Introduction

On 25 November, 2023, at the historic Conway Hall in London, I met Graham Smith, the CEO of the anti-monarchy campaigning group Republic—an organisation whose origin can be traced back through the pages of The Freethinker. Read more about that connection in ‘The Freethinker and early republicanism’. See also ‘Bring on the British republic’ for my review of Smith’s book Abolish the Monarchy: Why We Should and How We Will.

Smith was the guest speaker at the National Secular Society’s Members’ Day at Conway Hall, and I managed to talk to him in the foyer café before he went off to give his very well-received talk on the connections between monarchy and religion, and between secularism and republicanism. Below is an edited transcript of our short but illuminating conversation.

Interview

Freethinker: At the coronation of Charles III, you and several other anti-monarchy protesters were arrested [see links above for more]. Could you give us an update on how the case is going?

Graham Smith: There are no major updates. It has gone off to a judge for an application for judicial review. The assumption is that we will be granted the judicial review and then we will see what happens after that.

What are the historical links between secularism and republicanism?

If you look historically, you will very often see intellectual links between those arguing against the domination of established churches and those who opposed monarchy. There is an old quote, whose origin I cannot remember right now: ‘Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.’ [These are, in fact, the words of the 18^th-century Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot.]

This is not something that I would condone! But the sentiment is that these things are very much linked and so the opposition to them is linked and always has been. And certainly, the National Secular Society and Republic have quite a lot of overlap in terms of our interests and members and so on, even though we have not really worked together. I think it is difficult to argue for a secular state without arguing for the abolition of the monarchy and vice versa.

Could you have a secular monarchy? 

No, I do not think you can. You can have a non-secular republic—in Ireland, God gets a mention in the constitution, and for many years the Irish constitution gave a privileged position to the Catholic Church. But I do not think that makes intellectual sense. You also have disestablishment in monarchies like Sweden and Norway, but that is a bit of a halfway house because the monarch is still a member of one church and is very much a churchgoer, and thus that church is privileged through that relationship even if it is technically, by law, not established. I do not think you are going to get a secular state without getting rid of the monarchy. [For an alternative view, see Emma Park’s interview with Paul Scriven, a Liberal Democrat peer who introduced a disestablishment bill in the House of Lords on 6 December.]

Does one or the other—republicanism or secularism—have to come first?

It is hard to say. I think it may well be that the monarchy goes first because it is the bigger, more potent symbol of everything that has to change in Britain. I do not think there is the same appetite for disestablishment in the way that there is an appetite for abolishing the monarchy. It is interesting that over the last 25 years, we have seen a lot of pressure to get rid of the House of Lords, the monarchy, and the established church. Hopefully, the Lords will go in the next one or two years. And these three things are all connected.  I think we will see them all unravelling—one will go, then another, then another. Though in which order it will happen, who knows?

How was your anti-monarchy book received?

On the whole, it has gone down well. I got a couple of annoying reviews from monarchists, which is a good sign. One of the reasons I wrote it is because there is not enough literature about the monarchy and why it should be abolished. Most books about the royals are just inane nonsense.

Even though the history books talk about many of the monarchs being thugs and murderers, there is always this undertone—‘Oh, isn’t the monarchy so great and interesting? And don’t worry, they’re not like this anymore!’. But that history is one of the reasons we should get rid of them—not because they are still doing things like that, but because it is a celebration of that history, which is not a reason to celebrate.

Have you had any thoughtful reviews from monarchists?

Yes. Surprisingly, The Telegraph’s review was the most interesting. The reviewer described herself as a ‘soft monarchist’, which is a term I use in the book, and she really engaged with my arguments. She thought monarchists should be worried because there are lots of cracks in their armour and lots of weaknesses in their position, and they should be alert to that.

What is the strongest argument for the monarchy in your view? I have always thought it was the superficially convincing one made by, among others, George Orwell: that it is a check on political extremism because it diverts extreme emotion away from politicians. In other words, it prevents tyranny.

Yes. The fact that Orwell, a respected writer, made it, means that it is an argument that is taken seriously. Churchill said something similar—that if they had kept the Kaiser, Germany would not have had Hitler. But these claims are completely ahistorical. Two of the Axis powers were monarchies. The Italian king Victor Emmanuel III put Mussolini in power and sat there for 20 years and let him get on with it. And the Kaiser was keen to put his family back on the throne under or with Hitler. So, if anything, the Orwellian argument shows the weakness of monarchy.

And, of course, Emperor Hirohito was not just a monarch, but apparently a divine being.

Indeed! The problem is that that stifles critical thinking and it stifles opposition, and those things are very important if you want to avoid things like imperial conflicts.

How do you think Charles III is doing as king?

That is like asking how a chair is doing as a chair. It just sits there and is a chair, and he just sits there and is a king. He does not have to do anything. He just is. And people judge them [monarchs and royals] by their own standards, so if they go around waving and allowing their acolytes to say good things on their behalf, then that is judged to be fine, so long as there is not some huge scandal. The bar is set incredibly low.

But Charles is a man who is accused of exchanging honours for cash. He is accused of handling millions of pounds of cash from Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, a Qatari businessman and former Prime Minister of Qatar accused of having links with al-Qaeda. He is accused of lobbying behind the scenes for all sorts of things. He is not a good head of state. Anybody could be a good king because being a monarch is about biological descent alone, but to be a good head of state is to be someone who is principled, eloquent, accountable and accessible, and on all these scores Charles is dreadful.

In terms of religion, Charles was never going to be genuinely ecumenical or for all faiths, and certainly not for those who do not have a faith. The royals pay lip service to ecumenicism, and I think some people were really surprised by how much Charles doubled down on all the feudal religious nonsense during the coronation—but it was because he believed all that nonsense!

One of the problems is that you do not get to ask Charles questions directly and challenge him about these issues. So it is all about reading the tea leaves and believing people like Jonathan Dimbleby when it comes to the true beliefs of the royals.

Have you ever met Charles? Or been in the same room as him and tried to ask him a question?

I have been within shouting distance! I have been almost as close to him as I am to you now, calling out questions, but obviously, he just blanks me. That is the one thing the royals are good at, blanking people. They just blank people they do not want to acknowledge, including their own staff.

What would a British republic with a written constitution look like?

It would look like a modern, grown-up democracy where we would have a fully elected parliament. We would still have a prime minister but they would not have the same power, derived from the Crown, that they have now. We would have clearly defined limits to that power and these limits would be policed and monitored by an elected head of state. The head of state would be there to be our ambassador but also to guard our constitution. So a republic would just take all the nonsense out of it. And if we want pageantry and ceremony, we can do that. Other republics, like France and Greece, do it quite well.

Having a republic would ultimately mean that our constitution and our politics would be done in a serious, intelligent, accountable way.

What is the single, essential thing that makes the monarchy and our political or constitutional system rotten, in your view?

The fact that we still have the same system we had after the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688-1689. All that has happened since then is that there have been compromises between those in Parliament and those in the Palace. There has never been a serious democratic evolution that shifts power to the people in this country. Instead, we have had the centralisation of power propped up and disguised by all the trappings of the monarchy—that is the big problem.

Is it anti-British to be anti-monarchy?

I would say it is very pro-British to be anti-monarchy. Being against anything bad is being in favour of where you live. One of the things that annoys me the most about monarchists is when they say that we would not be anything without the monarchy. I think that is the least patriotic thing you could say. To rubbish this amazing country of 65 million people by saying that it would not be much without this very, very tedious and ordinary family—that is a weird and unpatriotic thing to say.

And, of course, there is also the great British tradition of republicanism and radicalism, which is just as much a part of our patriotic heritage as the monarchy.

Yes. History is written by the victors, by those in power, and we do not get to hear about the radicals. And when we do hear about them, they are dismissed as fringe people, while everyone else is just getting on with their lives as serfs and plebs.

Yet the anti-slavery movement was one of the largest, if not the largest, working-class movements in British history. You do not hear about that. You only hear about William Wilberforce and the anti-slavery MPs.

We have a long history in this country of fighting against the things that monarchy represents, and we just have to continue until it is gone.

What is the future of British republicanism?

We will win. I think that the monarchy will come to an end. I think that people have realised in the last twelve months that that is quite likely. There is no longer this sense of an immovable object. I think that republicans will continue to see the polling shift in our favour. Support for the monarchy has dropped significantly over the years. Once support for the monarchy drops below 50 per cent, we will see things unravel in quite good order.

Would you care to venture a prediction as to when exactly the monarchy will go?

No. I suppose I would say that there is a reasonable chance that Prince William will become king, but I think the chance of his son George becoming king is quite small.

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Further reading on secularism and republicanism:

Image of the week: Charles Bradlaugh’s study after his death, by Walter Sickert, by Bob Forder

Introducing ‘Paine: A Fantastical Visual Biography’, by Polyp, by Paul Fitzgerald

Is all publicity good publicity? How the first editor of the Freethinker attracted the public’s attention, by Clare Stainthorp

Charles Bradlaugh and George Jacob Holyoake: their contrasting reputations as Secularists and Radicals, by Edward Royle

Freethought in the 21st century – interview of The Freethinker editor Emma Park by Christoph De Spiegeleer

Christopher Hitchens and the long afterlife of Thomas Paine, by Daniel James Sharp

The post ‘I do not think you are going to get a secular state without getting rid of the monarchy’: interview with Graham Smith appeared first on The Freethinker.

The above image is of page 190 of the Freethinker, vol. 102, no. 12, December 1982. It includes a letter by Albert E. Standley, which led to the formation of Republic, the anti-monarchy campaign group. The current CEO of Republic, Graham Smith, was arrested for protesting against the coronation on 6th May 2023.

Standley’s letter was one of several published in the Freethinker on the abolition question. The meeting which it inspired is described by Smith in Abolish the Monarchy, p. 194, as follows:

‘It was on the Queen’s birthday, 21 April 1983, that a small band of republicans met in London in response to a letter in the Freethinker magazine from librarian Albert Standley. The letter proposed the formation of a society that would advocate republican ideals and promote the alternative to the monarchy.’

The text of Standley’s original letter is reproduced below:

‘ALTERNATIVES TO MONARCHY

‘Philip Harding, commenting (October) on Julia Atkinson’s article on the monarchy (August) admits that the British so-called constitutional monarchy (we don’t have a constitution!) is imperfect, but falls back upon two well-worn and unsupported assertions: “it works well enough” and “there’s nothing better to replace it”.

‘I should like to see a Republican Association formed, among whose members would surely be such rationalists as those who support the NSS and even pragmatists of Mr Harding’s mould, which would work to put forward logical and viable alternatives. It would also publicise the view that the Head of any truly democratic State must be chosen by, accountable to and removable by its people. Would anyone like to join me in launching such a body?

A. E. STANLEY

55A Netley Road, Barkingside, Ilford, Essex’

Note: Standley’s surname is printed as ‘Stanley’ in the above issue of the Freethinker. However, this appears to be an error: he is referred to as ‘Standley’ both by Smith and elsewhere, including in an article by Roy Greenslade in the Guardian, published on 28 March 1994 (‘Down the Royals! Up the Republic!’). Greenslade discusses a recent pro-republican dinner in the Cholmondeley Room in the House of Lords that was

‘organised by Republic, a little-known pressure group founded 11 years ago by Albert Standley, a librarian from Colchester, and Terry Liddle, then a second-hand book salesman from south London. Like-minded Labour party supporters and humanists, both found they also agreed that the British monarchy was not only an anachronism but a barrier to a genuinely classless and egalitarian society. So, one foggy night at London Bridge station, they decided to set up Republic.’

See also:

• Bring on the British republic – Graham Smith’s ‘Abolish the Monarchy’, reviewed by Daniel James Sharp.
• Graham Smith (not that type of republican), interview on the National Secular Society podcast.

With thanks to Dan Bye for research into Standley’s name.

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The post The Freethinker and early republicanism: from the archive appeared first on The Freethinker.

During the coronation of King Charles III, the Metropolitan Police arrested 64 people, most of whom they claimed were there to disrupt the inauguration of our new head of state. Six of these were members of the group Republic, which seeks to abolish the monarchy. They were detained for 16 hours.

What terrible disruption did these nefarious republicans have in mind? Were they planning to plant bombs in letterboxes? Were they going to throw paint at the King’s golden carriage? No. They were there to hold up some placards in protest against the institution of monarchy. They liaised with the Met for months before the coronation and, so far as we know, had no plans to do anything seriously disruptive, let alone illegal.

The Republic protesters were arrested because the police suspected they were going to ‘lock-on’ to objects so that they could not be easily removed. This power was given to the police by the absurd and draconian Public Order Act 2023—which was passed shortly before the coronation, perhaps not so incidentally.

The arrests were an affront to the very idea of British liberty. Graham Smith, the head of Republic, has denied that he and his fellow protesters had any equipment which would have allowed them to attach themselves to anything. But even if they did, they would have simply been victims of legal rather than illegal illiberalism.

Worse, the coronation arrests form part of a pattern. At the King’s Accession Proclamation in Oxford last September, one man was arrested for shouting three words: ‘Who elected him?’ Not long afterward, in London, another man was threatened with arrest for walking while holding a blank sheet of paper: he was told by an officer that he would probably be arrested if he dared to write ‘Not my king’ on it.

Meanwhile, King Charles III, the supposed defender of our constitution and our liberties, has been silent throughout it all. Is not the monarch, symbolically at least, supposed to be the ultimate guarantor of our freedom?

Enter Graham Smith once more, who, fresh from detention, has recently released a book making the case against the monarchy and for a republic. In writing Abolish the Monarchy: Why We Should and How We Will, Smith has done all republicans a great favour: here, in one slim volume, is the ultimate knockdown of the royals, which shreds every one of the usual monarchist arguments and presents an inspiring vision of a future British Republic.

Smith’s book is tightly argued and very well-researched: a testament to his decades of republican activism. Every monarchist should read it. If they remain unconvinced upon closing it, they either have a brilliant case for monarchy that has yet to be made or their brains have simply gone so soft from Windsor worship that they are unable to change their minds.

Most of the arguments Smith presents will not be new to staunch republicans like me, but they are argued so well and backed up so strongly that one envies his knowledge and skill. Even one well-versed in the perfidy of the Windsors might discover new lows. Did you know, for example, that, in the 1960s, the late Queen Elizabeth II successfully lobbied for the royal household to be exempt from race discrimination laws and that this exemption still stands today?

Not that Abolish the Monarchy is merely a personal attack on the royals, though there is plenty of that. It is, fundamentally, a book about our constitution and our principles. Smith argues that the monarchy is the source of many of our political woes, not because the monarch has day-to-day political power, but because the near-limitless power of the Crown is now invested in the Prime Minister:

‘This idea of Britain’s parliamentary democracy as the blueprint the world has taken to its heart, of Britain as one of the oldest, most stable democracies in the world, is founded on a bargain that has suited the interests of both the royals and the political classes alike. The reality is somewhat different: a parliament that has stumbled from one reform to the next, begrudgingly moving on the issue of suffrage while slowly centralizing power in the hands of the House of Commons, and then concentrating power further into Downing Street. Simply put, who has power and why in Britain, is a matter of historical contingency. We could do a lot better.’

This centralisation of power, and the powerlessness of our head of state in the face of it, is one of Smith’s favourite themes. Without an elected head of state and a written constitution, we are left at the mercy of parliamentary sovereignty—which in practice means the supremacy of the government. There is almost nothing stopping the Prime Minister of the day from legislating for whatever they wish, so long as they have an unassailable parliamentary majority. And this is not even to mention the sweeping powers, not subject to any sort of democratic process, afforded to the Prime Minister by the royal prerogative and the Privy Council.

Of course, we are unlikely to become a dictatorship, as Smith acknowledges. We have a strong liberal democratic culture despite the flaws in our constitution. But we would be better off with proper constitutional guarantees of our liberties, rather than trusting their safekeeping to Prime Ministers with monarchical powers. And these flaws can still threaten our democracy even if we never become a full-blown authoritarian state—think, for example, of the Queen’s helplessness in the face of Boris Johnson’s 2019 prorogation of Parliament, which the Supreme Court held to be unlawful.

Another of Smith’s most important points is that Britain’s transformation into a democracy is incomplete. All that we have gained over the centuries has had to be wrested away from the clutches of monarchs and politicians, and our liberal culture owes little to them – least of all to the monarchs. All we lack now is a properly democratic constitutional system. A liberal democratic culture without a written liberal democratic constitution and all the structures that flow from such a constitution is one always at the mercy of the dishonest and the mendacious, just as a written constitution is hardly worth the paper it is written on if there is no democratic culture in place to uphold its spirit. Right now, we have one, but not the other.

But what if we had both? What if we also had a written constitution, a fully democratic parliament, and an elected head of state—that is, what if we had a secular democratic parliamentary republic?

Would Britain be soulless? Would it be (to caricature the monarchist position) just another boring country? The answer to both questions is no. We would still have our history and our culture, and we would have finally fulfilled the promise of our long and honourable democratic tradition.

No president would be perfect, but they would be accountable, and they would represent us in a way no monarch ever could. Personally, I would prefer a head of state who could effectively enforce a written constitution and bravely lead the way in defending liberal values. Think of Václav Havel and Mary Robinson, two presidents who proudly supported Salman Rushdie in the 1990s while our own head of state, the great champion of our vaunted liberties, was silent. Our monarchs seem to have spent more time secretly lobbying for tax exemptions than standing up for liberty.

If there is one criticism I would make of Abolish the Monarchy, it is that it is at times too tame, too moderate. This is part of Republic’s strategy to widen its appeal, but it does a disservice to the genuine radicalism at the heart of the republican position. This is why Abolish the Monarchy does not quite fit into the great British pamphleteering tradition epitomised by Thomas Paine.

Certainly, Smith is right that demanding a British Republic is not to advocate a replay of the French Revolution, and that we already have most of the pieces in place to create a democratic parliamentary republic. But there is something revolutionary about the spirit of republicanism. As he points out, republicanism is essentially the demand for a true liberal democracy: ‘[republicanism is about] more than replacing one head of state with another—it’s about rebalancing power between government, Parliament, and people. … The challenge is to take what we have and make it democratic, top to bottom.’ Republicans should not be so coy about the radicalism of this project.

The monarchy is by definition undemocratic, if not anti-democratic, as well as sectarian and secretive. Almost all the members of the Royal Family are, in this republican’s view at least, negligible human beings. If the royals are stunted by their upbringing, a republic would set not only us but them free, too. For republicans, the Crown is not the bedrock of our liberties, but rather the fount of all that is rotten and fetid in our politics. The constitutional monarchy is an insult to the best of our history and culture. In short: bring on the British Republic.

Graham Smith, Abolish the Monarchy: Why We Should and How We Will, published by Penguin, 1 June 2023.

See also: The Freethinker and early republicanism: the letter by a ‘librarian from Colchester’ that led to the formation of Republic

Graham Smith (not that type of republican), interview on the National Secular Society podcast.

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The post Bring on the British republic – Graham Smith’s ‘Abolish the Monarchy’, reviewed appeared first on The Freethinker.