The same was done when US President Donald Trump came to visit. When a prime minister is particularly unpopular, notably Thatcher and Blair, it is speculated that the queen, “like us”, finds them distasteful. The queen’s diligence in avoiding scandal, an ill-advised word or false step, and care not to openly associate herself with the vicious class policy of the ruling elite has made her a tabula rasa on which can be written whatever beliefs are politically convenient at the time. As far as anyone feels they have a sense of what she is like, they are probably referencing the politely critical but generally sympathetic artistic interpretations of writer Stephen Morgan and actresses Claire Foy and Olivia Coleman in the Netflix series, The Crown. After 70 years as ruler, no one knows what the queen thinks about anything. She maintains an image of complete emotional and intellectual impassivity. To an extraordinary degree, her personality has been almost wholly subsumed by the institution of the British monarchy. She has performed that task with singular conviction, discipline and ruthless self-abnegation. Every upsurge of the working class at home has been met with the necessary repressive laws and police crackdown.Īmid such roiling political turbulence, the queen’s great service to the ruling class was to preserve the role of the monarchy as a stabilising force. Criminal wars have been launched in the Middle East and North Africa in support of a “special relationship” with the US. Bloody military campaigns have been waged to maintain British control of the six counties in the north of Ireland and the Malvinas/Falklands Islands. Between 1967-1970, it supported the genocidal war of the Nigerian government against the breakaway Biafra region. During the first eight years of Elizabeth II’s reign, the UK carried out savage repression in Kenya against the Mau Mau Rebellion. The British state responded to these challenges with customary brutality. With the development of globalisation and the defeat suffered by miners and other leading sections of the industrial working class at the hands of the trade union and Labour Party bureaucracy, the British economy was transformed from a centre of manufacturing to the international home of financial parasitism. Major strike waves in the 1970s and 80s rocked the governments of Heath, Wilson, Callaghan and Thatcher. Britain lost the bulk of its imperial possessions in the 1950s and 60s, an unravelling of empire and consolidation of US imperialist hegemony symbolised by the Suez Crisis of 1956. The geostrategic and social consequences of these processes were enormous. Her reign includes the prolonged decline of the UK’s industrial economy and, in its latter half, a staggering deterioration in the social position of the working class. The Platinum Jubilee, universally and fervently hailed across parliament and the media, is a celebration of her significant contribution to the history and indeed survival of British imperialism.Įlizabeth II came to power seven years after the Second World War and during the permanent eclipse of Britain by the United States. But Elizabeth Windsor has in some crucial respects lived up to the hype. There was always something pompous about the claim of a “Second Elizabethan Age”, given the hardly comparable position of the monarchy in British life in the 20th versus the 16th century of her namesake. To understand the concern requires an acknowledgement of what her reign has meant to the British ruling class. Given the queen’s age and failing health, the jubilee has inevitably been the occasion for an evaluation of the so-called “New Elizabethan Age” and what might come next. Running through it all is a barely suppressed nervous tension. The Epsom Derby, a Platinum Party at the Palace music show, street and garden parties and a Platinum Jubilee Pageant are scheduled for the weekend. A Trooping of the Colour with Royal Air Force flypast and lighting of beacons across the country and Commonwealth took place Thursday a Service of Thanksgiving for the Queen’s Reign in St Paul’s Cathedral Friday. The British state is pulling out all the stops in its still world-leading pomp and pageantry. Her Platinum Jubilee is being marked by four days of state ceremony and celebration, followed around the world.
London, June 2, 2022, (Humphrey Nemar/Pool Photo via AP)
The Queen (centre, with blue coat and hat) on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with other Royal Family members, on the first of four days of celebrations to mark the Platinum Jubilee.
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