A MODERN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

RMTnews :: october 2005 26 T his time last year amid the usual pomp and ceremony the Queen officially opened the Scottish parliament building in Edinburgh. I wasn’t there myself, I was way above her with 1,000 others atop Edinburgh’s Calton Hill celebrating an alternative vision, that of a Scottish republic. What a day we had. It was a bright crisp day, a buoyant, colourful, confident, forward looking crowd gathered, to quote that famous Scots republican Robert Burns, and ‘looked and laughed at a’ that’. We had wonderfully inspiring speeches augmented by entertainment from a broad coalition of singers, pipers, comedians, poets, academics, musicians and various performers from across Scotland. A year later, while I have no idea where the Queen now is, we were back on October 1 as we pledged last October that we’d make ours an annual celebration. All the opinion polls I’ve seen conducted in Scotland in recent years reveal a majority in favour of abolishing the monarchy. Scots are unique in this regard in Britain. A majority of us believe that a modern democratic republic with an elected head of state is much the more fitting constitutional arrangement for the 21st century. There was a time, a long time in fact, when Britain didn’t have a monarchy at all. It was a time when verses like this one were very popular A Parliament of knaves and sots Members by name you must not mention Have rendered Charles his restoration Let all the world henceforth abhor ‘em What can there be in kings divine? The most are wolves, goats, sheep or swine Then farewell sacred majesty Let’s put all brutish tyrants down Where men are born and still live free Here every head doth wear a crown Attributed to John Wilmot c.1672 And it’s not until you notice how outmoded and out of step Britain is with the rest of the world, that you consider how the ‘international community’ looks askance at us. They see in the British monarchy an outdated anachronism, a relic of a bygone feudal age. In those countries they insisted long ago that they were citizens and not subjects of anyone. Democracy, not the divine right of kings, established its superiority confidently and finally. As I look around today I often ask who makes the case for a modern democratic republic? In years gone by the maverick Labour MP Willie Hamilton was an outspoken opponent of monarchy and advocated a constitutional republic. But where is his counterpart today? Shortly after I was elected to the Scottish Parliament in 2003 I set off on a speaking tour of Australia. It was not long after the Aussies had voted, in a national referendum, to retain the monarchy. I remember teasing the predominantly left- wing audiences who came to hear me speak, saying how disappointed I was to hear how they had voted. But fair’s fair, I conceded, if that’s what they wanted. I had been sent by the Scottish people to tell them they could have her. We would even pay her air fare! They were pig sick. Colin Fox, MSP Scottish Socialist Party convenor FOR A MODERN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC