70
years on the throne are truly remarkable. Unsurprisingly, people up and down
the country poured into the streets to celebrate the anniversary of Queen
Elizabeth II over four days from 2 to 5 June. Houses were decorated with Union Jacks and red-white-blue bunting,
thousands of street parties organised across the country. While many of my
left-wing British friends fled in horror either abroad or to some hidden place
in the countryside to escape it all, I happily stayed back and joined in. After
all, what can possibly be wrong with neighbourhoods coming together and celebrating
jointly? This was not the moment to engage in critical discussions about
unelected Heads of State or the virtues of Republics, I thought. It should not
take long, however, before the darker undersides revealed themselves.
Trooping
the Colour on the Thursday was the first main event of the bank holiday
festivities. As announced on the news, the responsible regiment was the 1st
Battalion Irish Guards, that is ‘the regiment which was established in 1900 in
honour of the Irish soldiers, who had fought in the second Boer War’.
Nevertheless, while the reason for the regiment’s establishment was reported,
there was no comment about why British regiments fought in South Africa in the
first place, nor were the British concentration camps mentioned, in which more
than 48000 people had perished (Fransjohan
Pretorius 2019).
Throughout
the festivities, new honours were announced. Distinguished services to the
community were rewarded with CBEs (Commander of the British Empire), OBEs
(Officer of the Order of the British Empire) and MBEs (Member of the Order of
the British Empire). British society does not see any problems with linking these awards to the Empire. What became apparent is that this is a country and a
people, which have never confronted the atrocities of their imperial past, not
only in South Africa, but also as late as the 1950s and the savage suppression
of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya (The Guardian, 18
August 2016).
The final straw on Thursday’s news after the extensive coverage of Trooping the Colour was the brief announcement that several people in migrant detention centres had gone on hunger strike in protest over their threatened deportation to Rwanda. While celebrating its monarch, the country was preparing one of its most heinous anti-migration policies yet (The Guardian, 2 June 2022).
Academics
in Britain and abroad have revealed the brutal reality of Empire. Nevertheless,
little has reached popular common sense. I am reminded that both my children
went through full school education in the UK without discussing once the
realities of British Empire in History classes. The Tudors and Henry VIII with
his six wives featured prominently on the curriculum a number of times, while
the Empire, if mentioned at all, was treated as part of a proud history
culminating in the World War II victory over Nazi Germany.
The implications of not confronting one's own past for the present and the future are enormous. If the oppression of non-white people in the colonies in the past is not confronted critically, we should not be surprised about the deeply institutionalised racism permeating British society today.
Finally, this does question the role of the monarchy after all. The problem is not so
much the Queen or other members of the royal family, whatever their personal virtues
or shortcomings might be. The problem is not the massive private wealth, the
royal family has accumulated over time. There are many billionaires with similar
unjust wealth levels. The problem is the function of the monarchy as an
institution, which precisely underpins and maintains this rosy picture of Britain’s
imperial past. As long as the monarchy is maintained, it is difficult to see
how the UK can confront the Empire’s past atrocities and its deeply entrenched,
institutional racism today.
Andreas Bieler
Personal website: http://andreasbieler.net
12 June 2022
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