Having been subjected to the whole palaver of the “will & kate” wedding, and also listening currently to some lectures on the US and French revolutions, I’m not exactly in a favourable mood to royalty at the moment, so had mixed feelings about the Queen’s visit to Ireland.
First of all let me make clear that I don’t harbor a grudge against the British (specifically the English) , since they are not individually responsible for the previous acts of their country, nor have I any issue with Britain itself, since while as an enduring entity it does have ownership of prior deeds, it has not only stopped it’s policies against us, but does and has done many things for our benefit (stopping the Nazis being the most notable, while we could cower in protected neutrality).
So if this was a state visit, by the Prime Minister, then I would consider it nothing but a good thing, a normal act between neighbours. The problem is, as Sir Humphrey might say, a question of hats, specifically a pointy metal one. Although the Queen is the head of state, she also is the living embodiment and defender of the institution of British Royalty. Now while royals from anywhere will always get my goat up, and might be welcomed as irrelevant wasters but still treated as guests, a lot of the worst things that happened in Ireland could be blamed more on the British royals than the British state. Not the invasions, or occupation, or taking of resources, or even the lasses faire cruelty in the famine, which could have been done by any state with any government, but the anti-catholic measures which were a direct result of the English crown wanting to remain protestant, and which inflicted the most objectionable hardships on Ireland, and sowed the seeds for a lot of the sectarian troubles that have racked the land ever since.
Since for most of our history ,catholic and Irish were pretty much synonymous, then I think the royal family, as distinct from the British state, have a specific debt and guilt when it comes to Ireland, which is why I think there’s something wrong about the Queen’s visit, unless it’s accompanied by acts of apology not for the acts of Britain, but the ideology of the crown that drove those acts. The problem is, there has been to my knowledge no symbolic renunciation of that ideology, and until there is I find it very out of place that the defender of that tradition, should lay a wreath for those who fought (and would still fight) against that tradition. Perhaps a slightly stretched analogy would be if a German chancellor were to lay a wreath at the cenotaph, without Germany having acknowledged that it was in the wrong in WWII. It’s not that countries can’t honour each other’s dead – I see no problem in paying tribute to dead german soldiers, since even though they fought for an evil cause, in most cases they were just swept along by that cause. But if the cause is not denounced, then the tribute is meaningless - the crown is on the one hand honouring people killed , but since the reasons behind the killing are not dealt with, in principle they’d be killed again if necessary, which defeats the purpose of it.
No one seems to mention that the hypocrisy with having the head of an insitution which explicitly discriminates against catholics, visit a catholic country, and express "sympathy" with the problems her insitution caused for them through said discrimination.
Ultimately all that’s needed is a symbolic act of contrition and denunciation of the tradition that caused ireland’s problems, but none seems forthcoming. On the contrary , the British Royalty preserves the rule that forbids a catholic ascending to the throne, then it would seem that the tradition lives on unchanged.
Of course there is pragmatism too, and in principle it is good and important that Britain and Ireland can focus on current and future partnership, and base our relation on that and not harking back to the unchangeable grievances of the past, and since that was probably the intention of the whole visit then there is a lot to be said for it. But if the Queen, who people praise always for handling things so well, and being so dignified etc. etc. really was dedicated to that mission, then surely she could make some form of apology for the 2nd institution she represents? Royals want to inherit by birth the rights and powers of the predecessors, but that means they also inherit their sins and responsibilities. Hat’s off to the queen, but only if she acknowledges the one she’s wearing.
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