This week sees the Coronation of King Charles III. For the Coronation the King has made Coronation Quiche the official dish of the Coronation, a classic French tart which our horticultural monarch has deemed to be made with out of season Broad Beans, perhaps frozen for the ocasion after death of his mother. This is the sort of absurdity that built the glory of the United Kingdom.
As anyone who has travelled to the UK and tried to travel by train will know the British love, grumble about, cherish and stoically tolerate absurdity. Many this weekend will don cheap plastic Union flag bowler hats, probably made in China, to celebrate that the UK still has an hereditary head of state. A King who lives in huge palaces, wears a brazen ostentatious yet gloriously tacky crown. During an economic crisis where millions of Britons struggle to pay the bills, we lavishly spend money on a bizarre ceremony where our head of state has to be annointed with special oils, clothed in ancient robes, regaled with medieval trumpets from men wearing medieval dress, handed a special stick and an orb and the aforementioned crown to continue the hilarious idea that the people in positions in power in Great Britain are somehow ‘chosen by God’ and not the decendents of charlatans and bullies who managed to raise bigger armies than the other guy, to be paraded around London in a golden horse drawn carriage to the baying crowds. All whilst renowned journalists are drafted in to commentate on the proceedings by discussing which princess has the most ridiculous hat or which former Prime Minister is most in disgrace. We loves it and I say this from the fathomless depths of British sarcasm, it does make you proud to be British.
As a Briton the most striking aspect of this weekends festivities is that for the first time the British will be asked to swear an oath of fealty to the King. This is perhaps either the least British thing to do or the most. The least because, whilst we are all subjects of the Crown we are in no way obliged to offer the tiniest smigeon of respect to the instiution of the Monarchy. My family are Royalists and yet it was drummed into me as a child that it is my right as a Briton to disparage the Royals as much as I like, because we are a free people. Yes there probably is some of that delicious British irony in there somewhere. The most because many people will swear this oath with tongue firmly in cheek but go along with it because it’s the thing to be seen doing.
Of course there always were genuine Royalists who rampaciously defend the institution and similarly Republicans actively campaigning for the abolition of the Monarchy. However I’ve always felt that most British citizens, like myself regard it all with a gently respectful yet wry amusement; we are just happy to get the day off work to ironically enjoy making quiches, wave flags, getting some smiles off people for a change and some general quality time with our families.
This love of the absurd is perhaps the most defining characteristic of the British. One of the United Kingdom’s largest exports is culture. Our televisual comedies are sold throughout the world, comedies such as Mr Bean, Father Ted, Alan Partridge, Derry Girls and Keeping Up Appearances to name a few. Comedies that are globally popular yet which all send up British sensibilites and culture to the most extreme levels.
Pantomime is a great British institution perhaps because whilst it is gloriously absurd at its best and despite that is only possible because of a intense diligence to the traditions of Panto. Whislt Panto’ is mainly great fun for children, a proper one always includes a dig at the government for the ‘grown ups’. Panto is ridiculous but it only works because we take the production and traditions of it very seriously indeed.
Similarly with pop music from the Beatles, David Bowie and so on took used surrealism for the creation of bizarre characters the performers took seriuosly to create some fantastic pieces of popular music. Whilst in CLassical music great composers are alost absent, apart from those who savour the comic elements of classical music.
The Royals seemed to use to understand this British love of the absurd. Our late Queen Elizabeths last party saw her eating marmalade sandwiches with Paddington Bear. The late Queens children participated in ‘It’s a Royal Knockout’ a special edition of the insanely wonderful ‘It’s a Knockout’ gameshow, where people dressed in giant foam costumes to carry buckets of fluid half blind across slippery rotating floors, bumb into each other and fall over for laughs.
Yet this joyously British event seems to lack this taking the absurdity melded with seriouisness and respect for the absurdity which Royal occasions of old held dear. It’s perhaps partly as the United Kingdom is not at ease with itself and hence not finding it as easy as it once was to laugh at ourselves, our coping mechanism. It has been said that the British don’t fo revolution as we are too busy making up jokes. I imagine these words here causing the blood to boil in outrage from certain sections as ‘damnable wokery’ from the Royalists and conversely accusations of being a Royal apologist from the Republicans. The fun seems to be absent from this Royal event. It seems criticism and support of the Coronation has become involved in the establishments Culture Wars. Ironically perhaps merely a continuation of the policy of divide and rule that is sadly seeing a resurgance across the world. Perhaps all this caused by the seemingly endless global economic crisis we are facing: the declining British economy no-ones even talking about fixing, war in Europe, Covid, the general crisis of late monetarist capitalism. We almost don’t have time to discuss the greatest peril to our way of life, climate change.
The jokes don’t seem funny anymore, the joy is disappearing. You can laugh at the idiocy of the government or establishment class as long as fundamentally you believe they are least trying to put things right even if their ideas are fundmenetally flawed, that faith in the British economy to keep ‘buggering on’ has almost entirely faded, we are waiting for a miracle to come. There is the perception that no-one is even trying to unite the countries of the UK or fix the economy anymore, we are getting more used to things not working and there being no money to fix things.
It does come back to the elephant in the room no-one talks about anymore, or rather we talk about it all the time but without mentioning the accursed word, Brexit. I’ve written a lot about Brexit. Prior to Brexit there was a sense of ‘whatever our differences are at the end of the day we are all British’, that one uniting thing was viciously attacked by Brexit. Brexit may have been the British being at it’s Pythonesque best by saying that being members of the European Union (EU) was far too sensible and prevented the UK being as silly as it wanted to be and thus Brexit was won. However, Brexit exposed and amplified all the underlying tensions within the nations of the UK: between the Celtic nations and England, between black and white, between LGBTQ+ and striaght, between North and South, between the rich and poor, between Royalist and Republican, even and most strikingly between young and old and perhaps most fundamnetally those who value Britains diversity and those who value it’s conformist streak.
During Brexit it was often said ‘I don’t understand why polls are suggesting Brexit is 50-50 (or 52:48 as it was on the day of the vote) because I don’t know anyone who is voting for Brexit/Bremain’ The division was exposed, an individuals socio-economic and cultural background determined which side you were on. It made people realise that amongst their own side they agreed on so many other things. The government and now with the royal “oath of allegiance” UK institutions are no longer attempting to unite the country or try to tackle the economic problems and are instead exploiting the division for their own ends, divide and rule, attack freedom of speech, the scapegoats. It used to be the Catholics, now it seems to be everyone not exactly like them, hence the culture wars. Brexit demonstrated that you can foster intense debate over minutiae of word definitions, in particular what is an immigrant, to obscure and make imposible any genuine debate on immigration or anything else, what the UK economy can do post-Brexit. The age of informed polite discussion has been a victim of the culture wars, it’s now flame wars, cancel culture, obfusicating the narrative and leaving truth as a forgotten blood stained rag on the battlefield. It’s no longer comfortbale to be be wryly amused by Royal events, it seems you have to pick a side Republican or Royalist.
I simply fear this Coronation, the first in my lifetime, will lack any sense of joy or celebration of Britain and our love of the absurd. We are not supposed to take pomp and pagaentry seriously, how crazy is that, but that seems to be the argument the Royalist faction are pushing. We shall see. God save the King.
Squimple 