9 May 2013

"What is a Republic?"

"My government will continue to make the case for Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom." I'm sure the Tory royalists in the House of Lords, always more Bourbon than the Bourbons, squirmed with pleasure as the Queen read this section of her speech in Westminster today.

Although just a technically correct designation of the Westminster government, one can't help but feel that the hand that framed the speech took especial care to ensure this line read my government. Salmond, the ardent royalist swain, has done his dardnest to eliminate the monarchy as a wedge issue in the campaign, but somehow you doubt that she is a natural ally of those of us who favour Scottish independence. The delivery was, as always, bone dry but one might detect a small twinkle in the royal eye. I doubt they appreciated that line in Bute House.

Historical mischief makers like to recall an incident from Maximilien Robespierre's childhood, imputing to it a deep biographical significance. While a student in Paris' Lycée Louis-le-Grand in 1775, the future Incorruptible was selected to offer Latin greetings to the newly-crowned French monarch, Louis XVI. Rain pelting down, the King kept to his carriage, leaving the drookit Robespierre kneeling in the Parisian muck. 

After scant acknowledgement of the schoolboy's Latin peroration, the regal carriage scudded off. Leaving behind it, you imagine, both a sense of anticlimax and of cloying dampness. Over the years, hostile biographers have suggested that Robespierre boxed away this slight in his belly, wreaking his future small-minded vengeance for the humiliation by voting for the death of the French monarch in 1793.  Thanks to Baroness Orczy and Thomas Carlyle and others, posterity has handed down to us a vision of this man as an inveterate republican and a patriotic shortener of kings. Interestingly, however, Robespierre's views on the role of a monarch in a republican constitution were rather more nuanced than the decisive, dividing logic of the guillotine's blade. "What is a republic?", he asked.

"I have been accused, in the midst of the Assembly, of being a republican - too great an honour, for I am not. If I had been accused of being monarchist, I would have been dishonoured, for I am not that either. I would first like to point out that for many people the words "republic" and "monarchy" are entirely without meaning. The word "republic" does not signify any particular form of government, it belongs to any government of free men who have a patrie. Now, one may be free with a monarch, as with a senate. What is the present French constitution? It is a republic with a monarch. It is therefore neither monarchy nor republic, it is both one and the other." Quoted in Marisa Linton "Robespierre's political principles" (1999) in C Hayden and W Doyle (eds) Robespierre, 45.

This all changed after King Louis' monstrously inept attempt to flee the country, culminating in the monarch's execution in Paris after his trial before the French National Convention. When I was somewhat younger, I was more of a razor-edged Republican myself, all for deposing the British monarchy, impatient with its stuffy air of hierarchy - and its various contemptible hangers on, stuffed tabards and sundry gong-seekers, creeps and toadies. The foppery of honours - in particular knighthoods and peerages - still irritate me with the same intensity. I attach similar suspicions to any great state occasions, with their beanpole solemnity and gaudy livery, shuffling processions and feudal atmosphere and eccentric collections of toy soldiers, Grooms of the Stool, Keeper of Her Majesty's Butter Beans. One BBC commentator suggested that today's state opening of Westminster was important because it "reflects our values" as a people. I despair, and in such moments, my inner Jacobin wrecker can re-emerge.

But what is a Republic? As was his usual wont, the Incorruptible was one for searching hearts and minds, concerned with public manners and civic virtue, rather than emphasising ways in which formal political structures determine, or debauch the character of a country. Up to a point, I'd agree. Despite the First Minister's enthusiasm for the House of Windsor, it is undeniable that there is a republican strain in the SNP, much of which is distinctly associated with antipathies towards the British Establishment, of which the Monarchy is taken to be an elbematic character.  Even the wistful, recalling Romanticism of calling Lizzie "Queen of Scots" - a pose first adopted, I think, by David Steel as Presiding Officer at the opening of the Parliament in 1999 and fondly perpetuated since by Salmond and others - cannot efface such cherished hostilities.

Then there are also folk of a more virulently egalitarian strain, whose objections to the monarchy rest, not on a reaction to High Britannic flummery, but the claim that royalty and nobility perpetuates structures of class hierarchy, sustaining a patrician elite.  An elected president cannot make subjects of her people.  At least that's the theory.

I'm conscious, however, that on your travels in Europe, you encounter many monarchical curiosities, many of them dating from the period after Robespierre suffered the complete fracture of his own neck at the hands of Monsieur de Paris, and Napoleon began his European adventures. Take the Netherlands. Their first King was Napoleon's brother, Louis and the monarchy in its current form - with some disruptions - dates from the 1800s. Anyone who has been in the Netherlands in April cannot but remark on the amazing popularity and public display of the Orange-festooned Dutch celebration of their Koninginnedag.  Although one should be cautious about deducing attitudes towards monarchy and its influence on society from this public debauch, the roiling the sea of orange it hardly smacks of a society whose class divisions are exacerbated by the residents of the Koninklijk Paleis in Amsterdam.

A populist monarchy, and a country governed by a republican spirit, need not be incompatible.  For that matter, think of the Scandinavian monarchies, Norway, Denmark and Sweden (although Finland is a Republic, with an elected president). Sweden's furnishes us with one of the most ironic accidents of history. The House of Bernadotte still rules, owing their name to Napoleon's scheming and disgruntled Gascon Marschal Jean-Baptiste, who eventually waged war on his former master. The interest of these examples, in part, is that many Scottish nationalists deeply antipathetic to monarchy would look to Nordic inspiration for their independent Scotland, in particular the egalitarianism and social-democracy often associated with the politics of those nations.

Although events like the Queen's Speech still flash me the scarlet, like Robespierre, I find myself wondering, what is a Republic?

13 comments :

  1. The Republic, as an ideal, is only approachable, not fully attainable. It is perfectly conceivable that a state with a nominal monarch - i.e. some dribbling old duffer in a stupid dress who makes speeches on public occassions - be more republican in character than a state which deposes its monarchy and renames itself as the People's Republic of Whatever. See Communism, passim.

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    1. Always becoming but never being! I dare say that the Scottish People's Supreme Soviet would have dowdier costumes.

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  2. I absolutely adore the Bernadotte example. The story goes that he had no hand in his election to the monarchy, just the fortune of having ardent Napoleonic allies in the Swedish Riksdag. Napoleon, in turn, laughed out loud when he heard of his appointment but may have regretted that when the Swedes supplied the Prussian forces that eventually overwhelmed the French at Leipzig.

    I think you speak to an intriguing paradox at the heart of Scottish Nationalism, one of many paradoxes that speak to the difficulties of big-tent politics. Interestingly, I think Salmond is closer to Robespierre's definition of republican than the ardent republicans in his own party would ever allow. Populist government under a benign monarch sounds exactly like what the Maximum Eck desires.

    And he has precedent, as I know you know. Limited monarchy defined much of the anti-Union rhetoric in the days before 1707 (which is interesting considering Queen Anne was hardly an absolutist) and I think Eck draws on that spiritually when considering a Scottish approach to monarchy. He certainly rejects the Westminster paradigm which imbues all sovereignty in the hereditary trappings of state, including the House of Lords. But I think he would nonetheless enjoy the Opening of Parliament along civil, Scots lines, relish discussing the King/Queen of Scots (as opposed to Scotland) and be in favour of things like knighthoods as a measure of recognition, rather than as a way to confer political power.

    In that sense, we might liken Eck's royalism to Orleanists rather than Robespierrans, more befitting the 1830s than the 1790s. Just one historian's suggestion, of course.

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    1. I await the happy hour, when Salmond is questioned by a back-bench Labour MSP: "To ask the First Minister whether he is a closet Orelanist?" I'd love to hear Dennis Canavan's analysis of that one! "Bourbon splits in YesScotland: friction in the cadet branch..."

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  3. Since the Queen has nailed her colours firmly in the No camp what purpose will she serve in an independent Scotland?

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    1. In fairness to auld Liz, as a constitutional monarch, she is obliged to go through the ridiculous ceremony of droning out "her" government's programme. I suppose she might have objected to this particular sentence, but I'm sure it reflects her own views. Without naming names, I recently had the curious experience of having dinner sat beside one of Her Majesty's senior household (you know the sort of character, worldly, ex-military, pleasant and a bit reactionary). Imagine my shock to discover that he regarded Scottish independence as an unlikely and unsupportable adventure...

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    2. I've met a few - entirely affable in their concrete mindset. I hope you passed the port over the water?

      That apart I sense we are being set up for the Queens 'retirement' immediately prior to the referendum. Britannia ruling the air waves and all that.

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    3. Ha! If the old fellow didn't take much to Jacobinism, just think what Jacobitism would have done to his humour...

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  4. Craig:

    'But I think he would nonetheless enjoy the Opening of Parliament along civil, Scots lines, relish discussing the King/Queen of Scots (as opposed to Scotland) and be in favour of things like knighthoods as a measure of recognition, rather than as a way to confer political power.'

    I remember Salmond on Radio Scotland after we beat France enthusing about how he was going to honour the Scottish team in a 'democratic' Scots fashion - make them 'Guardians of Scotland' perhaps. Of course we got beat by Italy next game and no more has been heard of 'Guardians of Scotland'.

    LPW the encounter between the boy Robespierre and Louis was an enthralling one, strangely mirrored much later when Louis was taken by coach to execution - as the coach passed Robespierre's residence he led a wee girl away from the window saying that something was happening 'which you should not see'.

    Am with that old Jacobite Tory Dr Johnson on forms of government!



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    1. Robespierre's attitude to the death penalty is perhaps one of the most elusive and confusing features of his personality. While your Scarlet Pimpernel invariably depicts him as a cold-blooded villain who sublimated his sexual excitement into having his enemies decapitated, the reality is, if anything, more curious. Having argued against the death penalty, he has become identified with its Terrifying use. I suppose he may have felt that La Belle France was subject to fundamental threats to its integrity and survival, and so extraordinary capital measures were justified, to defend the Republic from its very real foes. A fascinating character. I still find him compelling, despite himself, and despite the fact that I'm a rather more mirthful, irreverent and worldly character myself and would have been more at home among the Cordeliers. The Incorruptible may not have approved.

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  5. Surely a popular monarchy and a republican spirit are fundamentally incompatable - or rather, they are only compatable via a rather dangerous leap of the imagination ie the monarch would be elected by a landslide if s/he ever was ever obliged to stand for election. A "popular" monarchy seems to be democracy without the electorate.

    If the Queen is popular, it is only because she tries to resemble a completely apolitical and inconspicuous figure. Not a very inspiring state of affairs if the most "popular" politician (and the Queen is inevitably a politician) is the one who doesn't say or do anything.

    What is a republic? A republic is surely a place where the people - ie the public - make decisions about their own destiny. These decisions should include things like who and what their head of state is.

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    1. Tychy,

      Left to my own whims and devices, most of the time I'd agree with your analysis. I've always found Robespierre's question provoking, which is part of the reason I thought it'd be interesting to air it here, given the ongoing controversy about an independent Scotland's head of state, both within the SNP, and in the broader pro-indy movement. The last Irish presidential election was interesting on that score. In some sense, the opportunity to pick a candidate also seemed (to this external observer!) an interesting chance to re-evaluate your national values, and question what the uniting features of your nation ought to be. At the time, I felt a squirm of jealousy. No such opportunities for national self-reflection for us, doomed to perpetuity under an immoveable, unalterable, undying Queen Liz.

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  6. Ouch! - sorry, "incompatible."

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