This is the third year that Republic monarchy abolition campaigners have staged an afternoon of speeches and music in Trafalgar Square. This time they also marched down The Mall to the gates of Buckingham Palace with their 15 metre-long model dinosaur ‘Chuck The Rex’.
After the arrest of the King’s brother, Andrew Mountbatten, the Royal Family is facing plummeting public support. Although much of their funding is opaque and the Royals are currently excluded from Freedom of Information law, researchers estimate they cost the taxpayer around half a billion pounds a year.
Republic are calling for an end to royal secrecy, a democratic alternative such as an elected head of state, and an end to the power and privilege that this institution supports.
The London protest was twinned with simultaneous events in Cardiff and Edinburgh and comes at a time the opinion polls fairly consistently show support has dropped below 50% with around a third of the public calling for abolition. In Trafalgar Square, Republic’s CEO Graham Smith told the crowd that soon after the campaign had announced a plan to privately prosecute Andrew, he was stripped of his titles, and just ten days after Graham had delivered copies of relevant Epstein file documents to the police, he was arrested, and the Palace commented for the first time that they would support a police investigation. He warned that in the absence of justice, Republic would still be considering a private action.
In response to the fact that the Royals paid £12 million to Virginia Giuffre, whom Andrew still claimed he had never even met, campaigners have been regularly turning up across the country at Royal Events bearing placards and chanting the question “What did you know?”
The event in Trafalgar Square included video messages of support from actor Jassa Ahluwalia and author Otto English, MPs Clive Lewis and Sian Berry and MSP Patrick Harvie and musicians The Proclaimers, with speakers including former MP and author Norman Baker, writer/comedians Eeshan Akbar, Robin Ince and Sooz Kempner, broadcaster Narinder Kaur, and activists Robin Wells (Fossil Free London), Kelechi Okafor and Peter Tatchell. Music was provided by hardcore folk band Nasty Fishmonger and Roots Soul artist Teshay Makeda.
Narinder Kaur commented that no monarch has ever actually apologised for the massacre of civilians in Punjab India during colonisation, and the Royal Family still holds on to the Kohinoor Diamond and many other stolen gems from that dark period of British history. She said that Britain aspires to being accountable and democratic, and so as a patriot is it right to call for an apology and the return of stolen loot.
Norman Baker has consistently exposed the relentless greed of the Royals in his research and writing. He asked how it is that George III was bankrupt in 1760, but Charles is now personally worth nearly £2 billion. After lobbying from Charles, the Civil List was abolished in 2011, replaced by the Sovereign Grant. In 2011 the Royals were given £7.9 million – this years’ grant amounted to £132.1 million, a 1670% increase in just 15 years.
Baker also spoke about the Royal Duchies – very opaque land ownership that brings in £20 million a year to William and Charles without corporation or capital gains tax. The Duchy of Cornwall charges the NHS nearly a million pounds a year to park ambulances. It rents parts of Dartmoor to the UK Army and charges the Navy for moorings. It even charges rent on a Scout House. Since taking over, William has invited investment bankers and property developers on to the board of his Duchy.
When the Queen died, Charles paid no inheritance tax on the private estate the Queen left him, which included half a billion pound jewel collection, a hundred million pound stamp collection, Monet paintings and Fabergé eggs. Unlike politicians who are required to declare gifts, the Royal Family often keep gifts given to them while “working” as state representatives.
Over the past year, Republic have been reaching out to other groups with the realisation that the same system of power and privilege connects many sorts of social justice struggles. In her speech, Fossil Free London’s Robin Wells observed that a small number of very rich, powerful and privileged (mostly) men, are hugely disproportionately responsible for carbon emissions, plundering extractivism, and war. While inequality worsens and billionaires prosper, our food, energy and housing costs are soaring, and the Royals are a part of that privileged system that needs dismantling.
Poet and comedian Robin Ince reminded the crowd that the Royals are no strangers to child abuse, including of course Charles’ close friend Jimmy Saville, the involvement of Lord Mountbatten in India and the Kincora Boys’ Home, rapist Laurens van der Post, and Bishop Peter Ball, whom the Palace asked the authorities to ‘please treat him kindly’ after his arrest for serial paedophilia.
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Police whistleblower Issy Vine is used to confronting and exposing power, and she highlighted the lack of scrutiny and accountability that power structures rely on, with the Royals at the pinnacle of that system. She noted that the Sovereign Grant rose by £40 million this year, and she undermined the notion that they bring in money through tourism by pointing out that France earns a lot more. Sooz Kempner noted that people still visit the pyramids even though the Pharoahs have been dead for thousands of years. People come here for our culture, our museums, and history and would still do so without a monarchy, and anyway, a system is not more moral just because it is profitable.
The fact that the Royal Family paid money to a victim of child sexual abuse sends out a deeply disturbing message to young women. This is not ‘public service’, it is self-serving hypocrisy.
According to human rights activist Peter Tatchell, the Royals own 23 houses and palaces between them, with 700 servants, including a person who squeezes toothpaste onto King Charles’ toothbrush! He echoed the call for accountability and transparency, on the basis that the monarchy claims to be a public service, but even MPs are not allowed to ask questions about them. No other public servant gains power through inheritance, which itself is a racist construct, simply because for the foreseeable future no Black or Asian British citizen could ever be our Head of State.
Before the march to the palace gates with ‘Chuck The Rex’, Graham Smith reminded us that a monarchy asks us to be spectators, but a Republic wants us to be participants.
Democracy should not stop at the gates of Buckingham Palace – it should go right to the top.
