Britain is as profoundly monarchical as Ireland is profoundly republican, writes VERNON BOGDANOR
THE CENTRAL argument for constitutional monarchy is that it yields a head of state above politics. The queen, almost alone in Britain, has no partisan history. Therefore she can act as head of the nation as well as head of state – and also as head of the multinational kingdom that Britain has, with devolution, now become.
The queen, after all, is neither English nor Scottish, neither Welsh nor Northern Irish. Belonging to none of the nationalities, she can belong to all. A president would inevitably come from one of the nationalities comprising the United Kingdom, and probably from the dominant one, England. The queen, however, is uniquely able to represent Britain to itself. Her success derives from her intuitive understanding of the soul of the British people.
Of course, a republican head of state can also represent the whole country – Mary Robinson is a good example. But there is a limited number of the great and the good, and an even more limited number of these who will stand for and secure popular election. An elected head of state generally needs endorsement by a political party and is often a retired politician, sometimes a highly controversial one such as Éamon de Valera. But the motives of politicians are always suspect.
When the queen visited Ireland last year she said that, with the wisdom of hindsight, some things done by the British in Ireland would have been better done differently or not done at all. No one questioned her sincerity. Had the same sentiments been expressed by, for example, Tony Blair or John Major, they might have elicited a more cynical response.
The British monarchy is also an international monarchy. The queen, as well as being head of state in Britain, is head of state of 15 other countries, including Canada, Australia and New Zealand, although in these countries almost all of her constitutional functions are carried out by governor-generals. The queen is also head of the Commonwealth, a voluntary grouping of 54 member states, nearly one-third of the world’s population, the vast majority of which were members of the British empire. This is a purely symbolic position entailing no constitutional duties. But it enables Britain to punch above its weight in international affairs.
Ireland, of course, has chosen a different path. When, in 1921, Lloyd George met de Valera, he tried to convince him that “republic” was not a Gaelic concept. He did not succeed.
De Valera’s pro-Treaty opponents were, admittedly, prepared to accept the monarchy; but, after Fianna Fáil came to power in 1932, de Valera deliberately devalued the governor-generalship by appointing a Dublin grocer to the post. In 1937 he took advantage of the abdication crisis in Britain to institute “external association” with the empire; while in 1949, a Fine Gael government withdrew from the Commonwealth, a step de Valera himself might not have taken.
It was, ironically, at just this time, in 1949, that a formula was found enabling India to remain, as a republic, within the Commonwealth, by acknowledging George VI as head of the Commonwealth. Unlike Australia, Canada and New Zealand, neither India nor Ireland were colonies of settlement. They saw themselves instead as subjects of an imperial conqueror. The crown, Irish prime minister John A Costello declared in 1948, “was a symbol of a political and religious ascendancy and became anathema to the vast majority of the Irish people. The bitter facts of history have inevitably prevented our people from having that outlook which the people of the great self-governing members of the British Commonwealth of Nations may have for the crown as their traditional link”. Different forms of government suit different countries; and Britain is as profoundly monarchical as Ireland is profoundly republican. Our different systems are a product of our different histories. The duke of Edinburgh declared some years ago that a republic was a “perfectly reasonable alternative” to a monarchy and that the monarchy would survive only so long as people wanted it to. But, he added, as the monarchy had survived in Britain for over a thousand years, it “cannot be all that bad”.
As the duke implied, constitutional monarchy is paradoxical. It is a traditional and pre-democratic institution that nevertheless depends upon popular consent. The diamond jubilee celebrations confirm the strength of that consent in Britain; they show indeed that the queen has an extraordinary hold on the affections of her people. Monarchy is, in the last resort, an institution of the imagination. In Totem and Taboo, Freud tells us that monarchs and those related to them are “vehicles of the mysterious and dangerous magical power which is transmitted by contact like an electric charge”.
In Britain, the roots of monarchical sentiment are probably embedded too deeply in our national psyche for us ever to be able fully to understand it.
Vernon Bogdanor is a research professor at the Institute of Contemporary British History, King’s College, London. His books include The Monarchy and the Constitution (1995), The New British Constitution (2009), and The Coalition and the Constitution (2011)