Self-Evident Truths

The Jubilee weekend is over, the boats are back in dock, the carriage is back in storage and the royal family have gone back home. Over the weekend millions around the country and commonwealth watched the Queen as she was paraded round to celebrate 60 years on the throne and many proudly sang the national anthem.  People proudly sang ‘God Save the Queen’, beaming with pride. Maybe they missed the crucial lyric. Maybe they chose to ignore the plea that the monarch “Long may reign over us”. I try and excuse these people because I cannot imagine how millions of people can ask to be enslaved and praise their so called ruler. The Jubilee was not a time for celebration, but a time for mourning.

In 1776 Thomas Jefferson proudly wrote that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”. These immortal words are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, a document which removed from the citizens of the American colonies the shackles of the British monarchy. These words were written 236 years ago, so why over two centuries later does the United Kingdom still have a head of state based on a hereditary monarchy. Elizabeth Windsor is my equal, not my superior. I am no one’s slave; she is not my ruler.  Why am I meant to accept the authority of one 86 year old woman to rule over me, and to accept that after she dies her son will rule me and his son and that all my descendants will always be ruled by their descendants? My descendants could be great writers, academics, scientists and politicians. They could win Nobel prizes or Oscars; travel to space or discover the cure for cancer. Yet I am meant to praise the fact that no matter what greatness they achieve they will the slaves of the Windsor’s and have to rejoice in their forced servitude. I will not. I am an equal to all human beings and I should be treated as such, not patronised as a weaker mortal who should bask in the glory of a superior monarch. The monarchy enforces an ancient belief that has no place in modern society.

Mrs Windsor did not become head of state because she is a woman of great wisdom, knowledge or ability to govern. She became head of state because in 1714 Georg Ludwig, a German Duke and Elector in the Holy Roman Empire, travelled to Britain to claim the throne after the death of Queen Anne.  My great great grandfather was a fisherman in Scotland, does this make me a great fisherman? My grandfather was a navigator in the RAF during the Berlin Airlift, does the mean I could successfully navigate a plane to Berlin?  If you look at other heads of state they are there because they were great lawyers, politicians and academics, not because centuries ago an ancestor used Machiavellian politics to gain power. No one is made superior because of the acts of an ancestor, yet this is the basis of the monarchy. 

The monarchy is a archaic institution, a last remnant of the ancien regime and the concert of Europe. But those days are past. The people of Europe cried out for democracy and after great struggles achieved it, yet we are left with a hereditary head of state.  The right to rule based on your family suffocates democracy and roots the British political system in the Dark Ages.

The silver Jubilee of Elizabeth Windsor highlights the need for an elected head of state in the United Kingdom. We should not rejoice at having someone to “reign over us” but demand equality, fight for freedom and cry out for democracy. It is time for the people of this sceptred isle to have the unalienable right to chose an equal to be head of state; a representative of the people not a ruler. I long for the day the monarchy will fall and Britain will finally emerge into a full democracy.