems had become the real party of the left, by continuing to support wholeheartedly the welfare state, high taxation and progressivism. However, the Orange Book of 2004 in fact showcases the Lib Dem commitment to radical centrist policies. It is therefore possible to suggest that all three parties are of the radical centre to centre-right, at least at the leadership level, though there are signs that new Labour leader Ed Miliband is attempting to move back to a more defined centre-left social democratic tradition.
Man. That was LONG. And I only covered half of what I wanted to. Questions? Leave them in comments. Follow this blog, go to twitter, and dance like a kangaroo. https://twitter.com/#!/antmoorfield
The current membership is divided between three main parties, and a few others with just a couple of members each. The government of today is what can only be described as an uneasy coalition between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats, while the Labour party, who governed from 1997-2010, provide the Official Opposition. Of these, the Conservatives have the longest history, being ultimately descended from the Tories (they are still often called by this name) who sprung up in the later seventeenth century in support of the right of royal succession to fall to anyone, even a Catholic, during the Exclusion crisis of the 1680s. The party that supported the removal of James, Duke of York from the succession because of his Catholicism developed into the Whigs, and over the centuries these two parties began to solidify into movements we'd now describe as liberal and conservative, with the Whigs supporting constitutional separation of powers (in a broad sense) and the nonconformist tradition while the Tories supported the monarch's power and the high Church of England. These parties renamed themselves into the Liberals and Conservatives in the Victorian era.
From the early 1900s, the incipient trade union movement began to get more and more members elected to parliament, and the socialist Labour party emerged, first taking government in 1924. Labour quickly supplanted the Liberals as the second party, so much so that in the general election of 1951 95% of voters supported either Labour or the Conservatives, and the Liberals won just six seats - in five of those there was no Conservative candidate. At this point, it would be clear to see genuine ideological differences between all three. In 1979 Margaret Thatcher, Conservative leader, became prime minister. She was a radically different leader, moving the Tories into a new era of libertarian neoliberalism based on the ideas of Friedman, Hayek and others. In an attempt to combat this, Labour elected Michael Foot as their leader in 1980, the furthest left leader for many years. This was the last straw for many in the moderate faction of the Labour party. Four senior party figures left Labour to form the Social Democratic Party on the European model. While they hoped to wrestle the mantle of official opposition from Labour, it quickly became apparent that they could not and so the SDP formed an Alliance with the Liberals, who were experiencing a slight revival themselves. This Alliance grew in power over the following years, and the two parties eventually merged to form the Liberal Democrats, despite the opposition of SDP leader David Owen, who remains an independent to this day. Neither Labour nor the Lib Dems could provide a credible challenge, however, to Thatcher, or her successor Major.
In an attempt to become electable, Labour elected Tony Blair as their leader, and effectively renounced socialism, most notably via the elimination of Clause Four of the party constitution, which committed the party to nationalisation of industry. (Note: loads more stuff happens before this, as this is very simplistic, but you can find that out yourselves, I'm sure.) Labour was elected in 1997 and effectively continued the radical policies of Thatcher and Major, deregulating banking, supporting private industry at the expense of the state, and so on. Many felt that the Lib Dems had become the real party of the left, by continuing to support wholeheartedly the welfare state, high taxation and progressivism. However, the Orange Book of 2004 in fact showcases the Lib Dem commitment to radical centrist policies. It is therefore possible to suggest that all three parties are of the radical centre to centre-right, at least at the leadership level, though there are signs that new Labour leader Ed Miliband is attempting to move back to a more defined centre-left social democratic tradition.
Man. That was LONG. And I only covered half of what I wanted to. Questions? Leave them in comments. Follow this blog, go to twitter, and dance like a kangaroo. https://twitter.com/#!/antmoorfield
Thursday, 14 April 2011
Firefly. (BSDA #12)
When I was younger, my dad tried to introduce me to Buffy - I did not like it at all. Now I simply cannot work out why that is, because after it being recommended to me by the world of internet geekdom, I decided to get Firefly, Joss Whedon's next series, a western in space, on DVD. And ohmygoditsoneofthebestthings-iveeverseen!
Wikipedia's synopsis tells us that the series is set in the year 2517, after the arrival of humans in a new star system, and follows the adventures of the renegade crew of Serenity, a "Firefly-class" spaceship. The ensemble cast portrays the nine characters who live on Serenity. Whedon pitched the show as "nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things". The show explores the lives of some people who fought on the losing side of a civil war and others who now make a living on the outskirts of the society, as part of the pioneer culture that exists on the fringes of their star system.
So that's a decent summation. But what it doesn't tell you is how brilliant this show is. I mean, incredible. Its colourful, complex, funny, wonderful characters, who speak Whedon's trademark cool-but-unusual style of language - "corpsifying" - inhabit a world which is as familiar as it is original, a quite genius mix of the American West, traditional oriental culture and the classic world of conventional sci-fi, all of which influences are melded into something consistently fascinating. I've only seen 5 episodes so far (come on, the box came 26 hours ago and I had to sleep and go to school in that time!) but this upcoming Easter break will see the rest demolished with glee. (No, not with Glee. Just - no.)
OK. That's enough lyrical waxation. Follow this blog, follow me on twitter, yadda yadda. And I leave you with the theme tune, written by Joss Whedon and performed by the wonderfully-named Sonny Rhodes.
Wikipedia's synopsis tells us that the series is set in the year 2517, after the arrival of humans in a new star system, and follows the adventures of the renegade crew of Serenity, a "Firefly-class" spaceship. The ensemble cast portrays the nine characters who live on Serenity. Whedon pitched the show as "nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things". The show explores the lives of some people who fought on the losing side of a civil war and others who now make a living on the outskirts of the society, as part of the pioneer culture that exists on the fringes of their star system.
So that's a decent summation. But what it doesn't tell you is how brilliant this show is. I mean, incredible. Its colourful, complex, funny, wonderful characters, who speak Whedon's trademark cool-but-unusual style of language - "corpsifying" - inhabit a world which is as familiar as it is original, a quite genius mix of the American West, traditional oriental culture and the classic world of conventional sci-fi, all of which influences are melded into something consistently fascinating. I've only seen 5 episodes so far (come on, the box came 26 hours ago and I had to sleep and go to school in that time!) but this upcoming Easter break will see the rest demolished with glee. (No, not with Glee. Just - no.)
OK. That's enough lyrical waxation. Follow this blog, follow me on twitter, yadda yadda. And I leave you with the theme tune, written by Joss Whedon and performed by the wonderfully-named Sonny Rhodes.
Thursday, 7 April 2011
Superpowers. (BSDA #6)
Today I was having a conversation with a friend which revolved around the age-old question "what superpower would you have"? My answer was, verbatim, "to be able to fly quickly. To get to Texas in like 20 minutes or something." This provoked great hilarity in my colleague because of the seemingly arbitrary nature of that restriction - why not instantly, he said, if any power is available? I didn't have a ready answer to that, because it is in a sense what superpower is considered to mean - the exercise of some power above and beyond conventional laws of physics implies a total freedom of choice as to how to operate and dominance over people without such power.
But does it?, I asked myself later, in a moment of deep and tranquil thought. The constraints of comic book fiction mean that no character is universally powerful; all superpowers fail somewhere. X-ray vision can't see through lead, Pyro in X-Men can only replicate flame rather than actually create it himself and shapeshifters are often forced to change back whether they want to or not. So superpowers in the classical sense are themselves constrained by what Terry Pratchett calls narrativium, the physical requirements necessary for a story to operate within an understandable world.
And this set me thinking. Most people, when asked for what they'd like to have most in the whole world, ask for some mechanism to easily create wealth, or the ability to stop time to allow them more opportunity to do what they enjoy, or a way to influence the emotions of other people to create a positive outcome for themselves. (Yahoo Answers knows all.) It occurs to me that these desires, perhaps manifest in superpowers, relate only to one's current set of values. They're a way of solving the problems we currently face in our lives - not having money, or time, or friends, or a lover; why else are all Marvel superheroes either computer geeks or wealthy businessmen? Surely if the concept of superpower is taken to its actual extreme, then the only useful desire would be to totally remove all of society's barriers to success, so no longer would one have to worry about having enough cash for the latest car, because the production process that created it could be controlled in its minute details by and for you. There would never be any reason to need something, or to exercise some power in order to get it, because a proper superhuman would ensure those barriers to success simply didn't exist.
This is the aim of Dr Faustus in Christopher Marlowe's interpretation of the Faust legend. His ambition on first reading seems pointless and without drive, since he is concerned not with money, nor with love, nor especially with knowledge, but with a totality of power that is quite hard for readers to imagine. He wishes that "all things that move between the quiet poles / Shall be at my command", a desire that is in every way superior to the arbitrary desires in comic book fiction, which seek only to propel the character upwards within pre-existing social structures, rather than rejecting them entirely.
It seems therefore that "what superpower would you have" is a really rather complex question. Our answers illuminate our seeming willingness to accept the arbitrary structures of society, governed ostensibly by competition, so long as we can be seen as atop that particular pile. My laughably pointless restriction of the power to fly seems absurd, but it is no more in contrast to the concept of holding power itself than the notions of conventional superhero literature. Superheroes are in many ways conservative; despite holding, between them at least, the power to reorganise society in its entirety, they as characters, and therefore us as readers, are content with realising only their own goals within the confines of their particular societies. A superpower reflects only the desires of the person who desires it, and by demanding, in our fiction as in our lives, only the power to improve within the social world as it currently exists, rather than to reform and innovate, we are failing ourselves.
There occurs a flaw in this argument - whoever spots it and comments will win an entirely arbitrary prize. Also, FOLLOW please. It's nice to see such shining happy faces.
But does it?, I asked myself later, in a moment of deep and tranquil thought. The constraints of comic book fiction mean that no character is universally powerful; all superpowers fail somewhere. X-ray vision can't see through lead, Pyro in X-Men can only replicate flame rather than actually create it himself and shapeshifters are often forced to change back whether they want to or not. So superpowers in the classical sense are themselves constrained by what Terry Pratchett calls narrativium, the physical requirements necessary for a story to operate within an understandable world.
And this set me thinking. Most people, when asked for what they'd like to have most in the whole world, ask for some mechanism to easily create wealth, or the ability to stop time to allow them more opportunity to do what they enjoy, or a way to influence the emotions of other people to create a positive outcome for themselves. (Yahoo Answers knows all.) It occurs to me that these desires, perhaps manifest in superpowers, relate only to one's current set of values. They're a way of solving the problems we currently face in our lives - not having money, or time, or friends, or a lover; why else are all Marvel superheroes either computer geeks or wealthy businessmen? Surely if the concept of superpower is taken to its actual extreme, then the only useful desire would be to totally remove all of society's barriers to success, so no longer would one have to worry about having enough cash for the latest car, because the production process that created it could be controlled in its minute details by and for you. There would never be any reason to need something, or to exercise some power in order to get it, because a proper superhuman would ensure those barriers to success simply didn't exist.
This is the aim of Dr Faustus in Christopher Marlowe's interpretation of the Faust legend. His ambition on first reading seems pointless and without drive, since he is concerned not with money, nor with love, nor especially with knowledge, but with a totality of power that is quite hard for readers to imagine. He wishes that "all things that move between the quiet poles / Shall be at my command", a desire that is in every way superior to the arbitrary desires in comic book fiction, which seek only to propel the character upwards within pre-existing social structures, rather than rejecting them entirely.
It seems therefore that "what superpower would you have" is a really rather complex question. Our answers illuminate our seeming willingness to accept the arbitrary structures of society, governed ostensibly by competition, so long as we can be seen as atop that particular pile. My laughably pointless restriction of the power to fly seems absurd, but it is no more in contrast to the concept of holding power itself than the notions of conventional superhero literature. Superheroes are in many ways conservative; despite holding, between them at least, the power to reorganise society in its entirety, they as characters, and therefore us as readers, are content with realising only their own goals within the confines of their particular societies. A superpower reflects only the desires of the person who desires it, and by demanding, in our fiction as in our lives, only the power to improve within the social world as it currently exists, rather than to reform and innovate, we are failing ourselves.
There occurs a flaw in this argument - whoever spots it and comments will win an entirely arbitrary prize. Also, FOLLOW please. It's nice to see such shining happy faces.
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