I know you have all forgotten the royal wedding (except for the 20 million friends, people with waaay too much time on their hands, of the Pippa’s bum facebook page) as indeed have I. The sight of an abbey full of the born-to-rule party at play, the sound of a wedding service which might have been thought out of date in medieval times, the hats, Elton John, all combined to create one of those events where my brain simply cannot cope with the sensory overload of irrational images and shuts down. It may, I suppose, re-emerge on a psychiatrist’s couch as a retrieved memory some time in the fuure, an explanation for some piece of odd behaviour, some uncharacteristic grumpiness, but for now it is safely locked away, buried deep.
So, no comments on that event from me. But I did want to note something that happened after the wedding, something that seems to have gone un-noticed, or, if not un-noticed, then simply accepted in a way that makes it even more disturbing. After the wedding the happy young couple instantly became, at the stroke of a royal pen, not just Mr and Mrs Windsor (or is it Wales?) but the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
Now I will leave that with you for a moment, let it sink in, while I have a cup of coffee (“Three cups of coffee?” said a nurse young enough to be my great great granddaughter the other day “You drink three cups of coffee in the morning?” leaving me with a vague sense, not uncommon throughout my life, of having done something wrong but not being quite sure what it was).
Still there? Yes, “Duke and Duchess of Cambridge”. In the real world a junior helicopter pilot and a recent university graduate don’t get awards, titles, big jobs, promotions. In the real world people work hard to learn, start at the bottom, work up, gain experience, achieve something, achieve something else, be, with a bit of luck, recognised in some way for those achievements much later.
In Conservativeland merit isn’t something you want to encourage in a country. You might want to pause briefly again to consider the psychological and political reasons for that. No, the idea that someone is just declared, by reason of their DNA or DNA marriage certificate to be, for example, a Duke (or, for that matter, the head of a corporation, the head of a national broadcaster, a university, and so on) is just the way things are, the way the world works. It is what the monarchy symbolises, holds in place.
Which is why conservatives in other countries (like that oddly shaped large island, small continent, a long way from the mother country) love the monarchy so much, will fight to the death to keep it in place. As Paul Keating once said – “Even as Great Britain walked out on you [the Liberal Party of Australia] and joined the Common Market, you were still looking for your MBEs and your knighthoods, and all the rest of the regalia that comes with it. You would take Australia right back down the time tunnel to the cultural cringe where you have always come from.” And am I right in thinking that one of the first acts of the incoming conservative NZ government was to restore imperial honours?
So complain all you want about the cost of the wedding and the archaic ceremony and the lack of former Labor PMs (as well as Tony Blair), the real message from the wedding came with the unearned honours, and the not so subtle message that WE will decide who rules the roost in this society. Sorry, not “We the people”, have I been unclear?
