Servant of the People

The Jubilee Circus

The Jubilee circus came to town and polluted the air of June with ancient tunes of empire and glory. The sound was dismal and plaintive. It reminded me of cicadas almost dead screeching across still hot august afternoons.

The opulence lack of self-reflection, the unabated nostalgia for empire and "the good old days" disturbed me as much as North Korea's annual birthday celebration for their "dear leader."

This platinum Jubilee was not a celebration of Queen Elizabeth; it was veneration for her as if she was divine and the institution of monarchy eternally benevolent. It was longing by people, with too much luxury, for a return to an unfair past. It was a Jubilee for people who felt cheated by getting too little today, who believe our epoch of woke is to blame. For four days, merit absented itself from Britain, and entitlement clouded the atmosphere of democracy like the smell of stale beer at a Britainia hotel bar three months after a New Year's celebration.

According to the news media, we are nothing without a Royal Family and their steady hand to navigate us through the rough waters of changing times. In lock step, every mainstream political party said during this Jubilee, that we must be thankful that Elizabeth continues to serve her people as Queen in Britain and across the many commonwealth nations where she is still head of state. Servant to the people was a term bandied about this weekend like philanthropist is used, at the funeral of a billionaire that made his fortune in Big Oil. However, "servant to the people," is a term constructed by a ruling class; to better enable them to govern over the many. Over the years, famous servants to the people were Stalin, Mao and Trump. A dinner lady working at a school, in a vulnerable neighbourhood, is more service to ordinary people than the Queen has been.

Even during the coronation year of 1953, my parents and their working-class mates knew the Queen was not a servant to their interests but to the interests of the establishment.

Naturally, my parents watched the coronation in 1953, and they wore their Sunday best for it. It was a bank holiday, and it was a novelty as one of their close friends had bought the first television set in their group. My dad had just turned 30, and my mum 26, and the celebration was more about how they had survived the Great Depression and Hitler. There was no bunting on the street where they watched the coronation, but there was beer and a sense of joy that comes with being young and able to pay your rent with a bit left over for fun.

In 1953, to be young and alive was exhilarating because the fear of death by bombs and hunger was over. Peace and prosperity were not the Queen’s doing or the monarchy. This was the doing of left-wing politics and a Labour Party that was then for and by the people. Admittedly, when Coronation Day arrived, Labour was in opposition. But they had laid a firm foundation for the Welfare State that was so strong that it took six Prime Ministers: from Thatcher to Boris Johnson, to finally split its cement flooring apart with the jackhammers of austerity and privatisation.

In 2022, we are left; with the rubble from the welfare state and we don’t know what to do with it. But instead of getting angry that food bank use in Britain and Canada exceeds 14% from last year or that the housing crisis is worse now, we Jubilee along with the 1%. We don't even get angry that the cost-of-living crisis sown by the 1% will reap an austere harvest of homelessness, hunger and hopelessness by autumn. Instead, we drink beer, buy monarchy tat and say, "God bless her."

I guess we forgot the reasons why our ancestors, parents, grandparents, and great grandparents fought against the totalitarians of the 1940s. They did not do battle in Normandy, Monte Casino, Iwo Jima, or the thousands of killing fields where the blood of friends' and foes' soaked the ground like they were the floors of rendering plants to own a tea towels with a picture of a monarch on it. They didn't come home maimed by war and were scarred emotionally by what they had done or witnessed in battle to return and live under the yoke of the entitled. Those who came home from World War Two returned to their countries and turned swords into ploughshares to live a better life than what they had before the conflict. The greatest generation created a better existence for themselves by demanding their governments build a social safety net for everyone in their society. Everyone who fought fascism in World War Two bequeathed us a birth right to live a life free of want that is replete with purpose and happiness. But we mortgaged our inheritance on the allure of consumerism and the splendour of Jubilees for people who do not know us or care for us.