The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.60/No.33           September 23, 1996 
 
 
UK: Who Will Succeed The Queen?  

BY JONATHAN SILBERMAN

LONDON - History doesn't move in measured steps. Social development is uneven while nations combine the most modern forms of technology and production with political institutions and social relations that are hangovers from previous societies.

One consequence of this law of uneven and combined development is that on the eve of the 21st century in Britain, birthplace of modern capitalism, a struggle has been joined within the bourgeoisie over the succession to the Crown.

The opening salvos were fired at the end of last year by Diana, the former wife of heir to the throne, Prince Charles. Millions around the world watched as Diana said in a high profile television interview that the monarchy had become distanced from ordinary people and that her then husband should not be king. A procession of ruling class figures and members of parliament lined up to express their backing for Diana.

Charles's reply was to press for divorce, now granted. At the end of August, Buckingham Palace publicly threw into the ring the Queen's backing for her son. The head of state, it was announced, backs a number of changes to the monarchy that have already been floated by Charles. These include financing the monarchy entirely from Crown Estate revenues - income from agricultural, urban and marine estates owned by the Queen; disestablishing the Church of England; repealing the ban against heirs to the throne marrying Roman Catholics; allowing the first-born child of a monarch to succeed the throne irrespective of sex; and limiting the number of "royals" who carry out public activities to the monarch's most immediate family.

Newspapers led with the story. TV and radio news and magazine programs turned over hours of broadcasting time to discussing the leak in which it was revealed that Downing Street and Anthony Blair, leader of "Her Majesty's Opposition" (that is the British Labor Party), had been fully involved in the discussions. Prime minister John Major is said to have given "enthusiastic backing" to the meetings.

It is not difficult to find personal motives in the struggle between Charles and Diana. Charles aspires to the wealth, status, and power that succession would bring. Diana likewise prefers the prospect of being the loving mother of King William rather than the estranged wife of King Charles.

More important is the reason why this struggle draws in such weighty ruling class forces: their desire to preserve the constitutional monarchy as the form of state to defend their class rule in the face of the monarchy's most severe crisis in 300 years. Divided they may be as to which future monarch gives them the best shot, but united they are that it's in British capitalism's best interests to preserve the United Kingdom and all its fundamental trappings. The monarchy is the only institution that can keep the United Kingdom united today. In the choppy waters of the class struggle at the end of the 20th century, the British rulers want to safeguard the crown as a political instrument.

These have served the rulers well since the first King Charles and his wife were crushed by the national revolution of the 17th century. Powerful enough to sever the King's head in 1649, the bourgeois revolution was not strong enough to prevent the monarchy's restoration 40 years later. The web of institutions that codified the compromise between the rising capitalist class and declining aristocracy - monarchy, a parliament including the House of Lords, bloated state bureaucracy, established church, United Kingdom - evolved in a relatively stable way over the decades and centuries of the ascendancy of British imperialism.

English parliamentarism was not born on the River Thames by a peaceful evolution but by violent revolution. But thanks to England's dominant world position the inner contradictions were softened. The abundance of wealth the ruling class acquired through exploitation of the toilers on much of the globe acted as a powerful buffer to social contradictions. Conservatism became inbred into the moral fibre of the capitalist class.

If the most decisive sections of the British ruling class are continuing this conservative clinging to tried and trusted forms of rule, the objective basis for their elasticity has long-since passed. The British crisis is endemic. The state form is fracturing along its weakest, that is national, seams. The Irish insurgency is unbroken. A new rise of the Scottish independence struggle has started. At best, the rulers hope that the monarchy can continue to bind together this edifice. Failing that, they hope that the monarchy, an institution with long historical roots, can be used should the government be threatened by serious class struggle.

That's why the struggle for succession is taken so seriously. But less and less can they draw working people into this exercise. The crisis of British state forms is hidden only by the absence of major social struggles, and these can't be postponed forever.  
 
 
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