NO ROYAL VISITS!
Another ‘British Royal Visit, Another PR Exercise
Visits by so-called British royalty to any part of Ireland should be totally and utterly rejected!
As Charles Windsor arrived in the Six Counties yesterday, politicians of all shades of opinion have been eagerly awaiting their invites to the various events, photo opportunities, exquisite lunches and lavish dinners (all paid for with taxpayers money) that are sure to be held. And all this at the same time as a dysfunctional Stormont cannot even agree on a budget……
As a result of this dysfunction, health and social services, youth and community services, and the education sector are all struggling to cope with financial cut-backs, risking many jobs. But, so what? Our political masters believe this is the perfect time for yet another trivial distraction away from the reality of everyday life.
After all, that is the purpose of any royal visit, irrespective of which of the two partitionist states on our island that visit takes place. Indeed, in recent days, Uachtarán Catherine Connolly also extended an invitation for Charles Windsor to visit the Twenty Six Counties.
Yes, let's take the focus away from exorbitant rents that families are paying weekly and monthly for their homes, along with a myriad of other issues, which, like the north, impact on the daily, everyday concerns of most people.
James Connolly astutely and correctly described such visits to Ireland many years ago in 1910 -
"Let the capitalist and landlord class flock to exalt him; he is theirs; in him they see embodied the idea of caste and class; they glorify him and exalt his importance that they might familiarise the public mind with the conception of political inequality, knowing well that a people mentally poisoned by the adulation of royalty can never attain to that spirit of self-reliant democracy necessary for the attainment of social freedom. The mind accustomed to political kings can easily be reconciled to social kings – capitalist kings of the workshop, the mill, the railway, the ships and the docks.
Thus coronation and king's visits are by our astute never-sleeping masters made into huge Imperialist propagandist campaigns in favour of political and social schemes against democracy. But if our masters and rulers are sleepless in their schemes against us, so we, rebels against their rule, must never sleep in our appeal to our fellows to maintain as publicly our belief in the dignity of our class – in the ultimate sovereignty of those who labour.
What is monarchy? From whence does it derive its sanction? What has been its gift to humanity? Monarchy is a survival of the tyranny imposed by the hand of greed and treachery upon the human race in the darkest and most ignorant days of our history. It derives its only sanction from the sword of the marauder, and the helplessness of the producer, and its gifts to humanity are unknown, save as they can be measured in the pernicious examples of triumphant and shameless iniquities.
Every class in society save royalty, and especially British royalty, has through some of its members contributed something to the elevation of the race. But neither in science, nor in art, nor in literature, nor in exploration, nor in mechanical invention, nor in humanising of laws, nor in any sphere of human activity has a representative of British royalty helped forward the moral, intellectual or material improvement of mankind. But that royal family has opposed every forward move, fought every reform, persecuted every patriot, and intrigued against every good cause. Slandering every friend of the people, it has befriended every oppressor.”