** FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 758 31 January 18 REGICIDE DAY

KING CHARLES I WAS EXECUTED BY HIS SUBJECTS. DOES QUEEN ELIZABETH II HAS ANYTHING TO FEAR?
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‘Happy Regicide Day, comrades. We did it once, we can do it again’, gleefully tweeted Liverpool Uni Labour students. A bloodthirsty sentiment evoked by the anniversary of King Charles I’s execution, 369 years ago. Alas, as The Sun newspaper denounced them (and, you bet, as the panicky Labour leadership told them off), the tweeters instantly chickened out, groveled and abjectly apologised. Not the sternest revolutionary material, are they?

The idea of nonagenarian Queen Elizabeth II stumbling up to the scaffold to have her head chopped off, amidst a ribald radical crowd shouting ‘Death to the tyrant!’ is comical. Many sins can be imputed to the Queen but they aren’t any the Left would resent. She obediently signed all the ‘liberal’ Acts of Parliament her Prime Ministers asked her to. From the law legalising abortion to the ordination of women and to gay marriage. Impeccable ‘progressive’ causes. ‘I hate the Queen’ a FB friend once emoted, signifying his reactionary stance. Is it then the Far Right that might cheer at Elizabeth’s execution? That would be most odd.

Yet till recently men of the Left railed against the monarchy. Famous playwright and ‘angry young man’ John Osborne compared the British monarchy unfavorably with the Papacy. The latter at least represented ‘a moral system, however detestable’. Instead, the Royal family was an imposture. It had become a mere ‘substitute for values’. ‘The last circus of a civilisation that has lost faith in itself’. As a symbol, the monarchy was dead. ‘A gold filling in a mouthful of decay’, he ferociously damned it. A lesser intellectual voice, Sex Pistols’ punk rock band singer Johnny Rotten, mounted an assault on the young Elizabeth with his single ‘God Save the Queen’. Really meaning ‘May God NOT save her’, because she embodied a ‘fascist regime’ and was not ‘a human being’. Old age has mellowed the rebel rocker, however. Last year he averred he will sorely miss the Queen when she dies, he loves the royal pageantry and all that gaudy tourist stuff. Astonishing!

There are no votes in republicanism or bashing the Queen. That’s why PM in waiting Jeremy Corbyn rushed to reprimand the student comrades, despite his being an avowed republican. Is that an argument for revolution, for bypassing formal democracy, I wonder? Charles I was not deposed after an election but following a bloody civil war. Depending on your allegiance, his trial can be judged either as grossly illegal – Charles was the Lord’s Anointed, the people’s liege monarch – or as an act of popular justice. Bradshaw, the accuser, charged the King with having made war on his subjects. He made a crucial point when he said that: ‘There is a contract and a bargain made between the King and his people...’ By engaging in ruthless civil war Charles Stuart had broken the contract. He had not been the protector but the destroyer of England. So the sentence, right or wrong, conveyed revolutionary justice, achieved, note, not by a popular vote but by the force of the triumphant Roundhead
army.

Charles could have saved his head, has he been willing to give up the Church of England. That is, the episcopal system of church government, which he believed to be of divine origins. Dying for bishops! Those smug, time-serving sods! Could anything be more inane? Still, the King was a devout Anglican, a Christian who died forgiving his enemies and asking God that his blood would not be on his enemies. The Anglican High Church party thereafter has considered him a Saint. A special Order of Service to commemorate him was inserted in the Book of Common Prayer and every year a monarchist body holds a memorial service for Charles in Whitehall. All very quaint and edifying but without the slightest impact or meaning on contemporary, ungodly English society. In that sense the old enemies, both Puritans and High Anglicans, are as dead as a dodo

Does the Queen matter, from any radical, revolutionary perspective? Or is the monarch like the Scandinavian kings, just crowned presidents, without any influence or significance? The answer is that the Crown matters. The Royal family are not just figureheads. They wield considerable influence. An important clique. Sitting at the heart of Britain’s entrenched system of power and privilege. The proof? If anyone, person or entity, is perceived by the secret services to pose a threat to the Royals, they would be dealt with. Like Princess Diana, perhaps? (What happened to the two ‘killer’ tapes inside a certain mahogany box Diana handled? Insiders will get this reference…) As we say in Italian: ‘A buon intenditor, poche parole’.

John Osborne was wrong. The British monarchy is not dead. The Establishment and the media, with the Royals’ self-interested complicity, make sure it stays alive, in the forefront of the popular consciousness. They skilfully project the images of William, Kate and the two cute little brats, George and Charlotte. (A third is in the offing. More hokum ahead). As to that shallow social climber, Meghan, she is the real ace up the Royal family’s sleeve. Bringing freshness, diversity and brash transatlantic openness to the stale Aryan clique. A real PR scoop. Very shrewd move, methinks, regardless of the poor carrot-headed dupe of her fiancé’.

The Liverpool Uni comrades are a risible, pathetic bunch. Until the monarchy is confronted by enemies like them, it has nothing to fear. The Queen can sleep soundly. The revolution’s flag is at half-mast.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

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