The Great Survivors

by Peter Conradi

  The Restoration appeared to close the door for good on republicanism: the men who brought Charles I to trial were themselves hanged, drawn and quartered after his brother climbed the throne; such was the desire for vengeance that Cromwell’s body was exhumed the following year on the anniversary of the King’s execution and his severed head displayed on a pole outside Westminster Hall for the next twenty-four years.

  Yet republicanism has lived on in Britain in the centuries since in radical circles, at times winning broader appeal – usually in response to bad behaviour on the part of monarchs. One such point was during the last years of the eighteenth and early years of the nineteenth century, when George IV’s antics as Prince of Wales and Prince Regent added to the unpopularity of the Hanoverians. The arrival on the throne of his niece Victoria in 1837 gave the monarchy a boost that was to last for several decades – but this was to be undone following the premature death of her husband Albert in 1861. Consumed with grief, Victoria largely withdrew from public life, plunging the British monarchy into one of its most serious crises since the Civil War.

  By the late 1860s ministers were beginning to express increasing concern about the invisibility of the Queen, who was spending most of her time at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight or at Balmoral in Scotland, and in February 1870 flatly refused a request to open parliament. Such reticence was perhaps understandable: when she had made a rare public appearance the previous year to open the new Blackfriars Bridge over the Thames, her carriage was booed as she drove down the Strand. Matters were not helped by the private life of her eldest son, the Prince of Wales, who was required to give evidence in an unsavoury divorce case in February 1870. The Times reflected broader exasperation with the Queen’s behaviour when it said the time had come for her to stop devoting her life to mourning her late consort and “think of her subjects’ claims and the duties of her high station, and not postpone them longer to an unavailing grief”.

  After the overthrow of Napoleon III and the declaration of a French republic in September 1870, republican clubs sprung up across Britain. In a loudly cheered speech to the House of Commons that November, Sir Charles Dilke, a radical member of parliament, declared the cost of the royal family had jumped to a million pounds a year – ten times the income of the President of the United States, as another speaker put it – and this was “chiefly not waste but mischief”. “The republic must come, and at the rate at which we are moving, it will come in our generation,” Joseph Chamberlain, a future President of the Board of Trade, wrote to Dilke the following year.

  Britain was not to become a republic, however, although the boost the monarchy received came from an unexpected quarter: on the day that the Times reported Dilke’s speech, the Prince of Wales fell ill with typhoid fever, the same disease that had killed his father. Dilke pressed on with his meetings, but with the heir to the throne’s life in danger the popular mood shifted radically. When he gave a speech at the Bolton Temperance Hall on 30th November 1871, royalists tried to storm the building and proceedings degenerated into a pitched battle between the two rival camps. It was a similar story a few days later in Derby. Then on 14th December, the tenth anniversary of Albert’s death, came the announcement that the Prince of Wales was recovering.

  In public-relations terms, this was a golden opportunity for Victoria and the monarchy: heeding the advice of her hated prime minister, William Gladstone, the Queen agreed to a public thanksgiving service for her son’s recovery to be held on 27th February 1872 in St Paul’s Cathedral. And she insisted that “the show”, as she called it, should be done properly: dressed in black, but with a white feather in her bonnet, she travelled through London in an open landau drawn by six horses. The crowds went wild.

  When Dilke’s motion came to a vote in a stormy House of Commons the following month, it was crushed by 276 votes to two. The result was greeted with cheers and laughter in the chamber. Dilke’s argument proved so convincing, mocked the Manchester Guardian, that “he carried with him into the lobby only just so many followers as he could have carried away with him inside a cab”. In retrospect, as Vernon Bogdanor, the British constitutional expert, has pointed out, the 1870s were to prove the high-water mark of republicanism.

  An important factor in the monarchy’s continued survival in the decades since has been the attitude of the Labour Party, which began to emerge at the end of the nineteenth century and by the middle of the twentieth century had supplanted the Liberals as the main anti-Conservative party. When the Labour conference debated the monarchy in 1923, republicanism was defeated by 3,694,000 votes to 386,000. A republican motion in the House of Commons in December 1936 in the aftermath of the abdication of Edward VIII won only five votes.

  Elsewhere in Europe, the end of the nineteenth century and the rise of organized labour and social democracy also led to a growth in republicanism that identified monarchy with the forces of reaction. In Sweden, the Social Democratic Party even made abolition of the monarchy part of its programme when it was founded in 1889 and has retained its commitment ever since. But although the party has been in power for much of the time since the 1930s, its leaders have always found something else more pressing to do – not least because of fear of upsetting their working-class supporters, who have always been rather fond of their kings. “Certainly I am a republican,” declared Tage Erlander, who was Social Democrat prime minister of Sweden from 1946 until 1969. “But that does not mean that I want a republic.”

  The Swedish monarchy was certainly stripped of its political power in the 1970s, but at least it survived. As has been noted, it has tended to be military defeat and the disruption to society it caused rather than the success of republican parties at the ballot box that has done for monarchy in those European countries that have become republics during the last century.

  Most of Europe’s monarchies – even Luxembourg’s – have at least one campaigning group which, like Britain’s Republic, is committed to getting rid of the king or queen. They have websites, hold meetings and congresses and publish newsletters and magazines setting out their cause. Sometimes they even get together – as happened during Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden’s wedding in June 2010, when the local republican association invited its counterparts from the six other main monarchies to meet in Stockholm to form an Alliance of European Republican Movements.

  All such groups are small, however; their leadership is often little more than a handful of enthusiasts, while membership is in the low thousands. And despite their dedication to the republican cause, they receive little attention from the media. Some, such as the Swedish Republican Association, include individual politicians among their ranks. The majority of the mainstream political parties, including those on the centre left, tend to support the status quo, however. Only small fringe parties, such as those on the far left or those devoted to “green” issues, tend to be committed to republicanism, and even for them, abolition of the monarchy is low in their list of priorities behind other more pressing social and economic concerns.

  This is partly pragmatism; in most cases the constitutional procedures needed to transform a country from monarchy to republic are so complicated and require such large parliamentary majorities as to make them virtually impossible to implement in peacetime. Yet the continuation of monarchy is due to more than just inertia or to the much-voiced horror at the prospect of having a party politician – or even worse, a celebrity – elected to the newly created role of president. A modern-day constitutional monarch, by appearing to be impartial, above political party and not representative of any particular class or ethnic or linguistic group, is also perceived by many Europeans as a symbol of national unity. The Swedish example is instructive: the removal of the King from the formal political process during the 1970s did not turn out, as the republicans had hoped, to be the first step towards abolition of the monarchy. Instead it seemed actually to strengthen his position by removing a major source of criticism.

  National unity is not seen everywher
e as positive, however – certainly not by many in Belgium, where the monarchy remains one of the few common elements in a country divided between Dutch and French speakers. The extent of separatist feeling in Flanders, the northern part of the country, was shown by the results of the parliamentary elections of June 2010, in which the New Flemish Alliance, which advocates the dissolution of Belgium, emerged as the strongest party in parliament.

  For Flemish separatists, the monarchy has become synonymous with the hated Belgian state, and they have waged a campaign to identify the royal family with the Francophone south. Their view was summed up by Mario Danneels, the young author who achieved notoriety after revealing the existence of King Albert’s love child in 1999. In a postscript to his polemical second book, Les Traumatisés du trône, published eight years later, he wrote: “Not only is the royal family French-speaking in origin, but also, over the past decade, it has given the impression of having chosen, almost openly, the French-speaking camp and of having been on its guard against the Flemish community. Under the circumstances, Flanders feels estranged from its royal family. It has turned its back on it because it intuitively perceives that is what some members of the royal family have done towards Flanders.”

  The irony of such sentiments will not be lost on those who recall that during the 1950 plebiscite on the fate of Albert’s father Léopold III, it was the Flemings who voted overwhelmingly for his return, while a majority of French-speakers were against him. Yet care should be taken in analysing the results of that vote: if the Flemings voted for the King it was not because they perceived him as one of them. At the time, theirs was the poorer, more rural, more conservative and more Catholic part of the country – all of which translated into support for the monarchy. More heavily industrialized Wallonia, by contrast, was the power base of the left, which was traditionally more sceptical about monarchy. There was another more sensitive explanation, too: while the French-speakers had resisted the Nazis, some of the Flemish had a more equivocal relationship with the occupying forces, making them less quick to judge their King.

  More than half a century later, the situation has changed, and not just because economic – and with it political – power has shifted from the south, mired in post-industrial decline, to the more economically vibrant Flanders which has found itself better placed to prosper in the global economy of the twenty-first century. In today’s Belgium almost everything is seen in terms of the language question. Danneels is not alone among the Flemings in viewing the royal family as representing the French-speaking community. No matter that the perceptions don’t quite match reality: as one commentator – Francophone, of course – pointed out, the royal family is more Flemish now than at any time before, with Dutch speakers forming a majority of the King’s advisors. In such matters, however, perception can be every bit as important as reality.

  Any move towards the break up of Belgium would be watched closely elsewhere in Europe, especially in Spain, where there are also links between separatism and republicanism. Advocates of independence in the northern Catalan and Basque regions resent the royals as representatives of the centralizing Spanish state. Underlying this is the more fundamental question of how deeply rooted monarchy is in Spain, which has had two republics and four decades of right-wing dictatorship under General Francisco Franco during the last century and a half – a very different experience from the continuity enjoyed by Europe’s other surviving monarchies. Indeed, it was only after Juan Carlos’s successful facing-down of the attempted military coup of 1981 that the monarchy won wide acceptance – prompting the oft-repeated claim that Spaniards are not monarchists but rather Juancarlists. Just as many Britons wonder how Prince Charles will fare once he succeeds his mother, so many of Prince Felipe’s future subjects question the extent to which he will be up to the job.

  The year 2007 proved an especially turbulent one for the Spanish monarchy: Catalan separatists burnt pictures of the King during his visit to the region, and a controversy erupted when two cartoonists were fined under a rarely used law against “damaging the prestige of the Crown” after they published a cartoon of Prince Felipe having sex on the cover of the satirical magazine El Jueves. There were questions too about the cost of the monarchy.

  The King responded in August by appointing an auditor to scrutinize the spending of the royal family – which is kept hidden from the public by law. Juan Carlos also took the unprecedented step of attempting publicly to justify his role as head of state, claiming that he had contributed to the “longest period of stability and prosperity under democracy in Spain”.

  The situation has calmed somewhat in the years since, but even minor incidents can be seen as disproportionately damaging. The divorce of the King’s eldest daughter Elena, announced in February 2010 – a first for the Spanish royal family – sparked fierce debate, as did the court appearance two years later of his younger daughter Cristina’s husband, Iñaki Urdangarin, in connection with a multi-million-euro corruption case. Then, that Easter, Elena’s thirteen-year-old son, Froilán, shot himself in the foot with a shotgun, even though by law in Spain you must be at least fourteen to handle a gun. The incident was reminiscent of the accidental killing of the King’s younger brother, Alfonso, in March 1956 by a stray revolver bullet.

  Juan Carlos’s personal popularity has been dented by accusations of meddling – his public admission of concern at the slowness with which the country is recovering from recession and decision to hold talks with trade-union officials and bankers have held him open to accusations that he is venturing onto political territory. There was worse to come: the King’s claims he could not sleep because of the plight of Spain’s young unemployed began to sound hollow after it emerged in April 2012 that he had been on an expensive elephant-hunting trip in Botswana, allegedly financed by a wealthy Arab businessman. The trip, which came to light only after Juan Carlos broke his hip and had to be rushed home for emergency surgery, provoked widespread anger and prompted calls for him to resign from his honorary presidency of the Spanish branch of the World Wildlife Fund. The King was then forced to make a public statement to the television cameras as he left Madrid’s San José hospital. “I’m very sorry,” he said. “I made a mistake. It won’t happen again.”

  Republicanism is not such a powerful force elsewhere in Europe, but there is a sense in which support for monarchy is not absolute but instead conditional on the behaviour of the royal families. While a relatively small number of out-and-out republicans object on principle to an unelected head of state, most people seem prepared to tolerate the continuation of monarchy under certain conditions: namely that members of the royal family behave themselves and are seen to provide taxpayers with good value for money.

  The emphasis on personalities rather than the institution means popular support also follows a certain cycle. Generally, the longer a king or queen is on the throne the more his or her ratings will rise; familiarity seems to lead to contentment rather than contempt – unlike with politicians. The birth of an heir will provide a boost, as will the arrival on the scene of a glamorous boy- or girlfriend followed by a royal marriage – provided that he or she is deemed suitable, that is. That being said, young people seem in most cases less passionate about monarchy as an institution than their parents or grandparents.

  The monarchy has experienced many such swings in its popularity in Scandinavia, a tendency documented by the many polls on the subject. In Norway, for example, the monarchy’s approval rating surged past ninety per cent in the late 1980s before dropping below sixty per cent (and to just forty-nine per cent in the capital) a decade later. The decline was due partly to revelations about the colourful past of Mette-Marit, the future Crown Princess. It was compounded by an outcry over the cost of a six-year renovation of the royal palace, which came in at 400 million kroner, against an original budget of just 150 million kroner. This prompted suggestions that the hitherto somewhat parsimonious royal family were, in the words of Carl-Erik Grimstad, a former deputy head of the hou
sehold turned royal critic, “spending money like drunken sailors”.

  The royal ratings had bounced back to sixty-seven per cent by April 2010, helped in part by Mette-Marit’s impressive performance as a crown princess, which bodes well for her future role as queen. The average Norwegian republican, says Grimstad, is “male, middle-income, university-educated and urban”. “Indifference is the greatest danger ‌to the monarchy,” he believes.1 The country’s Socialist Left Party has pledged itself to raise the question once every four years (every parliament) of whether the country should change to a republic. The motion is always defeated by a large majority, however – in the last vote, in 2010, by 125 to seventeen.

  In Denmark, by contrast, polls suggested the popularity of the royal house grew through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s from between seventy and seventy-five per cent to between eight-five and ninety per cent – due, in part, to the arrival of an attractive young queen. The fading of class divisions and a decline in traditional antagonism on the part of the left-wing parties also helped the monarchist cause. A referendum in June 2009 on changing the rules of succession to give equal status to male and female heirs turned, to almost everyone’s surprise, into a broader debate about the monarchy. The controversy helped ensure that turnout easily passed the minimum forty per cent threshold – although some, especially in Copenhagen and other cities, heeded calls by republicans to stay away or hand in blank voting slips. The change itself was approved with an eight-five per cent majority. Polls suggest the effect of the vote was to reduce support for monarchy, although not substantially.