The most frustrating thing for me is that whenever you talk to people in the UK about this stuff you notice there is this cultural attitude that if you're sticking your neck out too much that its somehow your fault.
People here don't care about being monitored by CCTV because they believe that so long as you keep your head down you'll be fine – and that any respectable person is going to keep their head down anyway.
You'll also find a lot of people here just dislike the act of protest in general. Again, I think it's because protest involves drawing attention to yourself which a large percentage of people here dislike on an instinctive level. So you find even the most agreeable protests seem to receive some level of pushback and shame which I think bleeds into our attitude towards policing. That said, I don't know what it's like in other countries. I just get the sense that the UK has a much more conformist attitude which enables the state to take a more authoritarian approach to policing protest here.
As an example, I'm not an anti-monarch but I was extremely angry about how the police handled anti-monarch protestors during the coronation. Yet when I've spoken to people about this over the weekend, most people have expressed to me that it was rude for there to be protestors at the coronation... But that's the point of protest!! Still, this doesn't change the fact that the act of protest is largely incompatible with our otherwise polite and conformist culture.
> As an example, I'm not an anti-monarch but I was extremely angry about how the police handled anti-monarch protestors during the coronation.
This is exactly my position too.
And if you force me to chose between a) democracy, free speech and right to protest OR b) a monarchy, then I will very quickly become an anti-monarchist.
The fact that the government felt that they had to rush in legislation in the last week which was - completely predictably - used to detain people unlawfully, to save possible embarrassment during the coronation, has done nothing to improve my view of our monarchy whatsoever.
I struggle to believe that this would have happened without some sort of implicit or explicit pressure from Buckingham Palace. They did afterall have veto rights on aspects of BBC coverage [0] so it seems highly unlikely to me that they weren't also working with the government to attempt to "contain" possible protests.
As someone who is anti-monarch I have to admit that this seems like the logical extension of monarchy and exactly what democracy is meant to help with. Can I ask why someone wouldn't be anti-monarch in 2023?
Let's be clear here, the UK isn't a monarchy, we just have a monarch who has effectively zero power and simply serves as a hereditary head of state.
As for why I support this, I think it makes sense diplomatically to have an apolitical head of state and I also believe the British monarch functions similarly to second amendment in the US. If the UK ever needed to revolt against the government the monarch serves as way in which the public (and armed forces) could side with the state over the government. I cannot express how much I like that our armed forces swear allegiance to a largely powerless Monarch that represents the state rather than Rishi Sunak.
However, getting back on topic here, the fact the UK has a monarch in my opinion has zero relevance to the fact the UK is becoming a place increasingly hostile to protest. Instead, it seems to me to be far more to do with the fact our two major political parties both have authoritarian tendencies, which I suspect stems from the UK having cultural values which lend themselves to certain kinds of authoritarian social policies.
Specifically, laws around limiting "improper" behaviour like rowdy protests, being rude online, and consuming porn that's a little too edgy seem to be ways in which our dislike of improper behaviour manifest politically. In most ways we're quite a liberal society, but there are certain ways that our conformist and overly polite nature seems to work its way into our politics via democracy – protest perhaps being the most clear example of something that people here seem to struggle with since freedom of expression requires an acceptance of impoliteness.
> Let's be clear here, the UK isn't a monarchy, we just have a monarch who has effectively zero power and simply serves as a hereditary head of state.
The article we're commenting on makes it very clear that the UK is a monarchy and that the monarch has the power to disrupt public life at great expense to the public and to have said public arrested for offending them.
> The article we're commenting on makes it very clear that the UK is a monarchy
It absolutely doesn't. The article doesn't even mention the word monarchy.
It was written before the recent arrests at the coronation.
We can talk about what influence the monarchy may try to exert on the government behind the scenes (and I believe there will be some - and there shouldn't be) but back channeling aside, our democratically elected government is the body which runs our country, not the monarchy, and therefore is correctly the target of this article.
Your statement is somewhat contradictory. The monarch has zero power but also controls the military and can violently oppose the government? He’s also powerful enough that people can be arrested for protesting his coronation. Democracy was created precisely because history shows people will be consistently oppressed when they don’t govern themselves.
> Specifically, laws around limiting "improper" behaviour like rowdy protests, being rude online, and consuming porn that's a little too edgy seem to be ways in which our dislike of improper behaviour manifest politically.
Jimmy Saville was way worse than any porn, yet his main enabler just became king. The outrage about the “impolite” seems very unevenly distributed.
> If the UK ever needed to revolt against the government the monarch serves as way in which the public (and armed forces) could side with the state over the government. I cannot express how much I like that our armed forces swear allegiance to a largely powerless Monarch that represents the state rather than Rishi Sunak.
> Can I ask why someone wouldn't be anti-monarch in 2023?
The sibling comment by kypro [0] answers this question much better than I could have. But at the same time, I'm not the British Royal Family's most diehard supporter by any means.
The legislation has been on the way for a while as a response to XR and others. It certainly aligns with royal interests, but I don't think you need to look any further than Braverman and the hang'em-and-flog'em electorate she appeals to for a source.
> rude to for there to be protestors at the coronation
Many monarchists are offended by republican views. For that reason alone, I would have recommended against a republican demonstration in the middle of a large crowd of monarchists (if I'd been asked!)
Also, I don't think republicanism is very widespread among cops, a group of people that tend to have an authoritarian mindset.
I think some people have a sense that the monarchy "is theirs", as if this hyper-privileged family were their own children.
I didn't watch any of the coronation coverage on purpose, but it's been devliishly difficult to avoid. Something that struck me is that many of the most ardent monarchists in the crowd seemed to be yanks and aussies. I find that really weird.
> Something that struck me is that many of the most ardent monarchists in the crowd seemed to be yanks and aussies. I find that really weird.
It's not weird if you consider that only foreigners who give a shit will bother to come. Add that to them this whole thing is distant enough to treat it as a theme park where they can larp their mediaval fantasies and it only makes sense.
Regarding CCTV, in my time, there used to be much opposition to the government installing such systems, but they kinda snuck in through the backdoor, being setup and run by private companies and individuals (A quick google seem to indicate this is still the case).
We've handed over many public spaces to private interests and cctv proliferated that way, arguably with even less oversight than had the gov done it.
This is happening in New Zealand now[1]. The public has been pretty clear that it doesn want a surveillance state. The police just worked with private business to set up the feeds.
More of this is to come. There are talks about Palantir (you know, Thiels profitable firm) working with the NHS.
But I'm not sure what the state of that is no.
By and large the UK feels like a gutted country, where every scavenging corporation took one organ and left.
>As an example, I'm not an anti-monarch but I was extremely angry about how the police handled anti-monarch protestors during the coronation.
The monarchy is classism personified.
Do you not think that by not being anti-monarchy you're tacitly OK with a class based society, and that's a part of where the conformism comes from - class identity?
Bear in mind the various loyalty swearing that goes on - MPs, Armed Forces, Police, is loyalty sworn first and foremost to the Monarch - implicitly a person at the top of a heirarchy of class.
> Do you not think that by not being anti-monarchy you're tacitly OK with a class based society, and that's a part of where the conformism comes from - class identity?
No. Newborn babies aren't anti-monarchy either. Are they part of the problem? This rhetoric of "silence is violence" is deeply polarizing.
We aren't born with rights unless there are people living at the time of our birth willing to fight for those rights. I mean, monarchy exists with supporters today despite being against the basic human rights you assert we are all born with.
Speed limits on roads exist; if someone's speeding, it's a question of enforcement.
Similarly, we're born with human rights as ratified in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. To your point, they're moot if not enforced -- I get that. But it's easier to enforce what exists than to fight for the original law.
We could be born with human rights as ratified by the Flying Spaghetti Monster and it would be just as meaningless. Enforcement is equally meaningless if there is no recognition of authority.
Why does the UN get to dictate human rights and not some other body? Did those human rights exist before the UN or not?
> Bear in mind the various loyalty swearing that goes on - MPs, Armed Forces, Police, is loyalty sworn first and foremost to the Monarch - implicitly a person at the top of a heirarchy of class.
After the New Model Army chopped off a previous monarch's head (they purged parliament and the remaining MPs passed legislation that found King Charles I guilty of treason) I can see why subsequent monarchs were somewhat keen to have an oath of Loyalty.
UK doesn't have free speech, think that culturally makes a big difference compared to how Americans look at these issues. Gotta remember they have a birth right to rattle cages and say anything while the UK does not. Changes "I don't agree with it but they do have a right to say it" to "I don't agree with it..."
There is a world of difference between free speech and the right to voice your opinion, and interfering with other people's right to go about their business unimpeded.
What we call 'The King's Peace' is the British sense of fair play. You can do whatever you like as long as you don't interfere with my equal right to do the same. Where those two try to occupy the same space, then the current majority opinion will prevail and the minority suppressed.
Breaching the King's Peace is a public order offence.
The right to protest in the UK is the right to be heard and listened to voluntarily, not to dominate proceedings or act in a manner that heads towards terrorism. Where there is intelligence that physical disruption was on the cards, the authorities are right to step in and head it off. That is the British way.
Most people in the UK still support the monarchy. Nobody stopped Spiked publishing their views on Republicanism, and nobody was forced to read it. That's free speech.
If the individuals objecting had waved a few placards and otherwise been respectful to those whose views differ from their own they would have been left alone. They didn't do that and were removed. I suspect that was the idea since that leads to greater publicity.
> The right to protest in the UK is the right to be heard and listened to voluntarily
A bit difficult to get heard once you get arrested for having violated no law… Funny that when putin does this to political opponents he's a dictator, but king charles is a great guy uh?
Hear hear, though that doesn't stop everyone asking me about the royal family all the time. It follows me around like a disease. From living abroad I get the feeling that the royal family is a lot more popular abroad than it is at home.
It may come off as low-effort, but "V for Vendetta" seems more and more accurate. Keep calm, don't draw attention, everything will be fine if we just go along with it - until things are not fine, and they come for you. By then, the mechanisms of state control have been well exercised on those who stood up earlier.
Has King Charles made any efforts or donated any money to causes that could help the people in this time of recession and retraction from the EU? I know he isn't supposed to be involved in politics, but if he doesn't speak as the "conscious of a nation" then he really does seem without purpose at great cost.
Versailles brings in more money and the head of the monarch didn't need to remain attached to the rest of the body for the home to still be a tourist attraction.
> most people have expressed to me that it was rude for there to be protestors at the coronation...
Yes, it was.
> But that's the point of protest!!
No, it is not.
From Cambridge Dictionary: "protest": a strong complaint expressing disagreement, disapproval, or opposition.
You can express your dissenting opinions without being rude. And, by the way, the monarchy has been in UK for centuries, and it is still there: if you don't like it, you have any day available to protest. No need to pick that particular day when you can be most disruptive.
Nobody is condemning the rudeness against the royal family, but against all the people who like to give special treatment to the royal family for whatever reason, and especially to all the people who just want to keep giving special treatment to the royal family because it has been so since their grandparents were born.
Those people are complicit with all of the human rights abuses perpetrated by the royal family. Without them, the monarchy could be abolished. They are the very source of the problem.
> if you don't like it, you have any day available to protest.
There are people thinking that we should not spend our public money on the monarchy. This viewpoint is absolutely topical on the very day when a large chunk of money is being spent on celebrating something they don't want to celebrate.
If you think that is rude, bad for you. Sometimes people will be rude to you and you have to take it.
> There are people thinking that we should not spend our public money on the monarchy.
They may be right, they may be wrong. They surely have the right to express their opinions. But the fundamental question is: who cares? Or, actually: how many people care?
If enough people cared, that would be on the agenda of a major political party. If it isn't, they have to suck it up.
> But the fundamental question is: who cares? Or, actually: how many people care?
I don't know. But I care about their right to shout their slogans and wave their placards more than I care about the existence or non-existence of the monarchy.
Why should your right to be seen be more important than the right of the government to organize a nice party for an event that will be in history books?
You have the right to protest, but the others must retain the right to ignore you. You talking in the centre of the public square, in the middle of the market, is ok; you screaming in my ear is not.
The right to ignore someone else is not the right to have police arrest and remove them without charges because you don't like the opinion they're expressing. That's fascism.
Wow, that's quite the leap. Peacefully attending a public gathering in yellow shirts with printed slogans is nowhere near the violent insurrection perpetrated on Jan 6, 2021. You are approaching "Hitler was a vegan" territory.
"Peacefully attending a public gathering in yellow shirts with printed slogans" is my perfect definition of a protest. You take a message with you, I can read it and decide whether I'm interested in joining your protest or just go on with my life.
My comment's parent called me authoritarian because I said that printing the message on my car would not be acceptable.
People here don't care about being monitored by CCTV because they believe that so long as you keep your head down you'll be fine – and that any respectable person is going to keep their head down anyway.
You'll also find a lot of people here just dislike the act of protest in general. Again, I think it's because protest involves drawing attention to yourself which a large percentage of people here dislike on an instinctive level. So you find even the most agreeable protests seem to receive some level of pushback and shame which I think bleeds into our attitude towards policing. That said, I don't know what it's like in other countries. I just get the sense that the UK has a much more conformist attitude which enables the state to take a more authoritarian approach to policing protest here.
As an example, I'm not an anti-monarch but I was extremely angry about how the police handled anti-monarch protestors during the coronation. Yet when I've spoken to people about this over the weekend, most people have expressed to me that it was rude for there to be protestors at the coronation... But that's the point of protest!! Still, this doesn't change the fact that the act of protest is largely incompatible with our otherwise polite and conformist culture.