It is rather
difficult to sit on the edge of a second extra bank holiday in as many years in
the realisation that the cause of these long weekends is once again our royal family.
Feelings of guilt wash over me and I get rather uneasy about the whole thing. I
attended a grammar school and on Sundays I went to a CofE church where I
sang in the choir. I enjoy Shakespeare, crosswords, real ale, tea and cake,
cricket and nothing gets me going like a good old fashioned queue (in which I
can discuss at length what the weather might be like at the weekend). All of
these things should make me a prime candidate for a rousing rendition of
Jerusalem this weekend and a toast to her madge but I’m as likely to sign up
for the festivities as I am to put on cassock and surplus again or sign up for
the old boys’ association.
For some time I
have walked a fine line balancing my own sense of patriotism with the
misappropriated Britishness/Englishness associated with intolerance and the
hooliganism of the EDL et al. A few years ago on Bastille Day I stood not far
from the Champs-Elysees among natives and tourists alike to see a great deal of
military hardware, air force flypast and M. Sarkozy waving at me from the back
of an army jeep. Bunting waved in the breeze, crowds cheered and music filled
the air as Paris thronged with excitement and national pride. As I waved back
(mentally ticking off yet another thing from my Francophile checklist) it
struck me that I would never contemplate anything similar in the UK. I mused
that this was because the service personnel, vehicles and weaponry would not be
rolling uninvited into an Afghan village any time soon… then felt rather smug
about how witty and satirical I was.
Enough bragging
about my Wildean humour and long weekends in Paris hanging with Nic and back to
the monarchy/patriotism rant. Arguments for the monarchy pull on tourism and/or
international profile and feature some interesting rhetoric that boils down to
‘she’s the queen, it’s what she does’. It is a well worn road in this argument to
play tourist income against cost to the taxpayer but in an age of austerity and
cutbacks could nearly £40m per year not be better spent? Also the fact that
parts of the royal attractions are unavailable through the year must damage
their earning potential, imagine how much more we could make if QE2 and her
groupies were never in residence! As for international profile I would suggest
that there are few less recognisable faces than Barrack Obama and he doesn’t
feel the need to swan about in a horse-drawn carriage dressed like he’s in panto. A little
distracted now but thinking of tourism and internationally recognisable figures
I’d like to see how much a certain squeaky voiced mouse bring to the US tourist
economy (I’m avoiding the comparisons of ridiculous pageantry, parades,
heteronormacy, failure to represent diversity, gender disparity… you get the
point... and that was me avoiding them!).
What I don’t want
is for people to call me unpatriotic. I am British and very happy to celebrate
what I believe it is to be British. We are the result of years of settlement,
invasion and empire which has given us a rich legacy of culture, language and
history that is inherently multi-cultural. So the purpose of my diatribe
becomes clear; we can wipe the slate clean, abolish the monarchy and in such a
clear stroke reclaim patriotism from those who would co-opt it for intolerance,
Islamophobia and violent racism. An antiquated institution is not what we need to take us into our bright future. So this weekend I will raise a pint of
German lager, not to the Teutonic ancestors of our head of state but to dreams
of revolution and to celebrate the Britain I know we can all enjoy.
Cue
Land of Hope and Glory The Sex Pistols…
