tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/republicanism-10759/articlesrepublicanism – The Conversation2023-05-09T20:16:24Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2052542023-05-09T20:16:24Z2023-05-09T20:16:24ZDismay over King Charles’s coronation raises questions about Canada’s ties to the monarchy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525158/original/file-20230509-21-1iokjg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5159%2C3413&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">King Charles and Queen Camilla stand on the balcony of Buckingham Palace after their coronation in London on May 6, 2023. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Leon Neal/Pool Photo via AP)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/dismay-over-king-charles-s-coronation-raises-questions-about-canada-s-ties-to-the-monarchy" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The coronation of King Charles was a cringe-inducing display of white European hereditary privilege and ostentation that angered many, both in the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/uk-republicans-call-for-saturdays-coronation-to-be-the-last">United Kingdom</a> and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/uk-charles-coronation-royals-commonwealth-caribbean-africa-e450b996bc21b179cd3725789853676e">the Commonwealth</a>.</p>
<p>That anger, or in some cases simple apathy or collective eye-rolling, should not be ignored because the monarchy and the Crown are not merely symbols, they’re a massive expense. </p>
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<p>The cost of the coronation to the British taxpayer has been estimated at <a href="https://time.com/6275383/king-charles-iii-coronation-cost-taxpayers/">£100 million</a> (almost $170 million in Canadian dollars) — extremely costly in a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64450882">post-Brexit period of economic uncertainty and decline for the U.K.</a>.</p>
<p>Some of the vast private wealth and land holdings of the Royal Family are also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/series/cost-of-the-crown">connected directly to England’s role in colonization and the slave trade</a>. </p>
<p>Despite all this, the monarch remains the head of state for many Commonwealth countries, including Canada. </p>
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<img alt="An elderly man in a large crown adorned with jewels and purple velvet waves from an ornate golden horse-drawn carriage. An elderly woman in a similar crown sits beside him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525163/original/file-20230509-15-e6h1l2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525163/original/file-20230509-15-e6h1l2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525163/original/file-20230509-15-e6h1l2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525163/original/file-20230509-15-e6h1l2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525163/original/file-20230509-15-e6h1l2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525163/original/file-20230509-15-e6h1l2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525163/original/file-20230509-15-e6h1l2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">King Charles waves from a golden carriage following his coronation in London on May 6, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette</span></span>
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<h2>The U.S. style of republicanism</h2>
<p>While the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/4/20/america-isnt-just-a-failing-state-it-is-a-failed-experiment">American experiment in republicanism isn’t looking especially good</a> at the moment amid the shambles left by Donald Trump’s presidency, the country’s founders were correct in recognizing that democratic legitimacy and monarchical power cannot be easily reconciled.</p>
<p>In fact, their biggest mistake and that of subsequent generations may simply have been to permit the presidency to retain elements of absolute or unfettered power in the form of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/14/politics/what-is-executive-privilege-what-matters/index.html">executive privilege</a>. </p>
<p>From George W. Bush’s disastrous war on terror to the Trump administration’s outright repudiation of democratic norms, <a href="https://hls.harvard.edu/today/presidential-power-surges/">recent presidents have not hesitated to behave like kings</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/manhattan-grand-jury-votes-to-indict-donald-trump-showing-he-like-all-other-presidents-is-not-an-imperial-king-196451">Manhattan grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump, showing he, like all other presidents, is not an imperial king</a>
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<p>In Canada, we can benefit from both the lessons of the United States and the U.K. to avoid idealizing a republic with a powerful president and at the same time acknowledging that a traditional monarchy, even a purely symbolic or constitutional monarchy, is no alternative. </p>
<p>As I have argued before, each Commonwealth nation would have different legislative and constitutional processes to follow to sever ties with the British monarchy. Canada’s in particular would be complex and difficult, but not necessarily impossible.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/will-canada-cut-ties-to-the-monarchy-under-king-charles-its-possible-190894">Will Canada cut ties to the monarchy under King Charles? It's possible</a>
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<p>It would require unanimous consent of all provincial legislatures and the federal Parliament. In practice, this would probably not be possible without referendums in each province. Because of this, <a href="https://thewalrus.ca/ask-an-expert-what-would-it-take-to-leave-the-monarchy/">some leading constitutional lawyers in Canada regard the question as a non-starter</a>. </p>
<p>But if Canadians aren’t careful, they may one day find that events in the U.K. make the decision for us.</p>
<p>Here’s how. </p>
<h2>Different political systems</h2>
<p>Suppose <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/young-british-people-want-ditch-monarchy-poll-suggests-2021-05-20/">current British demographic trends and polling data</a> pan out and a decade or two from now a younger, more diverse British population loses patience with the monarchy. </p>
<p>Like Canada, the U.K. has a constitution and the monarchy is essential to it. But unlike Canada, the U.K.’s constitution is largely unwritten. Changing the British Constitution can at least theoretically be done by an ordinary act of Parliament and without the complexity of co-ordinating 10 sovereign legislatures. </p>
<p>Another difference? <a href="https://www.centreonconstitutionalchange.ac.uk/news-and-opinion/back-unitary-state">The U.K. is a unitary</a> and not a federal state. This means British parliament, unlike Canada’s, can unilaterally amend its constitution to address the status of the monarchy if it wishes. </p>
<p>Similarly in the U.K., any conventions around public consultation would also be arguably less complex and more straightforward than in Canada because of the British system of government. This could lead to a bizarre situation in which the British monarch ceases to be the British head of state but remains the Canadian one. </p>
<p>To my knowledge, this would be a completely uncharted territory and a constitutional crisis of the highest magnitude. </p>
<p>Rather than continuing to sit nervously on the sidelines observing America’s presidential system lurch from crisis to crisis, or celebrating the coronation of Britain’s new king as our own, Canada should learn from the errors of both the republican model and monarchical model and do something different. </p>
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<img alt="People sit in an ornate ballroom drinking tea with two TV screens showing the coronation at the front of the room." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525160/original/file-20230509-23-idwc3m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525160/original/file-20230509-23-idwc3m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525160/original/file-20230509-23-idwc3m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525160/original/file-20230509-23-idwc3m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525160/original/file-20230509-23-idwc3m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525160/original/file-20230509-23-idwc3m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525160/original/file-20230509-23-idwc3m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">People gather to watch the coronation of King Charles in Edmonton on May 6, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson</span></span>
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<h2>Looking ahead</h2>
<p>We might start by recognizing forms of political association, governance and policymaking that are less European and owe more to Indigenous models. </p>
<p>Mary Simon, Canada’s governor general and the King’s representative in Canada — as well as first Indigenous person to occupy that colonial office — is correct when she says <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/governor-general-canada-monarchy-future-1.6831365">many Indigenous people look to the treaty relationship with the Crown, which predates Confederation itself, as part of their strategy of decolonization</a>. </p>
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<p>But it’s tough to reconcile a European hereditary monarchy with a Canada in which Indigenous people are attempting to take control over their own destiny.</p>
<p>Similarly, for many Canadians who immigrated to Canada from parts of the former British Empire in the Caribbean, Africa and India, finding the old colonial monarchy waiting for them here is no sign of dynamism.</p>
<p>It will be up to the current generation of Canadians to decide if now is the time to begin taking this question more seriously or whether to leave it to the United Kingdom to decide for us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205254/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeffrey B. Meyers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Canadians should learn the lessons of the U.S. and the U.K. to avoid idealizing a republic with a powerful president and at the same time acknowledge that a constitutional monarchy is no alternative.Jeffrey B. Meyers, Instructor, Legal Studies and Criminology, Kwantlen Polytechnic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2004082023-03-06T19:48:19Z2023-03-06T19:48:19ZKing Charles’s coronation: Should Canada become a republic?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513422/original/file-20230303-1853-7b1r25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=18%2C27%2C3065%2C2020&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Then-Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles visiting Canada in 2017. As a new monarch is crowned in Britain, is it time for Canada to have a head of state who is Canadian?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/king-charles-s-coronation--should-canada-become-a-republic" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>On May 6, 2023, Charles III will <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63543019">officially be crowned</a> King of the United Kingdom in a coronation ceremony at Westminster Abbey. </p>
<p>As King, Charles is also the <a href="https://www.royal.uk/commonwealth-and-overseas">head of state of 14 other Commonwealth countries, including Canada</a>. The coronation raises an important question for Canada and the other countries: should we retain a British monarch as our official head of state?</p>
<p>Several Commonwealth countries have already removed the British monarch as their head of state, opting to become republics. <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/04/28/caribbean-monarchy-queen-republic-reparations-jamaica-belize-protest/">Others are considering making a similar change</a>.</p>
<p>In 2021, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-59470843">Barbados became the latest Commonwealth country to cut ties with the British royal family</a>, opting to make Sandra Mason, the country’s governor-general, its first president.</p>
<p>Australia recently announced that <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64493849">King Charles will not be appearing on their $5 banknote</a>. This may prove the opening gambit in what could lead to a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/11/10/one-of-our-own-australia-plans-referendum-on-monarchy">second Australian referendum on whether to become a republic</a>. Australia’s current Labor government has announced its intention to hold such a referendum if it is re-elected to a second term.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513453/original/file-20230304-28-6fkgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Charles in a military uniform sitting on a gold throne next to a bejeweled crown of a red pillow." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513453/original/file-20230304-28-6fkgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513453/original/file-20230304-28-6fkgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513453/original/file-20230304-28-6fkgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513453/original/file-20230304-28-6fkgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513453/original/file-20230304-28-6fkgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513453/original/file-20230304-28-6fkgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513453/original/file-20230304-28-6fkgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Then-Prince Charles sits by the Imperial State Crown during the State Opening of the British Parliament in May 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Ben Stansall)</span></span>
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<h2>Canada and the Crown</h2>
<p>Canadians of a certain age will remember the heated debate back in 1965 when the <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/flag-debate">Pearson government moved to replace the Red Ensign</a>, with its Union Jack in the corner, with the <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/flag-canada-history.html">Maple Leaf flag</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/politics-law/the-great-flag-debate">John Diefenbaker</a> and other Tories huffed and puffed about the terrible break with tradition this would represent. But who in Canada today would want to return to the Red Ensign?</p>
<p>The Crown has had an important place in Canadian history. It was a symbol of the British connection and of the country’s tie to the British Empire at the time of Confederation and for many decades thereafter.</p>
<p>It is also worth noting that, demographically speaking, a clear majority of the country’s English-speaking population was of British origin for much of the country’s history.</p>
<p>But this has been much less the case since the Second World War. Immigrants from around the world have made Canada a <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/221026/dq221026b-eng.htm">much more diverse country</a>. Nor do those Canadians with British ancestry necessarily identify with Great Britain as the mother country in the way previous generations might have done.</p>
<h2>A borrowed crown</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513420/original/file-20230303-1751-a9jqqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and while photo of a woman wearing a crown sitting on a throne with men standing around her." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513420/original/file-20230303-1751-a9jqqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513420/original/file-20230303-1751-a9jqqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513420/original/file-20230303-1751-a9jqqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513420/original/file-20230303-1751-a9jqqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513420/original/file-20230303-1751-a9jqqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513420/original/file-20230303-1751-a9jqqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513420/original/file-20230303-1751-a9jqqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The coronation of Queen Elizabeth at Westminster Abbey in London on June 2, 1953.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/constitutional-monarchy">Constitutional monarchy</a> is a perfectly legitimate option for liberal democracies. It has worked well in Scandinavia and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Benelux">Benelux countries</a>, and reasonably well in the U.K., Spain and Japan. </p>
<p>The problem for countries like Canada or Australia is that ours is a borrowed crown. The Royal Family is British and no attempt to Canadianize the Crown can disguise the fact that our head of state is not and cannot be a Canadian, as long as this last vestige of the <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/timeline/colonization-and-immigration">colonial</a> tie is retained.</p>
<p>We need to have a proper debate in this country about the monarchy, now that <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-61585886">the queen who reigned for 70 years has passed away</a>. The House of Windsor has had its share of problems, and the <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/news-polls/canadians-conflicted-on-future-role-of-monarchy">current royals do not enjoy the same level of popularity that Queen Elizabeth may have had</a>. Nor is it clear why the Canada of today would want to retain its ties with an institution steeped in aristocratic and feudal privilege.</p>
<p>It would be helpful if our political parties, beginning with the New Democratic Party and the Liberal Party, were prepared to open a debate on the subject. But it needs to go well beyond their ranks and include society at large. What is at stake is the symbolism associated with having a British monarch as our head of state a century and a half after confederation.</p>
<p>Some might argue that replacing King Charles would open up a constitutional can of worms. A key question is how a future Canadian head of state might be designated. Clearly, we would not be replacing a parliamentary system with a presidential system of the American or French variety. </p>
<p>If we were to become a republic, it’s important to agree on a mechanism by which a president might be chosen. This was a problem that dogged the republicans in Australia at the time of their 1999 referendum. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513423/original/file-20230303-1839-uh0nhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Charles shakes hands with an Indigenous man wearing a traditional feather headdress." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513423/original/file-20230303-1839-uh0nhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513423/original/file-20230303-1839-uh0nhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513423/original/file-20230303-1839-uh0nhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513423/original/file-20230303-1839-uh0nhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513423/original/file-20230303-1839-uh0nhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513423/original/file-20230303-1839-uh0nhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513423/original/file-20230303-1839-uh0nhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Then-Prince Charles meeting with Indigenous leaders in Toronto in 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>A possible path forward</h2>
<p>One model that comes to mind for a federal state like Canada is Germany. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uIOhbTg7jM">Their president</a> is elected to a five-year term (renewable once) by a <a href="https://www.bundestag.de/en/parliament/function/federal_convention">Federal Convention</a> made up of all the members of the Bundestag (the lower house of parliament), and an equal number, proportionate to their respective populations, elected by the legislatures of the 16 Länder (provinces). </p>
<p>The system has functioned well until now, with the figures who have occupied the presidency being well-suited to the role. Germany, like Canada, remains a parliamentary democracy. <a href="https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-en/chancellor/structure-and-tasks-470508">Effective political power rests with the chancellor</a>, as it does with the prime minister in this country.</p>
<p>Were Canada to go the republican route, we would need to do so through a long constitutional process. The Canadian constitution states that there must be <a href="https://www.constitutionalstudies.ca/2019/07/amending-formula/">unanimity of the provinces</a> for changing the head of state. In addition, <a href="https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100028574/1529354437231">treaties between First Nations and the Crown</a> would have to be carried forward into a Canadian republic.</p>
<p>However, where there is a will there is a way. And Canadians should no longer shirk the question: does the British monarchy reflect how we see ourselves in the 21st century?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200408/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Resnick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As Charles is crowned King, maybe the time has come for Canada to reassess its connection with the British monarchy and become a republic.Philip Resnick, Professor Emeritus, Political Science, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1905912022-09-20T20:14:07Z2022-09-20T20:14:07ZQueen Elizabeth II: the politics of national mourning left no space for dissenting voices<p>After eleven days of national mourning following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, a full day of ceremonies brought the second Elizabethan era to a close. The official nature of this period – during which all political wrangling was cast to one side to allow the country to unite and grieve for the loss of the late monarch – was underlined by the administrative use of capital letters for “<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-demise-of-her-majesty-queen-elizabeth-ii-national-mourning-guidance/the-demise-of-her-majesty-queen-elizabeth-ii-national-mourning-guidance">National Mourning</a>”. </p>
<p>Drawing on traditions, rituals and protocols, the codified arrangements for what would happen when the Queen died and her son acceded to the throne as King Charles III, were dubbed operations London Bridge and Spring Tide respectively. They played out as a linear process, emphatically underlining the continuity of the monarchy. As such they differed in character from <a href="https://theconversation.com/queen-elizabeth-what-we-mean-when-we-say-we-are-mourning-her-for-the-values-she-embodied-190686">“collective grief”</a>, the more social expressions of which are non-linear and spontaneous, incorporating <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-do-britains-tears-for-queen-elizabeth-mean-190784">myriad emotions, experiences and activities</a>. </p>
<p>The focus on national mourning by large sections of the media, however, has left little or no room for a plurality of perspectives, whether that involved dissenting views on the monarchy or, simply, a fuller understanding of what collective grief actually means. This has arguably created a false impression of national consensus. </p>
<h2>Shared emotion</h2>
<p>Collective grief can facilitate individual and communal grief, as well as community action. The Queen’s death has indeed elicited numerous personal stories about a sense of shared emotion. Research speaks about <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0030222820971531">parasocial grief</a> – grief experienced for someone not known directly. </p>
<p>Many people have pointed, as reasons for their private mourning, to the Queen’s longevity and stature as a historical anchor point for their own lives. Her death thus precipitates what social work expert Joan Beder has called a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.2190/GXH6-8VY6-BQ0R-GC04">“loss of the assumptive world”</a>: when an individual’s core beliefs or worldview are challenged in the face of death and loss. </p>
<p>Cultural anthropologist <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20004214.2019.1635426">Christina Jordan</a> observes that from her coronation in 1953 the Queen became a familiar and domesticated presence largely through an astute use of the media. The televised coronation, the annual Christmas broadcasts and the many documentaries about everyday royal life all played a key role in establishing emotional bonds with the public. </p>
<p>As feminist writer and scholar Sara Ahmed <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Cultural-Politics-of-Emotion/Ahmed/p/book/9781138805033">has noted</a>, this made of the Queen an “object of shared feeling”. She was the means by which the “national body” could bond in recognition of its own history. </p>
<p>However, this process has involved a particular form of revisionism. As the Commonwealth was reconfigured during the Queen’s reign, so too were histories of empire, imperialism and colonialism. </p>
<p>It is in this context that the Queen’s death has prompted such mixed reactions from former British colonies and member states of the Commonwealth. These views have elicited strong reactions and online racist abuse. As journalist <a href="http://example.com/https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/queen-elizabeth-death-racist-abuse-twitter-b2166204.html">Nadine White</a> puts it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you’re surprised by that, you shouldn’t be: the late ruler had many subjects – it stands to reason that views on her legacy will vary in light of the atrocities of the British Empire and colonial crimes committed in the royal family’s name. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Newspaper columnist <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/15/dissenting-voices-royal-mourning-queen-silenced-cancel-culture">Polly Toynbee</a> has described the silencing of dissenting views as a form of intimidation and bullying. To her mind, right-wing sections of the press have contributed to a stifling of freedom of expression since the Queen’s death. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/20/queen-anger-monarchy-preserving-inequity">Other commentators</a> with republican views have felt similarly unable to express them.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.mariecurie.org.uk/talkabout/articles/how-national-and-collective-grief-help-us-with-personal-loss/289893">Research</a> on collective grief indicates that it is experienced at different scales. For some it is related to other forms of personal grief. For others it is prompted by wider concerns about current political and social uncertainties. The end of a historical era can also invoke feelings of loss and nostalgia. </p>
<p>Collective grief about the Queen might also include unresolved or disenfranchised collective grief resulting from the pandemic. But even when considering this echo, divisions here too become quickly apparent.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/28/delayed-public-inquiry-into-uks-covid-19-response-opens">UK COVID-19 inquiry</a> has been delayed due to the national mourning period. Hospital appointments have been cancelled by several NHS trusts, despite the <a href="http://example.com/https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/sep/08/waiting-lists-for-routine-hospital-treatment-in-england-break-record">reported</a> record levels of people waiting for treatment in the UK. And the news that <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/2022-09-13/food-banks-criticised-over-plans-to-shut-during-bank-holiday-for-queens-funeral">some foodbanks would be closed</a> on the day of the funeral came amid the cost of living crisis. </p>
<p>National mourning has been shaped by ceremonial functions across Britain’s four nations. This can be read as an attempt to unify a country riven with divisions – civic, political, cultural and social. </p>
<p>Furthermore, there are already differences in the emotions expressed. Older people who might have mapped their own life experiences more closely to the Queen’s have reported higher levels of grief than the so-called Generation Z. In fact, <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/09/13/how-have-britons-reacted-queen-elizabeth-iis-death">recent surveys</a> by British Social Attitudes and YouGov have consistently shown a <a href="https://theconversation.com/king-charles-inherits-crown-with-support-for-monarchy-at-record-low-but-future-not-set-in-stone-190448">lack of interest in the monarchy</a> among younger people. </p>
<p>Rather than achieving national consensus, the Queen’s death has already highlighted several historical and social faultlines.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190591/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deborah Madden does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many of those critical or skeptical of the monarchy have felt silenced.Deborah Madden, Principal Lecturer, Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories, University of BrightonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1906562022-09-14T22:33:31Z2022-09-14T22:33:31ZGod save the King: why the monarchy is safe in Aotearoa New Zealand – for now<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484726/original/file-20220914-9420-48cwta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C0%2C3484%2C2331&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>New Zealanders with republican or just plain anti-monarchy sympathies will have been disappointed (though maybe not surprised) that the Queen’s death has not triggered a more critical conversation about the country’s constitutional future.</p>
<p>Quite the opposite, in fact, if the prime minister is right. Far from representing a possible inflexion point in the nation’s post-Elizabethan development, Jacinda Ardern has suggested the nation’s close connection to the royal family would <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/11/jacinda-ardern-expects-new-zealands-royal-ties-to-deepen-under-king-charles-iii">continue and strengthen</a> under Charles III.</p>
<p>If so, it would put New Zealand in the vanguard of colonial loyalty. <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/29/barbados-set-to-become-a-republic-ditching-british-queen">Barbados</a>, of course, has recently taken the republican route, as have 35 other former British colonies or dependencies. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/antigua-barbuda-planning-vote-become-republic-within-3-years-media-2022-09-11/">Antigua and Barbuda</a>, <a href="https://www.essence.com/news/jamaica-republic-2025/">Jamaica</a> and other Caribbean nations are setting off down that path, and there is also the prospect <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/sep/12/albanese-says-inappropriate-to-discuss-republic-now-but-doesnt-rule-out-future-referendum">Australia</a> will join them at some point. </p>
<p>Indeed, of the 56 nations that are part of the Commonwealth, only 14 still <a href="https://www.newsroom.co.nz/the-unpublished-blueprint-to-bring-home-new-zealands-head-of-state">retain the British monarch</a> as head of state.</p>
<p>And yet, despite the future of the monarchy fast becoming a subject of debate around the remainder of the Commonwealth, it seems unlikely that much republican chatter will be heard any time soon in Aotearoa New Zealand.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1570163101726564357"}"></div></p>
<h2>Republican residues</h2>
<p>This lack of enthusiasm for a debate is a little perplexing. It’s not as if <a href="http://www.republic.org.nz/latestblog/queenstatement">republicanism is unknown in Aotearoa</a>. The New Zealand Republican Party was even briefly (and unsuccessfully) involved in electoral politics in the late 1960s.</p>
<p>At the Labour Party’s 1973 national conference, a remit to declare the country a republic was debated but scuttled. And in 1994, then prime minister Jim Bolger suggested New Zealand should look to achieve republican status by 2001. He was clearly ahead of his time.</p>
<p>There has been at least one more recent attempt to get the republican ball rolling. In late 2009, Green MP Keith Locke had his <a href="https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/hansard-debates/rhr/document/49HansS_20100421_00001350/locke-keith-head-of-state-referenda-bill-first-reading">Head of State Referenda Bill</a> drawn from the parliamentary ballot. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-evolving-colony-to-bicultural-nation-queen-elizabeth-ii-walked-a-long-road-with-aotearoa-new-zealand-179933">From evolving colony to bicultural nation, Queen Elizabeth II walked a long road with Aotearoa New Zealand</a>
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<hr>
<p>Had Locke’s bill been successful (it wasn’t, dipping out at the first reading by 15 votes), there would have been a referendum on remaking the governor-general as the ceremonial head of a parliamentary (rather than a presidential) republic.</p>
<p>And it is not that New Zealand isn’t constitutionally innovative or reluctant to have constitutional conversations. In 1951, it <a href="https://www.parliament.nz/en/visit-and-learn/history-and-buildings/evolution-of-parliament/legislative-council/">jettisoned its second parliamentary chamber</a> and in the mid-1990s adopted <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/12/new-zealands-mmp-electoral-system-what-is-it-and-how-does-it-work">proportional representation</a> for national elections. </p>
<p>Debates about the place of <a href="https://www.nzstory.govt.nz/stories/the-treaty-of-waitangi/">Te Tiriti o Waitangi</a> are a regular feature of public life, in which consideration has long been given to <a href="https://nwo.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/MatikeMaiAotearoa25Jan16.pdf">alternative constitutional structures</a> that fit Aotearoa’s unique history and society.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484728/original/file-20220914-16744-trnifk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484728/original/file-20220914-16744-trnifk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484728/original/file-20220914-16744-trnifk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484728/original/file-20220914-16744-trnifk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484728/original/file-20220914-16744-trnifk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484728/original/file-20220914-16744-trnifk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484728/original/file-20220914-16744-trnifk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Republican dreamer: former prime minister Jim Bolger wanted a republic by 2001.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Constitutional consistency</h2>
<p>There may be several reasons why republicanism has not captured the public mood here <a href="https://www.essence.com/news/jamaica-republic-2025/">the way it has elsewhere</a>. For a start, there are simply always more pressing political priorities – right now including the <a href="https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/increase-in-cost-of-living-reaches-new-high">cost of living</a>, entrenched <a href="https://www.parliament.nz/mi/pb/research-papers/document/00PlibCIP181/household-incomes-inequality-and-poverty/">income</a> and <a href="https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/1935430/WP-21-10-wealth-inequality-in-New-Zealand.pdf">wealth</a> inequalities, and the <a href="https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/annual-inflation-reaches-30-year-high-of-6-9-percent">return of inflation</a>. </p>
<p>Not many prime ministers would voluntarily expend political capital on a debate few New Zealanders appear to find especially relevant.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/charles-iii-the-difficult-legacy-and-political-significance-of-the-new-kings-name-190383">Charles III: the difficult legacy and political significance of the new king's name</a>
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</em>
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<hr>
<p>Second, it may be that in an age of political polarisation, the idea of a head of state who is not only unelected but also happens to live a <a href="https://www.distance.to/New-Zealand/London">long way away</a> appeals to those for whom politics has become distastefully partisan. In trying times, the pull of tradition and constancy is strong for some people.</p>
<p>A third reason lies in the significance of the relationship between Māori and the Crown, provided for by the cornerstone of the nation’s constitutional architecture, Te Tiriti o Waitangi.</p>
<p>The particulars of that relationship are <a href="https://www.newsroom.co.nz/ideasroom/anne-salmond-te-tiriti-and-democracy">hotly debated</a>, but there is a view that replacing the Crown (as an institution) with something homegrown would disrupt the partnership it represents. The Crown may well be the historic coloniser, but for that very reason it is the Crown which must engage in the conversation about decolonisation.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1569674371265880070"}"></div></p>
<h2>If not now, when?</h2>
<p>Of course, there are many New Zealanders for whom republicanism makes perfectly good sense. In part, that’s because, since the advent of responsible government in 1856, “the Crown” has effectively meant the political executive, not the person of the monarch. It is the prime minister and cabinet who govern, not the head of state.</p>
<p>There is, too, the basic weirdness of retaining a monarch who becomes head of state by virtue of having been born into one <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/from-the-archive-blog/2017/jul/17/british-royal-family-windsor-name-change-1917">very particular English family</a> domiciled on the other side of the world.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-queen-elizabeth-ii-made-the-british-monarchy-into-a-global-brand-190394">How Queen Elizabeth II made the British monarchy into a global brand</a>
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<p>Which means, of course, that no actual New Zealander (nor for that matter anyone who is <a href="https://www.royal.uk/succession">not a Protestant</a>) can ever be the head of state of New Zealand. (Happily those proscriptions do not apply to the monarch’s representative, <a href="https://gg.govt.nz/governor-general">the governor-general</a>.)</p>
<p>This quirk of history notwithstanding, there is little to suggest the accession of a new monarch is about to generate a wave of republican sentiment in Aotearoa. And yet, the republican conversation has already been held in India, Barbados and Fiji, and is well under way across the Caribbean.</p>
<p>When and if that discussion <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/australia-albanese-republic-referendum-queen-death-b2165229.html">heats up in Australia</a> again, the promise – or spectre – of republicanism will be right next door. By then, memories of a monarch who ruled over the end of empire for 70 years will have started to fade. All bets will be off.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190656/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Shaw does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If the prime minister is right, and New Zealand’s ties to the monarchy will only strengthen under Charles III, the country will be swimming against the Commonwealth tide.Richard Shaw, Professor of Politics, Massey UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1906032022-09-14T16:13:16Z2022-09-14T16:13:16ZAnti-monarchy protesters arrested – an expert on what the law says<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484604/original/file-20220914-6106-311yc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=46%2C46%2C5129%2C3399&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk-1st-april-2017-police-645244639">DaLiu / Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For many, the week following the death of the Queen has been a time of mourning. It has also been one of tension around the question of free speech and protest. There have been <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/abolish-the-monarchy-protesters-king-proclamation-b2165294.html">several instances</a> of police arresting or questioning protesters expressing anti-monarchy sentiment in London, Oxford and Edinburgh. </p>
<p>It is difficult to see what criminal offences protesters might have committed by shouting “not my king” or “abolish the monarchy” as the royal procession of the casket made its way along the streets, or at public proclamations of King Charles III the new monarch. </p>
<p>The right to peacefully protest is protected in domestic law, and the European convention on human rights’ protection for free expression (article 10) is enshrined domestically in the Human Rights Act. <a href="https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/handyside-v-uk/">European case law</a> makes clear that these protections cover speech that offends, shocks or disturbs the state or any sector of the population.</p>
<p>The Metropolitan Police <a href="https://twitter.com/MetPoliceEvents/status/1569419775473864706">has said</a>, “The public absolutely have a right to protest and we have been making this clear to all officers involved in the extraordinary policing operation currently in place.”</p>
<p>It’s not entirely clear what powers police relied on to make arrests in each case, but there are three likely possibilities: section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, public nuisance (under the new <a href="https://theconversation.com/policing-bill-is-now-law-how-your-right-to-protest-has-changed-181286">Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022</a>, and arrest to prevent breach of the peace.</p>
<p>In domestic UK law, there is no right not be offended, and so no crime premised mainly on causing offence. To breach <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/section/5/enacted#:%7E:text=5Harassment%2C%20alarm%20or%20distress.&text=(b)displays%20any%20writing%2C,harassment%2C%20alarm%20or%20distress%20thereby.">section 5 of the Public Order Act</a>, one has to be using threatening or abusive language that likely causes someone else harassment, alarm or distress (or engages in disorderly behaviour). </p>
<p>In the case of these arrests then, we have to consider whether the chants or placards in question were threatening or abusive. It would be very difficult for police to argue either – particularly in the case of protesters <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2022/09/13/protesters-hold-blank-signs-after-anti-monarchy-arrests-17367384/">holding blank placards</a> or simply shouting, “Who elected you?”</p>
<p>The case against protesters would have been stronger before 2013, when “insulting language” was <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn05760/">deliberately removed</a> from section 5 to provide greater free speech protection. There is a greater case against the <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/crime/queen-elizabeth-ii-edinburgh-woman-arrested-after-protest-breaks-out-on-royal-mile-3839377">Edinburgh protester</a> who was arrested while holding a “Fuck imperialism, abolish monarchy” placard. She was arrested in connection with a breach of the peace rather than for threatening and abusive behaviour, under the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010, the equivalent to section 5 north of the border. </p>
<p>In free speech cases, context is key. Unwittingly encountering such profanity is very different to any expected or warned-about profanity in theatrical performance. That said, if we arrested and prosecuted anyone who said “fuck” in public, our prisons would be fairly full. The issue here then is about differential policing, treating political speech differently, indeed counter-intuitively as lesser than other speech. </p>
<p>Even if the placards were considered to be abusive, section 5 of the Public Order Act contains a “reasonable conduct” defence. This is where the protection of free speech as a human right comes in. In short, protesters can argue that if all they are doing is exercising their free speech right under the European convention on human rights, that means their conduct is “reasonable”. </p>
<p>There is <a href="https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2021/23.html">supreme court authority</a> to that effect in the context of a disruptive roadblock: a protester should only be arrested, certainly only charged, with obstruction of the highway where it is proportionate to do so. With that balancing equation in mind, these arrests would very likely constitute a disproportionate response. </p>
<h2>Public nuisance and breaching the peace</h2>
<p>Equally, it is hard to see charges of public nuisance (<a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2022/32/section/78/enacted#:%7E:text=78Intentionally%20or%20recklessly%20causing%20public%20nuisance&text=(a)on%20summary%20conviction%2C,a%20fine%20or%20to%20both.">newly created</a> in the 2022 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act) being made good. First, it requires serious distress and serious annoyance to the public or a section thereof. And second, the act also contains a reasonable excuse defence. None of the arrests appear to have been made under the new act. </p>
<p>The likeliest justification for formal police intervention might be under the wide and uncertain power in common law to “prevent a breach of the peace”. The law here is slightly different, in terms of trigger test, in Scotland and England. Certainly, the arrests of <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/crime/queen-elizabeth-ii-edinburgh-woman-arrested-after-protest-breaks-out-on-royal-mile-3839377">republican protesters in Scotland</a> were made under that power. </p>
<p>In England and Wales, case law establishes that the police have the power to take proportionate action to prevent breaches of the peace. While there are no reports of actual violence, the power to step in – and indeed arrest – might arise where the police reasonably believe violence to a person or property might imminently be done at one of these events. </p>
<p>The question is then: who should they arrest? The placard-holders and shouters, or those lining the route who are beginning to show irritation and could turn to violence? </p>
<p>It helps to look to <a href="https://learninglink.oup.com/static/5c0e79ef50eddf00160f35ad/casebook_227.htm">a 1999 case</a>, Redmond-Bate v Director of Public Prosecutions, where three strident and vociferous Christian fundamentalists were preaching in Wakefield. Several people objected. The preachers refused to quieten and were arrested for obstruction. </p>
<p>They appealed their arrest, and the court laid down this distinguishing test: were the preachers being so provocative that someone in the crowd might reasonably be moved to violence? Or were passersby taking the opportunity to react and cause trouble? </p>
<p>The answer to this is obviously a judgement call for officers on the spot. In the case of the republican demonstrators, without any evidence of likely violence, the police probably should not have acted. The rest is context-specific. Even with heightened current public sensitivities, being provoked by a simple sign proclaiming “not my king” is probably not reasonable.</p>
<p>Perhaps these arrests might now bring into question whether such an open-ended common law policing discretion – one never set out in an act of parliament – sits well in a liberal democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190603/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Mead is a member of the Labour Party, of the university lecturers' union, UCU, and is a member of the NETPOL Lawyers' Group</span></em></p>Police may not have been justified in making arrests over breach of the peace and public order.David Mead, Professor of UK Human Rights Law, University of East AngliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1728922021-11-30T15:50:58Z2021-11-30T15:50:58ZBarbados: after four centuries under the British crown, former slave island looks to bright new republican future<p>Fifty-five years after gaining independence from Britain in 1966, Barbados has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/30/at-the-stroke-of-midnight-barbados-becomes-the-worlds-newest-republic">become a republic</a> – and other Commonwealth countries, where support for the monarchy is becoming more volatile than ever, could well follow in its wake. </p>
<p>The change to a republic has been a long time coming for the 300,000 citizens of the small Caribbean island nation. Mia Mottley, Barbados’ centre-left prime minister, has long advocated the change. As far back as 2005, Mottley – then deputy prime minister – said that the Barbadian Labour Party was committed to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20071128160635/http://www.nationnews.com/story/314949145377053.php">holding a referendum on the issue</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We feel that it is the right thing to do to have a Barbadian head of state. We accept that there was a concern that the Government alone should not make that decision in this day and age and we are therefore committed to expressing our views to the public and having them pass judgement on it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The vote was planned for 2008. Then the financial crisis hit and the cost of holding such a vote was considered to be too expensive, so it was postponed.</p>
<p>There has been some speculation that the removal of the Queen was associated with the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/29/nelson-blm-and-new-voices-how-barbados-came-to-cut-ties-to-crown">Black Lives Matter movement</a>, and a new confidence. Certainly, Mottley has used this as a way of drawing attention and gathering public support for the issue – but, in truth, a republic has long been on the agenda.</p>
<p>Despite her party losing office between 2008 and 2018, the issue remained on the table. In 2015, then prime minister, Freundel Stuart – from the Centre-Right Democratic Party – <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150324053426/http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/latestnews/PM-says-Barbados-moving-towards-Republic">said that</a> Barbados was moving towards a republic. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We respect [the Queen] very highly as head of the Commonwealth and accept that she and all of her successors will continue to be at the apex of our political understanding. But in terms of Barbados’ constitutional status, we have to move from a monarchical system to a republican form of government in the very near future.</p>
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<p>Mottley’s BLP won a landslide victory in the 2018 election, securing all 30 parliamentary seats, giving her administration carte blanche to proceed with plans to become a republic. In truth, this was not a contentious issue as both sides had espoused the republican cause.</p>
<p>This time, the decision was made without holding a referendum. Unlike the <a href="https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/10308386">Pacific island of Tuvalu in 2008</a> and the neighbouring<a href="https://www.antillean.org/referendum-day-on-monarchy-constitutional-reform-in-st-vincent-the-grenadines/"> St Vincent and the Grenadines in 2009</a>, the voters were not given a say. Perhaps because the citizens of these two island states voted “no” to having an elected head of state, which was the preferred model in Barbados.</p>
<p>This was an issue that divided the republican cause in Australia in 1999. When the country voted on the republican movement’s “preferred model”, which was for a head of state to be nominated by a two-thirds majority of parliament, rather than holding a direct election, 54% of Australians <a href="http://www.lawfoundation.net.au/ljf/app/&id=DF4206863AE3C52DCA2571A30082B3D5">voted “no”</a>, many of them thought to be republicans who wanted a directly elected head of state.</p>
<p>In 1996 a [Constitution Review Commission](https://www.barbadosparliament.com/main_page_content/show_content/9#:~:text=A%20Constitution%20Review%20Commission%20(1996,non%20Executive%20Head%20of%20State.) was given the job of exploring Barbados’ link with the Crown. In 1998 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/16/barbados-revives-plan-to-remove-queen-as-head-of-state-and-become-a-republic">it recommended</a> that Barbados become a parliamentary republic. In 2005, the country replaced the London-based Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as its final court of appeal with the <a href="https://ccj.org/">Caribbean Court of Justice in Trinidad and Tobago</a>.</p>
<p>Section 49 of the <a href="https://www.oas.org/dil/the_constitution_of_barbados.pdf">Barbados constitution</a> states that: “Parliament may, by an Act of Parliament passed by both Houses, alter this Constitution.” So it didn’t take a great deal to alter the legal basis of the constitution from a monarchy to a republic.</p>
<h2>Could it be catching?</h2>
<p>Barbados’ decision could prompt a wave of other countries deciding to adopt the republican model. In Jamaica – the largest of the Commonwealth nations in the region – both political parties have spoken in favour of becoming a republic. In 2003, the then prime minister, P.J. Patterson of the centre-left People’s National Party, pledged to abolish the monarchy by 2007, telling a party conference:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I love the Queen dearly, but the time has come when we must have a head of state chosen by us. </p>
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<p>Opinion polls <a href="https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/55-of-respondents-say-the-queen-must-go_200465">taken in 2020</a> found that 55% of the Jamaicans want to end the country’s association with the Crown.</p>
<p>Republicanism is not confined to the Caribbean – as recently as March 2021, <a href="https://researchco.ca/2021/03/01/canadians-monarchy-2021/">a Canadian poll found</a> that 45% of respondents wanted to move to a republican model and only 24% were committed to remaining a monarchy. Even in Britain support for the monarchy is falling, especially by the youngest voters, who favour an elected head of state by a 10% margin according to a <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/05/21/young-britons-are-turning-their-backs-monarchy">YouGov poll</a> which found 41% of 18- to 24-year-olds favoured a republic. </p>
<h2>New beginnings</h2>
<p>The Prince of Wales, who flew to Barbados for the handover ceremony, cut a dignified figure when congratulating the country on its decision, telling Barbadians: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The creation of this republic offers a new beginning. From the darkest days of our past and the appalling atrocity of slavery which forever stains our history, people of this island forged their path with extraordinary fortitude.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, are we seeing the writing on the wall for the British Crown in former imperial possessions? The Queen is still head of state in 15 nations, including the UK, Canada and Australia – and support for republicanism is <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/no-sense-of-momentum-poll-finds-drop-in-support-for-australia-becoming-a-republic-20210125-p56wpe.html">reportedly waning</a> in the latter country. In neighbouring New Zealand, meanwhile, a recent survey showed that 50% of respondents <a href="https://www.republic.org.nz/latestblog/2021/11/17/opinion-poll-44-republic-50-monarchy-after-the-queen">favouresed retaining the monarchy</a>, even after the death of the current queen, compared with 44% who favoured a republic. This is a turnaround from a similar poll taken two years ago, when <a href="http://www.republic.org.nz/latestblog/2019/5/15/media-release-opinion-poll-new-zealanders-want-a-new-zealand-head-of-state">55% said</a> they wanted to become a republic.</p>
<p>The only thing these polls can tell us is that support for the monarchy in Britain’s former imperial possessions remains volatile and the chances are that the Sun will set on the Crown elsewhere before too long.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172892/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matt Qvortrup does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The move to a republic has been gathering pace for many years.Matt Qvortrup, Chair of Applied Political Science, Coventry UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1659142021-08-24T14:16:00Z2021-08-24T14:16:00ZThe monarch in Lesotho should be given some powers: but not extreme powers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417444/original/file-20210823-23-pqrvtj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">King Letsie III of Lesotho. Frustration with politicians has led to a rise in popularity of the monarchy in recent times.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> CChris Jackson via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The kingdom of Lesotho has been marked by waves of <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/6196/Khabele%20Matlosa.pdf;sequence=1">political instability</a> since independence from Britain in 1966. This has manifested in several forms – such as coups, mutinies, electoral disputes, forced exile of political opponents and assassinations. The most recent wave of instability, which necessitated the current long-running facilitation by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), was from <a href="https://www.accord.org.za/conflict-trends/appraising-the-efficacy-of-sadc-in-resolving-the-2014-lesotho-conflict/">2014 to 2015</a>. </p>
<p>Now the country is discussing wide-ranging <a href="https://www.gov.ls/reforms/">constitutional reforms</a> with the aim of achieving lasting peace and stability. The reforms are locally led by the <a href="https://www.ls.undp.org/content/lesotho/en/home/news-centre/articles/The-Lesotho-National-Reforms-Bill-to-safeguarding-and-insulate-Lesotho-Reforms-Process-passed.html">National Reforms Authority</a> – a statutory body comprising several stakeholders such as political parties, government, civil society and other formations.</p>
<p>The reform process dates back to 2012 but gained momentum in 2015 as a result of the strong recommendation of the <a href="https://www.gov.ls/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/phumaphi-report_201602081514.pdf">SADC Commission of Inquiry</a> into the assassination of the former army commander, Lieutenant General Maaparankoe Mahao. There are <a href="https://www.gov.ls/reforms-forum-achieves-goal/">seven themes</a> to the reform programme. They entail a review of the constitution, parliament, public service, justice, security, economic and media. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lesothos-new-leader-faces-enormous-hurdles-ensuring-peace-and-political-stability-139320">Lesotho's new leader faces enormous hurdles ensuring peace and political stability</a>
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<p>The reform process has once again raised the perennial question of the place of the monarch in the constitutional design. At present it’s mostly a ceremonial role. But recently there’s been a <a href="https://media.africaportal.org/documents/ad413-basotho_endorse_greater_role_for_traditional_leaders-afrobarometer_dispa_B4YDfRj.pdf">rise in popularity</a> of traditional leadership, and the monarch in particular, amid growing frustration with the elected leadership.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.gov.ls/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/EXPERT-REPORT-OF-CONSTITUTUIONAL-REFORMSFINAL-23-OCT-19.pdf">citizens’ voices</a> on the reforms suggest that people want the monarch to have more power - including the control of the army. This is a change from earlier <a href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/lwati/article/view/57490">trends</a>. </p>
<p>The reforms are a wholesale enterprise to review all the institutions in Lesotho, including the institution of the monarch. But, the extent to which the reforms can overhaul the entire design is a matter of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00083968.2020.1834418?journalCode=rcas20">intense discourse</a>. </p>
<h2>Traditional leadership</h2>
<p>After independence from Britain <a href="https://books.google.co.ls/books?hl=en&lr=&id=B2TWVN92hYYC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=Independence+of+Lesotho&ots=iQftFOeTWM&sig=OkpQYBbasG3b6S--auSdyiOa4pY&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Independence%20of%20Lesotho&f=false">in 1966</a>, there was a steady decline in the power of traditional leadership in Lesotho. The powers of traditional leaders on key matters such as land allocation and dispensing of justice all dissipated. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/dejure/v53/11.pdf">1993 constitution</a> took away the little powers that the king had in terms of the 1966 constitution. He is now expected to act “on the advice” of the prime minister, cabinet or <a href="https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Lesotho_2011.pdf?lang=en">Council of State</a>. The real political power has drifted, almost entirely, to the cabinet and the prime minister in particular. </p>
<p>But not everyone wants <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41231177.pdf?casa_token=G5L71YENm8sAAAAA:8JmPmKVKo1g7xlmn4XOluKUkVpzX78HN6d5561OdxIFeKsBI_JD8NPjkBx44vnWheCr97hFeDxu8tBQpnuthKu4p83JRG8XwB_l7nnv-Fbap96Y9n8E">the total abolition</a> of traditional leadership in Lesotho. The resilience of the monarch is arguably based on <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article-abstract/112/448/353/124493">two pillars</a>. Firstly, the institution is still culturally embedded in the psyche of the society. Therefore, it still enjoys legitimacy. Secondly, the failure of democracy has led people to hope that other forms of government, like monarchism, can offer a better alternative. </p>
<h2>Failed democracy</h2>
<p>Lesotho’s constitutional democracy has not lived up to its lofty promises. Those who were chosen to represent the people have not performed any better <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.10520/EJC46008?casa_token=Jy412EVkS4MAAAAA:E-lGNAyej1APF-OZOTSpMZI2lu0FqeWAyYMCqcy7qVPw05cFNyHHXbGcLoTKql28_ddV3GMwW7X8Bg">than the pre-existing traditional institutions</a>. The country’s <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/lesotho/overview">grinding poverty</a> and <a href="https://www.eisa.org/pdf/JAE14.2Weisfelder.pdf">political instability</a> continue.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-efforts-to-stabilise-lesotho-have-failed-less-intervention-may-be-more-effective-137499">South Africa's efforts to stabilise Lesotho have failed. Less intervention may be more effective</a>
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<p>Lesotho’s Auditor General always expresses <a href="http://www.auditgen.org.ls/images/OAG_Documents/AUDIT_CERTIFICATE_2016.pdf">disclaimer or adverse opinions</a> on government’s annual financial statements because of embezzlement and misappropriation, among other causes. Access to public office has been a <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/ldr-2018-0025/html">licence to loot state resources</a> and <a href="https://www.voanews.com/africa/lesotho-exiled-opposition-wants-sadc-intervention">torment political opponents</a>. </p>
<p>When citizens have an opportunity to rank politicians in surveys, they <a href="https://afrobarometer.org/publications/ad413-citizens-endorse-traditional-leaders-see-greater-role-contemporary-lesotho">show dissatisfaction</a>. </p>
<p>The recent rise in the popularity of traditional leadership is not due to its achievements but to the failure of democratically elected leadership.</p>
<h2>Power balance</h2>
<p>In view of this resurgence in the popularity of the monarch, the powers of the monarch in the constitution may change somewhat. That is if the reforms are genuinely consultative. </p>
<p>There is not necessarily anything inherently wrong with giving power to the monarch in a system based on the constitutional monarchy. It may even enhance the constitution when power is balanced between the monarch and liberal politicians. That will build in checks and balances.</p>
<p>But restoring some powers to the monarch should be considered extremely carefully. A monarch with absolute powers is just as dangerous as self-serving politicians in a democracy. </p>
<p>Fortunately, the current constitutional reform process in Lesotho happens against the backdrop of <a href="https://www.voanews.com/africa/pro-democracy-protests-continue-rock-eswatini">pro-democracy demonstrations</a> in eSwatini – the southern African region’s only absolute monarchy. </p>
<p>In eSwatini the king wields all the power and there is no political participation of other political groups. The king has <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02500167.2014.974639">monopolised the economy</a> too. </p>
<p>The frustration with politicians among Basotho should not evoke the decision to discard democracy completely. Democracy - the ability to choose public representatives and hold them to account - is still an <a href="https://books.google.co.ls/books?hl=en&lr=&id=VNez0rhiE44C&oi=fnd&pg=PA26&dq=democracy+and+elections&ots=vIflLnL7Yq&sig=OvWNmPV5GLDB484LG_fGpTLmjyg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=democracy%20and%20elections&f=false">essential principle of constitutionalism</a>. It should prevail over heredity. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pasha-86-why-its-wrong-to-be-pessimistic-about-democracy-in-africa-149927">Pasha 86: Why it's wrong to be pessimistic about democracy in Africa</a>
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<p>In a constitutional democracy, no single institution must wield untrammelled powers, even an elected one. The problem with Lesotho’s 1993 constitution is that it gives the prime minister near-absolute powers. The most brazen consequence has been the abuse of power to control the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589001.2020.1749246">army</a>. For years, politicians have used the army to stoke <a href="https://www.voanews.com/africa/lesotho-exiled-opposition-wants-sadc-intervention">unrest and persecute opponents</a>.</p>
<h2>Time to talk about it</h2>
<p>The conversation about the place of the king in Lesotho’s constitution is timely. The monarch’s lack of power has not worked for constitutional development in the country.</p>
<p>The monarchy is embedded in society but has no significant role. This is counter-intuitive and costly. Taxpayers foot a hefty bill for an institution that has no significant role in checking on the excesses of elected politicians. </p>
<p>The monarch must be given some powers, but not extreme powers. That would equally harm efforts to consolidate democracy. Reformers must strike a balance between the principle of democracy and the doctrine of checks and balances.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hoolo 'Nyane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A monarch with absolute powers is just as dangerous as self-serving politicians in a democracy.Hoolo 'Nyane, Head of Department, Public and Environmental Law Department, University of LimpopoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1512062020-12-15T00:14:30Z2020-12-15T00:14:30ZAs protests roil France, Macron faces a wicked problem — and it could lead to his downfall<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374726/original/file-20201214-21-1ndh7cp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Two years ago, the streets of France were filled with the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/03/who-are-the-gilets-jaunes-and-what-do-they-want">gilets jaunes</a> (yellow vests), a grassroots protest movement sparked by a proposed tax hike on petrol. </p>
<p>Though they have shed their yellow safety jackets, many of these disaffected people have joined a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55229428">new wave of protests</a> that has roiled France for weeks, presenting a major challenge for the government of President Emmanuel Macron.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/world/samuel-paty-beheading-mass-protests-france-after-terror-attack/bea93db9-aad9-4632-aebc-a2200fdee59d">protests erupted in late October</a> after the horrific murder of the schoolteacher Samuel Paty, who had used caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad during a lesson. Thousands <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-19/protesters-march-across-france-to-promote-freedom-of-expression/12780930">marched in tribute to Paty</a>, but also in support of freedom of speech. </p>
<p>In the past month, protesters have also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/world/europe/france-islamist-extremism-bill.html">taken aim at a proposed new security law</a> intended to combat what the government describes as “Islamic radicalism”. <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/france-nearly-150-arrested-at-paris-protest-over-security-bill/a-55919737">Nearly 150 people were arrested</a> last weekend after protests became violent.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374965/original/file-20201214-16-q1s4gh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374965/original/file-20201214-16-q1s4gh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374965/original/file-20201214-16-q1s4gh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374965/original/file-20201214-16-q1s4gh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374965/original/file-20201214-16-q1s4gh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374965/original/file-20201214-16-q1s4gh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374965/original/file-20201214-16-q1s4gh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Rights groups and journalists’ unions have denounced what they call ‘arbitrary arrests’ at the latest protests.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON/EPA</span></span>
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<h2>The roots of Macron’s current challenge</h2>
<p>An explanation of the tensions connecting these protests takes us deep into the history of France, as well as to contemporary crises. It also suggests that there is no simple solution.</p>
<p>In 1789, French revolutionaries sought to capture their twin aspirations of religious tolerance and freedom of speech in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt19b9jvh.6?seq=3#metadata_info_tab_contents">articles 10 and 11</a> of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/for-french-muslims-every-terror-attack-brings-questions-about-their-loyalty-to-the-republic-149151">For French Muslims, every terror attack brings questions about their loyalty to the republic</a>
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<p>“No man may be harassed for his opinions, even religious ones”, they insisted, while asserting that “the free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious rights of man”. </p>
<p>Should these natural rights be curtailed in any way? Yes, of course: as article 4 stipulates, they would be limited to “ensure the enjoyment of the same rights for other members of society”. As to how this would be achieved, “only the law may determine these limits”. </p>
<p>Therein lay the problem. Since “the law” would be made by national legislatures, these limits would always be instrumental — that is, made by elected politicians working within a social and political context. That is Macron’s wicked problem today.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374971/original/file-20201214-23-1sd0ltv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374971/original/file-20201214-23-1sd0ltv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374971/original/file-20201214-23-1sd0ltv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374971/original/file-20201214-23-1sd0ltv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374971/original/file-20201214-23-1sd0ltv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374971/original/file-20201214-23-1sd0ltv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374971/original/file-20201214-23-1sd0ltv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Macron called Paty a ‘quiet hero’ at a memorial service and said he was ‘killed because Islamists want our future’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Francois Mori/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<h2>The continuing debate over laïcité</h2>
<p>Conflict over limits to freedom arose immediately between revolutionaries and their opponents after 1789. There were <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300189933/liberty-or-death">ribald, even pornographic, attacks</a> on Marie-Antoinette and the Catholic Church, reflecting a deadly schism between secular, republican France and the church.</p>
<p>For republicans, a central legacy of the revolution has been the principle of <a href="https://theconversation.com/frances-la-cite-why-the-rest-of-the-world-struggles-to-understand-it-149943">laïcité</a>, that is, of a secular public space. </p>
<p>Freedom of religion has been guaranteed in France so long as it does not disturb public order. Religion is seen as a private matter and its observance strictly separated from public life. </p>
<p>This is a deeply held conviction in France. It explains the 2010 law that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/world/europe/12france.html">bans the wearing of full-face coverings in public</a>, including but not limited to burqas and niqābs.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374967/original/file-20201214-23-1an7ins.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374967/original/file-20201214-23-1an7ins.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374967/original/file-20201214-23-1an7ins.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374967/original/file-20201214-23-1an7ins.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374967/original/file-20201214-23-1an7ins.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374967/original/file-20201214-23-1an7ins.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374967/original/file-20201214-23-1an7ins.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">An unidentified veiled woman is led away by police after the law banning face coverings came into effect.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michel Euler/AP</span></span>
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<p>French supporters of laïcité would find it perplexing, if not offensive, to see one Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, holding Sunday press conferences outside his church, or another, Scott Morrison, welcoming the media inside his church and describing secular events (such as an election victory) as a “miracle”. In France, this might end political careers.</p>
<p>Australian and US commentators have been too ready to criticise France for not being as accepting of difference as their own societies, ignoring France’s different history and present. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/frances-la-cite-why-the-rest-of-the-world-struggles-to-understand-it-149943">France's laïcité: why the rest of the world struggles to understand it</a>
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<p>From 1789, Jews, Protestants, Muslims — as well as Catholics — were guaranteed the freedom to worship, but the fine line between religious freedoms and secular public space has always been blurred, sometimes with tragic consequences. </p>
<p>Take <a href="https://www.history.com/news/what-was-the-dreyfus-affair">Captain Alfred Dreyfus’s false conviction for treason in 1894</a>, followed by his imprisonment and eventual exoneration in 1906. This was profoundly polarising because it embodied the violent divisions in France about the place of Jews in public life at a time of acute anti-semitism. </p>
<p>Dreyfus’s anti-semitic and anti-republican accusers included many clergy
— one of the reasons behind the <a href="https://theconversation.com/frances-la-cite-why-the-rest-of-the-world-struggles-to-understand-it-149943">formal separation of church and state in 1905</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374961/original/file-20201214-17-1ujeq5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374961/original/file-20201214-17-1ujeq5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374961/original/file-20201214-17-1ujeq5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374961/original/file-20201214-17-1ujeq5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374961/original/file-20201214-17-1ujeq5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374961/original/file-20201214-17-1ujeq5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374961/original/file-20201214-17-1ujeq5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The start of Alfred Dreyfus’s trial in Rennes in 1899.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<h2>Deep national tensions over Islam</h2>
<p>Similarly, the beheading of Paty and subsequent <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54729957">terror attack in Nice</a> in late October sparked a profound response because they occurred amid deep national tensions over the place of Muslims in France. </p>
<p>These tensions go back to wars of decolonisation in the 1960s, but were heightened by <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/islamism-how-terror-attacks-have-shocked-france/a-55566704">recent attacks</a> at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan theatre in 2015.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374969/original/file-20201214-14-xqusg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374969/original/file-20201214-14-xqusg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374969/original/file-20201214-14-xqusg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374969/original/file-20201214-14-xqusg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374969/original/file-20201214-14-xqusg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374969/original/file-20201214-14-xqusg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374969/original/file-20201214-14-xqusg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Mourners leave flowers at a memorial to the victims of the knife attack at the Notre Dame Basilica church in Nice.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SEBASTIEN NOGIER/EPA</span></span>
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<p>While almost all Muslim organisations in France were prompt and unequivocal in repudiating those murders, elsewhere in the Muslim world, some were hostile to the freedoms accorded to media outlets such as Charlie Hebdo to publish caricatures mocking Islam and its prophet. </p>
<p>Leaders in Turkey, Morocco, Pakistan, Egypt and elsewhere condemned the magazine and called for <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/26/whats-behind-the-middle-east-boycott-of-french-products">consumer boycotts of French products</a>. </p>
<p>Charlie Hebdo’s defence was that it mocks everybody, and it followed with an <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54717587">obscene cartoon</a> of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/liberty-equality-fraternity-redefining-french-values-in-the-wake-of-charlie-hebdo-36066">Liberty, equality, fraternity: redefining 'French' values in the wake of Charlie Hebdo</a>
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<p>Macron has insisted the respect due to all religions must be balanced by the right to freedom of expression, no matter how offensive some caricatures might be to people of faith. </p>
<p>He has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/france-charliehebdo-trial-cartoons-macro-idUSKBN25S672">defended the right</a> of Charlie Hebdo to publish the caricatures, even though some might be banned in other countries as deliberately offensive, even racist. While France has anti-hate laws, its highest courts have also been very reluctant to penalise satire.</p>
<p>At the same time, Macron’s minister of national education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2020/10/23/polemique-apres-les-propos-de-jean-michel-blanquer-sur-l-islamo-gauchisme-a-l-universite_6057164_3224.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1603471695">has targeted “Islamo-gauchisme”</a>, the supposed undermining of French republican values by left-wing academics and intellectuals infected by feelings of guilt for France’s colonial past.</p>
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<h2>Can Macron find a solution?</h2>
<p>These tensions have now spilled onto the streets in unanticipated ways, as they have become embroiled with deep anxieties and divisions about decolonisation, policing and the limits to secularism. All of this comes at a time of economic despair and strident criticism of the government’s mishandling of the pandemic.</p>
<p>In this context, violent police raids and a sweeping <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/04/france-security-law-incompatible-human-rights-un-experts">national security law</a>, which would make a criminal offence to publish photos or film identifying police officers and expand police surveillance powers, have sparked widespread discontent. </p>
<p>In early December, the Macron government announced a revision of the security bill. This alone will not staunch a profound crisis of confidence in the foundational values of the republic: secularism, freedom of speech and respect for religious plurality. </p>
<p>In such a situation, the siren calls of cultural stereotyping may become louder, and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/11/19/who-is-emmanuel-macron">Macron may need a “miracle” of his own</a> to keep France out of the hands of Marine Le Pen and her Rassemblement National (National Rally), formerly known as the Front National, at the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-04/france-s-le-pen-could-win-first-round-of-2022-elections-poll">presidential elections of April 2022</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151206/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter McPhee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The protests, which have lasted for weeks, have become embroiled with deep anxieties in France about decolonisation, policing, the limits to secularism and the place of Muslims in French society.Peter McPhee, Emeritus professor, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1463632020-09-17T11:52:19Z2020-09-17T11:52:19ZBarbados plans to remove the Queen as head of state without a referendum – is that a wise idea?<p>“If you want a republic, a referendum is a risky option, sir,” I told Ralph Everard Gonsalves, the prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, a small Caribbean state ahead of a referendum on whether to remove the monarchy as head of state in 2009. He carried on regardless. And <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/world/americas/27briefs-queen.html">lost the vote</a>. </p>
<p>Maybe Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, has taken notes. She has proposed that the small island state becomes a republic before the end of 2021, removing Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state. But has not announced plans to hold a referendum. </p>
<p>Republicanism has a long history in Barbados. In 2005, a referendum on the subject was planned. At the time, Mottley, then deputy prime minister, said she <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20071128160635/http://www.nationnews.com/story/314949145377053.php">was “committed”</a> to letting the public “pass judgement on it”. Yet, due to costs, the referendum was postponed. Mottley’s Barbados Labour Party was then voted out of office. Now it is back, and so is the issue of a republic, though the lofty assurances about democratic legitimacy are gone.</p>
<p>At the opening of the Barbadian parliament on September 15, the Queen’s official representative in the country, the governor-general, Dame Sandra Mason <a href="http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/caribbean/20200915/time-leave-queen-barbados-become-republic-2021">made no mention of a referendum</a> on the decision to become a republic. However, she did announce <a href="https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/09/16/barbados-government-sandra-mason-same-sex-civil-unions-marriage-public-referendum-caribbean/">a popular vote</a> on same-sex marriage equality, which will be the first referendum ever held in Barbados.</p>
<p>A referendum is not required to become a republic under the island’s constitution – which only needs a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/16/barbados-revives-plan-to-remove-queen-as-head-of-state-and-become-a-republic">two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament</a>. But is Barbados wise to avoid a popular vote on the issue? </p>
<h2>Farewell your majesty</h2>
<p>Worldwide there have been several referendums on whether to abolish monarchies. Since Mexico voted on the issue in 1863, there have been <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321680204_Referendums_around_the_world">33 referendums</a> on whether to abolish monarchies around the world.</p>
<p>Some of these were dubious, if not outright absurd. For example, when the Diệm’s regime in Vietnam held a plebiscite on the abolition of the monarchy in 1955, 5.7 million out of 5.3 million eligible voters <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/government-and-opposition/article/explaining-the-paradox-of-plebiscites/0CC8326C8325B84F4C677600D15B2459">supported the republic</a>. A majority of a staggering 107%. </p>
<p>Apartheid South Africa voted to <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/south-africa-withdraws-commonwealth">sever the ties</a> with the British monarchy in 1960, though only white South Africans could vote. There were also successful plebiscites on the same issue in Ghana in the same year, in Rwanda in 1961 and a decade later in the Gambia. (Though in the Gambia a vote for retaining the Queen as head of state had been won by monarchists in 1965). All these plebiscites achieved overwhelming – if manufactured – majorities. </p>
<p>The same success rate used to be the case in developed democratic countries with competitive elections and multi-party systems. In 1944, voters in Iceland voted to establish a republic, and two years later a referendum in Italy led to the <a href="https://destinorepublicano.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/referendum-of-the-monarchy-in-italy-1946/">establishment of a republic</a>. </p>
<h2>Let them stay</h2>
<p>But then things began to change. In 1950, 57% of Belgians <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZqfHDwAAQBAJ&dq=Belgium+referendum+1950+Leopold&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s">voted for the return of King Leopold III</a> in a highly divisive referendum that pitted the two linguistic communities against each other. </p>
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<p>In the world’s three most recent referendums, there have been majorities for retaining the system of constitutional monarchy. A <a href="https://www.aec.gov.au/elections/referendums/1999_referendum_reports_statistics/index.htm">majority of Australians voted</a> for monarchy in 1999. Tuvalu in Oceania voted overwhelmingly to retain the monarchy in 2008. And St Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean voted 57% to 43% to keep the Queen as head of state the following year. </p>
<p>So why have countries in recent years voted against establishing republics? An element of conservatism has played a role. This was the case in Australia in 1999. While <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp9899/99RP25#Poll">opinion polls</a> predicted a majority would have been in favour of establishing a republic, in the end most voters <a href="https://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/referendums/1999_Referendum_Reports_Statistics/Key_Results.htm">were against the alternative on the ballot</a>, an indirectly elected head of state. At a time when politicians were in low regard, substituting a soft-spoken septuagenarian for a retired career politician was not a prospect that thrilled the hearts of voters. </p>
<h2>Don’t ask</h2>
<p>Those republicans who really want to abolish monarchies are advised not to ask the voters, just as I told Gonsalves. Other countries in the Commonwealth have followed this route, for example Trinidad and Tobago (1976) and Fiji (1987). This might not be very democratic. But it was formally in line with their constitutional rules, and the abolition of the monarchy in these countries didn’t lead to protests, or dissatisfaction with the respective governments.</p>
<p>There are some examples of successful referendums on establishing a republic – but the context matters. When a 69% majority voted against the return of <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10602-009-9078-4">King Constantine of Greece in 1974</a>, it reflected dissatisfaction with the monarch’s somewhat ambivalent rule during the preceding decade of military dictatorship, not a deep desire for constitutional reform.</p>
<p>But for the most part, voters have not rushed to reinstate monarchies when given the chance. In Brazil, a proposal to this effect was rejected in 1993, and a similar proposal suffered the same fate in Albania three years later. A curious example is the tiny country of the Maldives. There the voters voted to abolish the monarchy in 1952, only to re-establish it the following year, and then finally to become a republic in 1968.</p>
<p>There are strong democratic reasons for having a republic. In a democracy, having a monarch remains an anachronism – but it can be a popular one.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146363/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matt Qvortrup has advised the governments of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago in the past on referendums. </span></em></p>Barbados is avoiding a referendum on whether to remove the Queen as head of state – is that a good idea?Matt Qvortrup, Chair of Applied Political Science, Coventry UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1428372020-07-16T11:46:01Z2020-07-16T11:46:01ZGrattan on Friday: Palace letters make great reading but leave a republic as far away as ever<p>In the midst of our present crisis, this week’s release of the Palace letters has taken us back to the debate about another crisis, massive at the time and of lasting significance but rather put into perspective by COVID-19.</p>
<p>For many younger people, the extraordinary events of November 11 1975 would hold absolutely no interest. They might know who Gough Whitlam was, but John Kerr?</p>
<p>For a lot of those who remember that dramatic day, however, it was like no other in modern politics.</p>
<p>The Palace letters have reignited the argument about Kerr’s action in dismissing Whitlam, and what really happened behind the scenes.</p>
<p>The correspondence between the then governor-general and the Queen’s private secretary Martin Charteris gives an intimate running insight into the building drama, and Kerr’s thinking, including his desire to inundate the Palace with material amid his concern it might be too much. Charteris assures him: “The Queen is absorbing it with interest and is very grateful to you for taking so much trouble to keep her informed”.</p>
<p>In his letters Charteris steers between careful formality, reassurance to a man under pressure, and some chatty commentary. He tells Kerr he was relieved Whitlam had abandoned his idea of asking the governor-general to assent to the appropriation bills if they were rejected. “From your point of view this would have been a real bouncer and not at all easy to play!”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/palace-letters-show-the-queen-did-not-advise-or-encourage-kerr-to-sack-whitlam-government-142376">'Palace letters' show the queen did not advise, or encourage, Kerr to sack Whitlam government</a>
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<p>These fascinating documents have provided grist for protagonists on both sides of the dismissal debate.</p>
<p>Kerr’s defenders point to his November 11 letter reporting he hadn’t informed the Queen he was about to sack Whitlam. “I was of the opinion that it was better for Her Majesty not to know in advance.”</p>
<p>Those who argue the Palace interfered highlight the correspondence before the dismissal, in which Kerr and Charteris canvass options and the constitution.</p>
<p>Charteris told Kerr the governor-general’s reserve powers did exist, despite claims to the contrary, but “it is only at the very end when there is demonstrably no other course that they should be used.” After the dismissal, a major criticism of Kerr was that he acted too early.</p>
<p>The Palace, which resisted the letters being made public, entered the debate after their release, saying they confirmed neither the Queen nor the Royal Household “had any part to play in Kerr’s decision to dismiss Whitlam.”</p>
<p>The letters won’t close the old argument – the question is whether they’ll give any new life to the debate about an Australian republic. Anthony Albanese seized the occasion to say Kerr’s action “to put himself above the Australian people” reinforced “the need for us to have an Australian head of state … the need for us to stand on our own two feet”.</p>
<p>By now, Australia should have been a republic for two decades. We had the chance in the 1999 referendum, and we blew it. The yes vote was defeated by several factors - including divisions among pro-republic Liberals, the cunning of then prime minister John Howard, and the conservatism of Australians when asked to change the constitution.</p>
<p>Since then the difficulties have increased and may be insurmountable. There are multiple reasons why change could be even harder second time round (even after the Queen’s reign ends).</p>
<p>The issue probably resonates less than in the 1990s. It would be caught up in the culture wars, which have become deeper and more destructive in recent years.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-big-reveal-jenny-hocking-on-what-the-palace-letters-may-tell-us-finally-about-the-dismissal-142473">The big reveal: Jenny Hocking on what the 'palace letters' may tell us, finally, about The Dismissal</a>
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<p>Most important, it would be near impossible to get a model that was both safe and saleable.</p>
<p>The 1999 model was for a president appointed by a two-thirds majority of federal parliament. There was no attempt to codify the powers of the president, despite the governor-general’s “reserve powers” being at the core of the 1975 crisis.</p>
<p>These days, the public would almost certainly want the president directly elected. But that would carry risks. It could lead to competitive tension between a popular president and an unpopular prime minister.</p>
<p>The powers of a popularly-elected president would need to be clearly spelled out (codified). As Malcolm Turnbull writes in his book A Bigger Picture, “Nobody would seriously contemplate leaving the powers of a directly elected president in the undefined, and thus potentially uncertain, world of convention”.</p>
<p>One compromise some suggest would be to remove the circumstances that caused the 1975 crisis by taking away the Senate’s power to block supply. Good luck with that.</p>
<p>Many politicians and constitutional experts would be uncomfortable with a direct-elect model.</p>
<p>Controversy over the model would translate into a divided electorate. And when it comes to referendums, division is certainty deadly.</p>
<p>Look at what’s been happening with the attempt to put recognition of Indigenous people into the constitution. You’d think this should be relatively easy. It’s anything but.</p>
<p>Under cover of the pandemic, the government has abandoned minister Ken Wyatt’s ambition for a referendum this term. But there wasn’t enough agreement anyway.</p>
<p>The challenge of finding acceptable wording for recognition is formidable (just as devising an acceptable republican model is fraught). And a referendum for Indigenous recognition, like one for a republic, would bog down in the culture wars.</p>
<p>Despite the problems, the optimists would think we could achieve both changes. The pessimists would doubt either is attainable in the foreseeable future.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/palace-letters-reveal-the-palaces-fingerprints-on-the-dismissal-of-the-whitlam-government-142476">'Palace letters' reveal the palace's fingerprints on the dismissal of the Whitlam government</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It’s an academic question admittedly, but it is worth asking ourselves which of these constitutional changes would be of more significance to our identity as a nation.</p>
<p>Those who’d nominate moving to a republic would start with the obvious – we should have an Australian head of state.</p>
<p>They’d also say becoming a republic would boost Australia’s image in our region, although one suspects this point is weaker than previously – we’re less defined in our neighbourhood by our British ties these days.</p>
<p>Those who’d prefer the limited political capital to be spent on Indigenous recognition would emphasise how overdue this is, and how symbolically important.</p>
<p>While the flow-on effects shouldn’t be over-estimated – the Apology didn’t work miracles - recognition could help generate goodwill and co-operation needed for tangible improvements in the lives of disadvantaged Indigenous people.</p>
<p>Recognition of First Australians would be a gesture of reconciliation as well as a statement of our values as a nation.</p>
<p>To my mind, it is a higher priority than the republic.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142837/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the midst of our present crisis, this week’s release of the Palace letters has taken us back to the debate about another crisis, massive at the time and of lasting significance but rather put into perspective…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/815442017-07-27T06:33:10Z2017-07-27T06:33:10ZFor Venezuela, there may be no happily ever after<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179835/original/file-20170726-30134-v6vbn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In the face of rising protest, Venezuela's government has called on the military to squelch dissent. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2017_Venezuelan_protests_flag.jpg#/media/File:2017_Venezuelan_protests_flag.jpg">Efecto Eco /Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/en-venezuela-puede-que-no-haya-un-final-feliz-98139"><em>Leer en español</em></a>.</p>
<p>Last week, over seven million Venezuelans both at home and abroad <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/woman-killed-4-injured-as-violence-erupts-at-venezuela-vote/2017/07/16/a7c1fb92-6a8c-11e7-abbc-a53480672286_story.html?utm_term=.65fcfc555aa5">voted against president Nicolas Maduro’s proposed Constituent Assembly</a>, which would have empowered his administration to rewrite the country’s constitution.</p>
<p>But the logic of Venezuela’s republican institutions broke down long ago. This informal, unsanctioned referendum had no constitutional basis, and the government paid it little mind, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-maduro-idUSKBN1A80S4">promising to push ahead</a> with the controversial plan despite overwhelming popular discontent. </p>
<p>Now opposition leaders have called for a <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40726779">48-hour strike</a> to keep the pressure on.</p>
<p>Both the July 16 vote and the general strike are an attempt to make rules for the grassroots exercise of democracy – a sign that Venezuelans have not yet forgotten this system of governance, despite mounting incivility that has left more than a hundred dead in just over <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/world/americas/venezuela-maduro-protests-supreme-court.html">three months of daily protests</a>.</p>
<p>The perverseness of life here is no longer limited to the everyday turmoil of <a href="https://theconversation.com/thousands-flee-violence-and-hunger-in-venezuela-seeking-asylum-in-the-united-states-74495">scarce resources, medicine shortages or spiralling crime</a>. In Venezuela, the social contract has officially been shredded. </p>
<p>Venezuelans have drifted from a nightmare into an unreal world, as though living in the magical realism of Jorge Luis Borges, where anything is possible and everything can be invented.</p>
<h2>Chronology of the absurd</h2>
<p>In these profoundly liquid times, even political clashes in Venezuela have gone postmodern, creating something close to anarchy on the streets. </p>
<p>Each day, acting spontaneously and with no clear leadership, fighting factions in cities across Venezuela may (or may not) block streets of their own volition, penetrate university campuses and crush their opponents, trampling the basic standards of social coexistence. </p>
<p>Masked young demonstrators clash anonymously with state forces and destroy urban infrastructure, from <a href="http://globovision.com/article/reverol-denuncian-que-manifestantes-opositores-quemaron-metrobus-en-altamira">street lights and sewers to the public transit</a>. </p>
<p>The state, in turn, overreacts, relying on disproportionate use of police force and judicial overreach to try to stem dissidence. Human Rights Watch estimates there are now some <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2017/07/09/leopoldo-lopez-casa-tirania-venezuela-hrw/?action=click&contentCollection=opinion&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection">400 political prisoners</a> in Venezuela.</p>
<p>Little is certain in Venezuela but this: the country is now living a low-grade war. </p>
<p>What else can you call a country in which barricades are raised every day in major cities, military troops are posted on the streets and where citizens routinely swallow <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-venezuela-protest-gear-20170503-htmlstory.html">tear gas</a>?</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/BW2nxAEgCAX/?taken-by=nytimes","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>All parties bear responsibility for this conflict. The protests are not peaceful <a href="https://alertasur.wordpress.com/2017/04/12/las-manifestaciones-de-la-oposicion-venezolana-no-tienen-nada-de-pacificas/">as the opposition claims</a> nor as violent <a href="http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/oposicion/los-simbolos-resistencia-pacifica-venezuela_181292">as the government says</a>. Tensions have so escalated in recent weeks that no one really knows what triggered certain events nor what direction they’ll take next. </p>
<p>On June 27, which is National Journalists’ Day in Venezuela, unruly groups surrounded the National Assembly building, trapping members of Congress and the press <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL0rUsV1RJ8">for hours</a> and bombarding them with insults and threats.</p>
<p>This was certainly not a minor event, but it turned out to be a mere dress rehearsal. Just over a week later, on July 5, the National Assembly was stormed during a ceremony commemorating the <a href="http://runrun.es/nacional/316262/video-colectivos-irrumpen-y-atacan-a-diputados-en-la-asamblea-nacional.html">signing of Venezuela’s declaration of independence in 1812</a>.</p>
<p>On this eminent civic date, a shouting horde burst into the chamber, threatening, landing blows, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/05/four-politicians-wounded-venezuela-attack-on-congress">bloodying up some members of the opposition party</a>. Journalists, congressional staffers and several diplomats were held hostage for hours.</p>
<p>This fearsome event represented, in graphic detail, the kidnapping of Venezuela’s republican spirit.</p>
<h2>Civilisation versus barbarism</h2>
<p>Those familiar with Latin American literature will recall the region’s obsession, back in postcolonial days, with the topic of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=rHPbCQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">civilisation versus barbarism</a>. </p>
<p>Today, these same forces have resurfaced in Venezuela. Subject to the anarchical forces of barbarism, citizens swing between resentment, hate and incomprehension, with little concern for the consequences of their actions. </p>
<p>Venezuela has lost the trappings of modernity.</p>
<p>Nobody is free from blame. Citizens erroneously placed their bets on populism, and now the country has fallen prey to apathy, awaiting its next great leader.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Maduro government is embroiled in corruption and inefficiency, more interested in its own survival than in leading a spineless and weak-willed nation to salvation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179881/original/file-20170726-2133-zzq6ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179881/original/file-20170726-2133-zzq6ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179881/original/file-20170726-2133-zzq6ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179881/original/file-20170726-2133-zzq6ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179881/original/file-20170726-2133-zzq6ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179881/original/file-20170726-2133-zzq6ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179881/original/file-20170726-2133-zzq6ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protests have taken place every day since April in cities across Venezuela.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sinlentes/30285111750/in/photolist-N9c7B9-N9c7rE-N9c6oN-N9c5Zb-N9c4m1-N9c3YN-N9c3Ld-MCPsPq-MCPqGj-MCPqfh-MCPpPN-NsRYSX-NsRYqK-NsRXZV-NsRXBR-NsRX8V-NsRWBp-NsRWan-NsRVKp-MCPn7d-NqjEzj-qGNVe5-rnmsDV-rqBjpx-r7PzeX-qQvPoP-r5FhRE-r7PyAn-qQvNFX-qazPH7-ny4D2z-nbzgLC-n2JQS5-mEz5ik-mi7AA2-mgdNJv-mc7pxY-mc5A16-mc7k73-mc7j9S-m7KiXK-m7L5Y7-m7K4U4-m7HZf8-m7Kxhw-m7HKw6-m7HCrz-m7Jaez-m7J48B-m7HrPR">Hugo Londoño / flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And the opposition, too, has failed: it has not developed any feasible alternatives for the future. </p>
<p>All told, the entire country has developed what seems to be a structural inability to engage in dialogue or negotiate solutions to the deep-rooted differences now ripping Venezuela to shreds.</p>
<p>What will become of this country?</p>
<h2>Fairytale ending</h2>
<p>Shunning the hard work of dialogue and debate, many Venezuelans are hoping for a Disney-style quick fix. But the real world does not work like a fairytale; the good guys don’t always win in the end. </p>
<p>Instead, the opposition has worked up poorly thought-out possibilities, creating weak, one-off instances of parallel governance that have nothing to do with Venezuela’s institutional reality and no chance at institutionalisation.</p>
<p>The July 6 grassroots poll was one such event. In addition to asking Venezuelans about the government’s plan to make substantial (but largely undefined) changes to the country’s social and political organisation, there was another question in the non-binding referendum. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"886795543476928513"}"></div></p>
<p><em>Results of the July 16 plebiscite. Over 7 million Venezuelans oppose the government’s plan.</em></p>
<p>This openly seditious second query suggested that the armed forces might repudiate and perhaps even remove President Maduro from office. It’s important to note that the Venezuelan people declared themselves openly in favour of this risky possibility.</p>
<p>Neither loud dissent nor nationwide conflicts can stop the Maduro government, which is intent on holding its power-grabbing Constituent Assembly. If the measure goes forward, the 545 members of the National Assembly <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40624313">could be elected as soon as this Sunday, and granted the power</a> to redefine the provisions underpinning Venezuela’s republican structure. </p>
<p>Between these two approaches – the opposition’s weak mutinies and the government’s growing authoritarianism – there is a single country. But Venezuelans have demonstrated a sweeping inability to acknowledge each other’s existence in order to reach even the most basic agreement that could drive progress. </p>
<p>If the people can’t build a common and inclusionary strategy for the future, in Venezuela, there may be no “happily ever after”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81544/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Miguel Angel Latouche does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Venezuela’s opposition has called a 48-hour strike to stop the Maduro government from rewriting the nation’s constitution. But grassroots democracy may not be able to save the Bolivarian Republic.Miguel Angel Latouche, Associate Professor, Universidad Central de VenezuelaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/807432017-07-11T04:18:57Z2017-07-11T04:18:57ZDonald Horne’s ‘lucky country’ and the decline of the public intellectual<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177647/original/file-20170711-5923-73ev3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Donald Horne saw Australia as a country that had got lucky, but was squandering its luck. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Steve Irwin and Donald Horne died a year apart, during the twilight of the Howard era. The government offered Irwin’s family a state funeral in 2006. It had not done the same for Horne, although he was famous for his 1964 book <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3305564-the-lucky-country">The Lucky Country</a> and had been one of the country’s leading journalists, editors and intellectuals for half a century.</p>
<p>That may well tell us something about the value we attach to people who wrestle with ideas rather than crocodiles. It might also say something about a conservative government’s attitude to a renegade, or about the indifference or hostility of the wider political class to independent public intellectuals.</p>
<p>I read The Lucky Country for the first time as an undergraduate in 1990 and didn’t find it all that exciting. I can see now that the failing was that of my 21-year-old self rather than Horne’s. I re-read the book about four years ago and was struck that time by the raw power of Horne’s vision of Australia as a lucky country whose people were “adaptable” but whose elites were mainly “second-rate”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177645/original/file-20170711-587-104dr23.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177645/original/file-20170711-587-104dr23.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177645/original/file-20170711-587-104dr23.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177645/original/file-20170711-587-104dr23.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177645/original/file-20170711-587-104dr23.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177645/original/file-20170711-587-104dr23.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177645/original/file-20170711-587-104dr23.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177645/original/file-20170711-587-104dr23.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Goodreads</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Horne’s message was that while Australia had been lucky, he was doubtful whether it deserved its luck and was worried that, unless it lifted its game, its good run would not last. But the purpose of Horne’s use of the phrase “the lucky country” is usually forgotten. It is commonly misunderstood as laudatory.</p>
<p>A new collection of <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/donald-horne">Horne’s selected writings</a>, edited by his son Nick, includes selections from The Lucky Country’s beginning and end. Their force, intelligence and insight had quite an impact on me yet again and, when seen in the context of a larger body of his writings, show how Horne refined his views over the years. </p>
<h2>Progressive, but not romantic</h2>
<p>The selection begins with an essay by a former student, University of Melbourne Vice-Chancellor Glyn Davis, who reminds us that Horne was very much a man of the right early in his career, making his name as a staunchly anti-communist servant of Frank Packer’s media empire.</p>
<p>Horne edited two significant quality publications of that era: The Observer, in the late 1950s, and then the conservative, racist and decrepit Sydney Bulletin after Packer acquired it in 1960. The new collection contains an account, written late in his life, of <a href="http://www.australianbiography.gov.au/subjects/horne/intertext4.html">Horne’s attempt to reform The Bulletin</a>. To the objection that he should not remove the banner that it had carried “from time immemorial” – “Australia for the white man” – Horne replied that it had not always been the magazine’s slogan. Previously, it was “Australia for the white man and China for the chow”.</p>
<p>Although he never held public office, Horne was great at clearing away political rubbish of this kind, turning The Bulletin into one of the country’s liveliest and most influential publications. He was increasingly in tune with the modernising impulse in Australian life of the 1960s and ’70s. Modernising, but not revolutionary or romantic, Horne’s progressive views included anti-censorship, anti-White Australia and engagement with Asia.</p>
<p>The Lucky Country was Horne’s first book and, although he would write many fine and wise things in the years ahead, he never again managed that kind of magic. His fiction was not a great success, his history and biography competent and even lively without achieving for him a place in the front rank. But his writings on culture and society, and his more introspective (but not solipsistic) late and posthumous work, remain provocative.</p>
<p>Probably the biggest surprise of The Lucky Country was Horne’s support for the distinctly unfashionable republican movement, a cause to which he devoted much energy and thought in the second half of his life. The dismissal of <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-gough-whitlams-dismissal-as-prime-minister-74148">Gough Whitlam as prime minister in 1975</a> angered Horne greatly. This was not so much because he was an admirer of Whitlam and all his works – he was not – but because the dismissal suggested that the democratic effort to change Australia had been defeated. The dismissal sparked Horne’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/709947.Death_Of_The_Lucky_Country">Death of the Lucky Country</a>. </p>
<p>That attitude lost Horne some of his old friends on the right, but he was already making new ones who shared many of his catholic interests and passions. This new edition of selected writings allows us to gain a sense of the range of those concerns, which extended across politics, business and the economy to history, psychology, museums, tourism, everyday life, literature, the arts and much else. In the absence of a biography of Horne – surely something that will happen in due course – this collection traces the main contours of his life through his own writings, including chapters from his <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5037568-the-education-of-young-donald">much-admired autobiography</a>.</p>
<h2>Who will be the next Donald Horne?</h2>
<p>In many ways, Horne was an Australian pioneer in the field that eventually came to be called cultural studies. As an academic, he found a home in political science, but he was never the captive of any discipline. The role of roving commentator continued to appeal. Horne did not much like scholarly paraphernalia such as footnotes, bemoaning: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the “universitisation” of intellectual life … an arid division of labour increasingly related to the administrative manipulation of universities into specialist disciplines with career paths measured in citations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But there were surely greater dangers to the public intellectual looming in the shadows, dangers hinted at in the reaction to Horne’s republicanism. The public culture that had allowed Horne to exercise such influence was already in decay by the time of his death in 2005.</p>
<p>It is not that there are no opportunities today for the kind of discussion Horne valued; there are probably more than ever, in part thanks to social media. It is rather that these occasions are mainly for preaching to the converted. </p>
<p>In Horne’s prime as a writer, that last decade of the post-war golden era between the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, a renaissance in the local media and publishing industries gave intellectuals with something to say, and the ability to say it well, brief access to a mass market. A central role of the public intellectual, as Horne conceived it, was to change the minds of this audience. Twitter and Facebook, however, are not places where people are likely to be persuaded to alter their thinking but rather to gain confirmation for what one already believes.</p>
<p>Australia has its public intellectuals, but it is hard to think of any who quite manage Horne’s range, insight or authority. There may in fact be good reasons for the more uncertain place of the public intellectual in Australia today, beside the trend towards specialisation and the impact of a more fragmented public culture.</p>
<p>Being white, Anglo and male, Horne would probably not be threatened with rape, or trolled out of the country – as appears to have <a href="https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=15&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi-xsuGiYDVAhWMjJQKHQQ3AjcQFghtMA4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theaustralian.com.au%2Fbusiness%2Fmedia%2Fyassmin-abdelmagied-says-she-is-moving-to-london%2Fnews-story%2F4e0e18bae53739df5c22742026a0ee94&usg=AFQjCNEqrnIkzxpqrWhLem4dRX9x3nvwzg">happened to Yassmin Abdel-Magied</a>. Ours is now hardly the kind of public sphere to encourage the adventurous expression of new ideas. The purpose of intimidation is to warn anyone who imagines that they might have something new and bold to contribute that they can run, but they can’t hide. Even an intellectual terrier such as Horne would have found the going hard. </p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/donald-horne">Donald Horne: Selected Writings</a> (ed. Nick Horne) is published by La Trobe University Press in conjunction with Black Inc.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80743/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Bongiorno also publishes books with Black Inc., including his recent The Eighties: The Decade That Transformed Australia.</span></em></p>Donald Horne saw Australia as a lucky country that was squandering its luck. His bold ideas captured the nation’s imagination. But being a public intellectual is no longer easy. Who will come up with the next grand ideas?Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/743032017-04-20T19:56:38Z2017-04-20T19:56:38ZFriday essay: King, Queen and country – will Anzac thwart republicanism?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165025/original/image-20170412-25882-1f7x8t9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Queen Elizabeth II meets with Australian Defence Force personnel and veterans at the Australian War Memorial in 2011.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Graham Tidy/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On the morning of 16 February 1954, Charles Bean and his wife Effie drove along Canberra’s Anzac Parade towards the Australian War Memorial. As their official car approached the building, crowds of onlookers stood several lines deep on the roadside. Climbing the steps to the memorial, Bean “could see the photographers and broadcasters above the entrance”. Inside, he walked past the solemn rows of “widows, mothers, and children of men who had lost their lives”. Above him, the memorial cloisters were packed with “veterans”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165755/original/image-20170419-32696-1gvqhof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165755/original/image-20170419-32696-1gvqhof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165755/original/image-20170419-32696-1gvqhof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165755/original/image-20170419-32696-1gvqhof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165755/original/image-20170419-32696-1gvqhof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165755/original/image-20170419-32696-1gvqhof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165755/original/image-20170419-32696-1gvqhof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165755/original/image-20170419-32696-1gvqhof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bean researching his Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The significance of this moment was not lost, least of all on Bean. The memorial he had first imagined as a war correspondent on the Western Front in 1916 and that finally came to fruition in 1941 had never before been visited by a reigning British monarch. Now, having arrived half an hour early, he was to lead the Queen and Prince Philip through the memorial and introduce the royal couple to members of its board of management.</p>
<p>Bean was apprehensive. Although he had rehearsed his lines and the appropriate protocol many times before – only when the previous couple had finished shaking hands with the Duke could he introduce the next couple – he was afraid he would embarrass himself. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I had been very anxious about the task of presenting board members – in the fluster I would be likely to stumble or hesitate over the names, ranks, and titles or even forget them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The waiting seemed interminable. Finally, a luminously pallid Queen, wearing “a primrose frock with a small hat” and her reliably wooden consort, Prince Philip, conspicuously clad in “naval white”, stepped out into Canberra’s glaring late summer light. They extended their hands, Bean wrote, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>and we remembered to shake, or rather hold, them lightly as the shaking of hands so many times is apt to bruise them. I did not see Eff make her curtsey as I had to get round to my position, but friends told us that she made it very well.</p>
<p>[Once the proceedings were underway] all trace of nervousness or self-consciousness vanished … partly because [of] the girlish Queen standing beside me with her natural manner so like one or other of our own nieces, and partly because one’s whole attention was concentrated upon making the visit interesting to her.
But I noticed that during the presentations, as soon as the lady of each couple had moved on from her to shake hands with the Duke, her little gloved hand came up as quickly as the arm of a railway signal to shake hands with the next board member.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Within a matter of minutes, Bean had gone from nervous colonial to father figure. He realised that the Queen had her own protocol anxieties to manage. Laying the wreath at the stone of remembrance, she asked him tentatively, “How do I lay it? Do we just lay it against the stone?” Nor was she in need of Bean’s tutoring.</p>
<p>Approaching the Anzac galleries, he offered her some basic historical instruction: “I suspect your Majesty knows that to us the landing at Anzac is regarded almost as the Battle of Hastings in England”. “Yes I realise that”, she replied bluntly. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165750/original/image-20170419-32713-1m2vopd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165750/original/image-20170419-32713-1m2vopd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165750/original/image-20170419-32713-1m2vopd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165750/original/image-20170419-32713-1m2vopd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165750/original/image-20170419-32713-1m2vopd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165750/original/image-20170419-32713-1m2vopd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165750/original/image-20170419-32713-1m2vopd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165750/original/image-20170419-32713-1m2vopd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip visiting the Australian War Memorial in 1954.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If Bean was sentimental – he described the “grey headed diggers’ waving to the Queen as if they were greeting a pal” – he was also conscious of the immense distance between them. “The Queen always kept a slight reserve between me and herself – broken only by one or two flashes.”</p>
<p>The reserve Bean felt from Her Majesty might equally have been expressed from his side. Although he was not a royalist – throughout his life he had repeatedly refused offers of a knighthood and his loyalty, first and foremost, was to those who had established the “character of Australian men” in the eyes of the world – he had become a player in an episode of a particularly Australian ritual: linking fealty to the monarch with a national legend of death on foreign fields.</p>
<h2>‘Flesh of the British’</h2>
<p>Although the imperial dimensions of the Anzac legend have largely been forgotten today, the presence of British royalty on Australian soil had long bolstered the foundational connection between Anzac and Empire. Even before Australian soldiers landed at Anzac Cove in 1915, the visit of Prince George, Duke of Cornwall and York (later King George V), and his wife Mary in 1901 had helped cement the bond between blood sacrifice to the Empire and fealty to the Crown. </p>
<p>After opening Australia’s <a href="http://www.peo.gov.au/learning/closer-look/federation-cl/first-parliament.html">first federal Parliament in Melbourne</a>, the royal couple proceeded to Sydney, where the Duke presented medals to the officers and men of the NSW contingents who had returned from fighting in the Boer War. The Ode of Welcome, composed for the occasion and sung by a choir 4,000-strong, proclaimed that Australia had “fought for the Empire” and “mingled [its] blood with the best”. “We are flesh of the British”, the choir proclaimed in unison, “and bone of the British bone!”</p>
<p>For a geographically isolated federation such as Australia, blooding in battle was the ultimate proof of the right to belong to a global British community. The script for Gallipoli was written decades before the event came to pass. And, when the war finally ended in 1918 with the loss of more than 60,000 Australian lives, the Anzac legend was quickly embedded in the fabric of Australia’s commemorative culture through a succession of royal visits. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165757/original/image-20170419-32723-34riax.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165757/original/image-20170419-32723-34riax.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165757/original/image-20170419-32723-34riax.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165757/original/image-20170419-32723-34riax.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165757/original/image-20170419-32723-34riax.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165757/original/image-20170419-32723-34riax.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165757/original/image-20170419-32723-34riax.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165757/original/image-20170419-32723-34riax.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A crowd of Australian soldiers listens to an address by a chaplain on the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Edward, Prince of Wales (“the Digger Prince”) arrived to a dumbstruck Australian audience in 1920. He spoke at Parliament House in Melbourne, reassuring his admirers that Australia had finally </p>
<blockquote>
<p>won her spurs in the great ordeal of battle [and] taken her place in the councils of nations. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Everywhere His Royal Highness travelled, returned men were prominently choreographed in public events. Reviewing 10,000 returned soldiers at Sydney’s Centennial Park, the Prince was aware that among the crowd of onlookers were men who had fought in the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, the Sudan and the Boer War. Each commemoration flushed out the survivors from previous wars and implied that national communion could only truly occur through sacrifice on the battlefield. </p>
<p>Journalists described Diggers, who remembered the Prince fraternising with the Australian Imperial Force on the Western Front, shouting out as he moved through Sydney’s streets, “How’s this to the Somme?”</p>
<p>A handful of crippled veterans reportedly waved their crutches in feverish adulation. Throughout the carnival of the Prince’s visit, in public speeches and press reports, the erection of a militarist national mythology mattered far more than learning from the folly of war. If the nation was “born” in battle, implicitly it could only be reborn through participation in future conflicts; the democratic achievements of Australia before the war constantly gave way to sagas of blood sacrifice.</p>
<h2>‘All for King and Empire’</h2>
<p>According to the speeches of visiting royals in the early 20th century, the foundation of the new Commonwealth’s democracy was not to be found in the history of Federation but in the egalitarian ritual of the Anzac Day parade.</p>
<p>During the 1927 royal tour, Prince Albert, Duke of York (later King George VI) and his wife Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother) presided over the Anzac Day ceremony in Melbourne, which was widely described as the high point of their visit. Nearly 30,000 ex-servicemen “fell in” to march through the city’s streets, with tram conductors marching alongside judges.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165756/original/image-20170419-32696-1o1jyg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165756/original/image-20170419-32696-1o1jyg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165756/original/image-20170419-32696-1o1jyg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165756/original/image-20170419-32696-1o1jyg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165756/original/image-20170419-32696-1o1jyg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165756/original/image-20170419-32696-1o1jyg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1293&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165756/original/image-20170419-32696-1o1jyg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165756/original/image-20170419-32696-1o1jyg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1293&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sir John Monash in 1918.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As one observer remarked, the march was “a vindication of democracy”. After <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/people/P10676516/">Sir John Monash</a> implored the crowd to “Keep Anzac Day sacred”, the Duke “made one of the most emotional speeches of the tour”. “They gave their all for their King and Empire”, he declared, “let us [emulate their example] and hand down to the children who come after us those traditions of loyalty, fortitude, and devotion to duty”.</p>
<p>Little more than two weeks later, speaking after opening Parliament House in Canberra, Albert devoted scant time to the men and women who had forged Federation, preferring instead to beseech Australians to listen “to the voices of the noble army of the dead” and “march in step with them towards the … ideals for which they died”. Departing the country from Fremantle, he returned to this well-worn theme in his farewell message: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>That loyalty to the British ideals for which Throne and Empire stand found its highest expression in the commemoration of Anzac Day.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To contemplate these words in the early 21st century is to be reminded of the dramatic change that has occurred in the meaning and significance of Anzac Day in recent years, one that has seen 25 April transformed from the highest expression of loyalty to the British Empire to a more inward-looking, nation-defining myth that reveals the country’s “sense of self” and occupies an “eternal place in the Australian soul”. </p>
<p>Throughout World War II and well into the late 20th century, the Anzac legend remained tethered to the Empire through the reigning monarch’s Anzac
Day message, which harped on imperial unity in the face of totalitarian aggression and stressed the longevity of the imperial connection and the depth of common feeling in the new British Commonwealth.</p>
<p>As the term “Anzac” was gradually extended to include those who fought in all our wars, Australian politicians, newspaper editors, and military and community leaders echoed the reigning monarch’s sentiments on Anzac Day, extolling the “indestructible strength of an Empire” and the “military prowess” of Australia’s “muscular grim-faced veterans”, who had been prepared to die for “this offshoot of Britain in the South Seas”.</p>
<p>Pining for the presence of royal flesh and blood on Australian soil, state and federal governments occasionally invented the atmosphere of a royal tour in order to buttress the imperial theatre of Anzac Day. In 1948, when the British actor <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000059/">Sir Laurence Olivier</a> visited Australia, he was astonished to find that he had taken on “a quasi Royal role”. (His wife Vivien Leigh, Scarlett O’Hara in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031381/">Gone with the Wind</a>, took the part of consort.) </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165552/original/image-20170418-32713-11617ae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165552/original/image-20170418-32713-11617ae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165552/original/image-20170418-32713-11617ae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165552/original/image-20170418-32713-11617ae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165552/original/image-20170418-32713-11617ae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165552/original/image-20170418-32713-11617ae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165552/original/image-20170418-32713-11617ae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165552/original/image-20170418-32713-11617ae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier disembarking a plane in Brisbane in 1948.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Olivier’s many appearances in kingly Shakespearean roles had seduced Australian officials into thinking he was blessed with the royal touch. Delivering speeches on official occasions, Olivier even took the salute at the Anzac Day march in Canberra and read Charles Bean’s Anzac Requiem (composed in 1944) at the War Memorial’s dawn service. </p>
<p>The text Olivier read so eloquently that day referred specifically to the New Zealand, Indian and British divisions who had fought with the Australians at Anzac Cove, as well as at the more recent battles in the Middle East, North Africa, Malaya and Papua New Guinea, in which Australians had died with Americans and “loving friends in our Mother Country”. Bean’s text highlighted the contribution of Australia’s “women’s services” and concluded by remembering the </p>
<blockquote>
<p>peaceful millions in prostrated Europe, in defiant Greece, Russia and China … [and] every man, woman and child who, in those crucial hours, died so that the lights of freedom and humanity might continue to shine.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Bean’s requiem was at once Australian, imperial and remarkably internationalist. In 2015, when a version of Bean’s words was circulated by government authorities as part of a kit sent to schools in preparation for the Anzac centenary, they were suggested for use as “an introduction to an Anzac ceremony”. By now, however, Bean’s original text had been adapted. </p>
<p>Aside from New Zealand, there was no mention of the contribution of any other nation’s armed forces. Gone was specific mention of the Indians at Anzac Cove, our “loyal friends among the people of New Guinea”, and the American contribution during World War II. Russia and China politely disappeared. The British were nowhere to be found. All other nations were reduced to our “staunch friends and allies”. </p>
<p>The war dead were now imagined exclusively as Australian. What was originally Bean’s powerful attempt to place Australia’s military contributions in their full international context had by 2015 become a patriotic hymn.</p>
<h2>The long moment of Empire’s vanishing</h2>
<p>The point in the late 20th century at which the imperial foundations of the Anzac legend were dismantled is difficult to isolate because the process was slow and incremental. But reading the Queen’s official speeches since her first visit in 1954 (a task which requires considerable perseverance) at least makes it possible to observe the long moment of the Empire’s vanishing.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165752/original/image-20170419-32713-47501d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165752/original/image-20170419-32713-47501d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165752/original/image-20170419-32713-47501d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165752/original/image-20170419-32713-47501d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165752/original/image-20170419-32713-47501d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165752/original/image-20170419-32713-47501d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165752/original/image-20170419-32713-47501d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165752/original/image-20170419-32713-47501d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh join the crew of the Battle class destroyer HMAS Anzac for a ship’s photograph in 1954.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When Queen Elizabeth II stepped ashore at Farm Cove in February 1954 it was clear that she saw her own family’s connection with Australia primarily through the prism of the country’s shared sacrifice in two world wars. The need to mesh the Anzac legend with loyalty to Britain was felt not only on Australia’s side but from the monarch’s perspective as well. </p>
<p>Opening the new forecourt at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance, Elizabeth reminded her audience of her family’s connection with the memorial. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>My grandfather, King George the Fifth, wrote these words in the King’s book which is now in the Shrine: ‘Let their names be forever held in proud remembrance’. My uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, dedicated the shrine itself on Armistice Day.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165760/original/image-20170419-32689-e0gf9j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165760/original/image-20170419-32689-e0gf9j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165760/original/image-20170419-32689-e0gf9j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165760/original/image-20170419-32689-e0gf9j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165760/original/image-20170419-32689-e0gf9j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165760/original/image-20170419-32689-e0gf9j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165760/original/image-20170419-32689-e0gf9j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165760/original/image-20170419-32689-e0gf9j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Queen Elizabeth II talking with Mr Bernard Sydney Gordon VC, MM on her tour here in 1954.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Time and again, she stressed that the bond between her and her Australian people– the loyalty that was “not a mere form of words” – was given its most powerful expression through the “grievous ordeal” of two world wars.</p>
<p>Visiting Australia four years later, the Queen Mother reinforced her daughter’s sentiments by insisting that “Australia first impressed the world at Anzac”. The monarchical connection and the Anzac legend walked hand in hand. </p>
<p>As the Queen remarked during her visit in 1963, “every ex-serviceman knows that when there is serious work to be done, Diggers stick together in a common loyalty”. Australians, it seemed, could only find their true identity by becoming Anzacs in civilian dress.</p>
<p>While the Queen’s Anzac Day message appeared on the front page of many newspapers throughout the 50th anniversary of Gallipoli in 1965, by the 1970s this practice had declined. Throughout that decade and into the 1980s, the Queen continued to depict the Anzacs as “the first to fight for freedom against tyranny and oppression”, although, increasingly, the emphasis was on “courage”, “duty” and “values”, which were now shorn of their earlier imperial baggage. </p>
<p>Anzac, Elizabeth asserted in 1970, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>denotes valour in Europe and Africa, in the jungles and mountains and paddy fields of Asia.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165753/original/image-20170419-32732-dkurq0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165753/original/image-20170419-32732-dkurq0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165753/original/image-20170419-32732-dkurq0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165753/original/image-20170419-32732-dkurq0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165753/original/image-20170419-32732-dkurq0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165753/original/image-20170419-32732-dkurq0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165753/original/image-20170419-32732-dkurq0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165753/original/image-20170419-32732-dkurq0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Visiting the War Memorial in 1977.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gradually, imperial themes became less prominent in her portrayal of Anzac at the same time as they disappeared more generally from her public addresses in Australia. As the idea of Australia as a British society slowly collapsed, the monarchical connection needed to find a new rhetoric of attachment and allegiance if it was to survive. </p>
<p>Similarly, the Anzac legend, threatened as it was by the politics of the new social movements and the critique of an emerging generation with little direct experience of war, needed distance from traditional themes of imperial loyalty if it was to endure. Speaking in the Commonwealth Parliament in 1986, the Queen acknowledged this change herself:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Whenever I am here … I see a growing sense of identity and a fierce pride in being Australian. So it is right that the Australia Act has severed the last of
the constitutional links between Australia and Britain … [A]nachronistic constitutional arrangements have disappeared – but the friendship between two nations has been strengthened and will endure.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Only one more anachronism remained to be removed. New themes had begun to emerge in the Queen’s speeches – multiculturalism and immigration, Indigenous Australians and rural life – which for the most part blended seamlessly with old verities such as material progress to articulate a more contemporary conception of the monarchical bond. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165766/original/image-20170419-32732-17vd0b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165766/original/image-20170419-32732-17vd0b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165766/original/image-20170419-32732-17vd0b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165766/original/image-20170419-32732-17vd0b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165766/original/image-20170419-32732-17vd0b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165766/original/image-20170419-32732-17vd0b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165766/original/image-20170419-32732-17vd0b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165766/original/image-20170419-32732-17vd0b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Prince and Princess of Wales attending a Bicentenary event, Sydney, 1988.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Archives of Australia/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the bicentenary of British settlement in 1988, the Queen’s Anzac Day address, delivered in Hobart, prefigured many of the sentiments that would characterise the reinvention of the Anzac legend in the 1990s and beyond:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[We should always remember] the debt we owe to the men and women who served their country in order that Australia could remain free from tyranny and oppression. They fought to preserve the things they valued most, their families, their future and their ideas of freedom, justice and fair play … Anzac Day does not seek to commemorate any material values. The costs of war cannot be counted in monetary terms alone. Nor does Anzac Day extol victories, or boast of conquests.
Rather, it shines a light on the greatness of the human spirit … [E]ach Anzac Day when the Last Post sounds … it is a call of awakening and re-dedication, to remind us of the standards for which we should all strive when we are called upon to do our duty.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The specifics of imperial campaigns were omitted. No distinction was made between one war and the next. Laced in thinly veiled allusions to Christian teachings on love and redemption, the assumption of the Anzac legend into even more unearthly realms was almost complete. </p>
<p>Over the next two decades, remembering war would increasingly become an exercise in spiritual nourishment. Bow the head. Be moved. Feel more Australian. And, touched by “the Anzac spirit”, walk on into the blinding light of the next war.</p>
<h2>Post-imperial Australia’s national day</h2>
<p>After a decade of fierce and largely unresolved debate over the dispossession of Indigenous Australians (in the lead-up to the bicentenary of settlement), the growing sense of pride “in being Australian” that the Queen identified in 1986 had by the early 1990s turned to less problematic and more distant soil: Anzac Cove.</p>
<p>The shedding of imperial baggage from the Anzac legend was given added force by Paul Keating’s <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/talks-speeches/keating-remembrance-day-1993/">Unknown Australian Soldier speech in 1993</a>. (“He is all of them. And he is one of us … [R]eal nobility and grandeur belong not to empires and nations but to the people on whom they, in the last resort, always depend.”)</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165553/original/image-20170418-32696-1l3c6wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165553/original/image-20170418-32696-1l3c6wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165553/original/image-20170418-32696-1l3c6wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165553/original/image-20170418-32696-1l3c6wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165553/original/image-20170418-32696-1l3c6wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165553/original/image-20170418-32696-1l3c6wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165553/original/image-20170418-32696-1l3c6wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165553/original/image-20170418-32696-1l3c6wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Keating, accompanied by his then wife Annita, in 1993.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Archives of Australia/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Keating’s successor John Howard’s decade-long crusade (1996–2007) to establish Anzac as the nation’s core foundational narrative was also driven by the emergence of the Indigenous history and politics that had so effectively undermined the myth of peaceful British settlement from 1788. The Empire, now tainted and inglorious, disappeared from Anzac at the same time as it was politely withdrawn from the rhetoric of national belonging more generally. </p>
<p>The history of invasion and dispossession that had gnawed at the heart of the bicentenary celebrations and would later haunt the centenary of Federation in 2001 could not threaten the Anzacs. Unlike the illegitimate history of settlement or British constitution-making on Australian soil, stories of the Anzacs’ courage and sacrifice could give birth to an unblemished, exclusively Australian nation.</p>
<p>Whether the all-pervasive nature of the new, Empire-free Anzac legend in contemporary Australia will have any bearing on the future prospect of an Australian republic is difficult to tell. The 2015 centenary of Anzac may well prove to be the legend’s apogee. A culture saturated in Anzac mythology can only exist for so long before people recoil from its suffocating piety and begin to question the endless parade of speeches and media features that claim to pass for history. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165762/original/image-20170419-32726-1wbu49q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165762/original/image-20170419-32726-1wbu49q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165762/original/image-20170419-32726-1wbu49q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165762/original/image-20170419-32726-1wbu49q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165762/original/image-20170419-32726-1wbu49q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165762/original/image-20170419-32726-1wbu49q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165762/original/image-20170419-32726-1wbu49q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165762/original/image-20170419-32726-1wbu49q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australians settle in at Anzac Cove in Gallipoli on April 24, 2015 ahead of a dawn service marking the centenary of the landing of Anzac troops there.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Brosnahan/NewZulu</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But at one profound level, Anzac’s grip on affective expressions of Australian identity speaks directly of the challenges facing Australian republicans today. As Australians once found mystery and spiritual communion through their allegiance to the British monarch – a depth of attachment that was almost beyond human expression – they find similar virtues in Anzac today: something sacred, immaterial and gloriously irrational that binds them as a people and transports them beyond the everyday like no other national myth can. </p>
<p>For the majority of Australia’s history, it was only the birth, visit, marriage or death of a British monarch that witnessed similar outpourings of national emotion. When news of Edward VII’s death reached Sydney in 1910, reports in the city’s press described thousands of people united in their grief:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Looking down and outwards from the top of one of the highest towers in the city, everywhere were limp and melancholy half-masted flags … The people everywhere seemed quieter, and … there appeared to be a tendency to cluster into groups. There was only one thing talked of. And there were no differences of opinion … Everyone was speaking of the dead King, and everyone was speaking solemnly, regretfully, and appreciatively.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In Sydney, the Stock Exchange closed and the news of the King’s death was written on the blackboard; men filed past silently, taking their hats off. On the street, many people wore black ties, shop windows were draped in strips of black cashmere and, on the day of the King’s funeral, it appeared that the entire nation was in mourning. </p>
<p>The commemoration of Anzac today evinces similar moments of mass emotional resonance – the evocation of the sacred, the silent parades and the communion of millions through shared devotion to one national creed. As Brendan Nelson, director of the Australian War Memorial, told the National Press Club in September 2013, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the Australian War Memorial, in my view, represents the soul of our nation. Almost two million Australian men and women who’ve worn the uniform of our three services over 100 years, and 102,700 names on the bronze role [sic] of honour.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The “Anzac spirit” has effectively replaced Britishness as Australia’s defining myth of civic attachment. It also represents the people’s deepest expression of belonging to the nation. Ironically, the myth that began in blood sacrifice to the British Empire has become post-imperial Australia’s national day.</p>
<p>While members of the British royal family still troop through the Australian War Memorial, their visits captured in framed photographs – Prince Harry in uniform submitting cheerfully to “selfies” with teenage girls – and on Facebook, Flickr and Instagram, they are treated as celebrities rather than royalty.</p>
<h2>A new sense of self?</h2>
<p>Since the modern Australian republican movement began in 1991, the argument for a republic has been predominantly couched in terms of severance and minimal change – the removal of constitutional monarchy (the last “anachronism”) – and its replacement with an Australian head of state (“one of us”).</p>
<p>Among the political class there is widespread consensus that the republic is a “second-order issue”. The nation waits in vain for a political leader to champion the cause in the way Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating did in the early 1990s.</p>
<p>Although a recent surge in the membership of the Australian Republican Movement is encouraging, a popular movement remains elusive. In simple terms, the republic does not cut deeply. It does not “move” or “connect” with a large enough number of people to force politicians to act. Instead, it waits in suspended animation for the Queen to die.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165758/original/image-20170419-32716-o27mhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165758/original/image-20170419-32716-o27mhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165758/original/image-20170419-32716-o27mhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165758/original/image-20170419-32716-o27mhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165758/original/image-20170419-32716-o27mhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165758/original/image-20170419-32716-o27mhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165758/original/image-20170419-32716-o27mhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165758/original/image-20170419-32716-o27mhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (second left) and wife Lucy arrive at the Australian Republican Movement’s 25th anniversary dinner, with ARM Chairman Peter FitzSimons, (right), and National Director Tim Mayfield, (left), in Sydney in December.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dan Himbrechts/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The questions raised for republicans by the recent rise of the Anzac legend are fundamental: can popular attachment to the idea of an Australian republic come from severance from the monarchy alone? Can a fully independent and republican Australia – a new “sense of self” – emerge merely from the collapse of old loyalties? Or does the promise of a republic ask something more from us as citizens? </p>
<p>Where is the republic’s moral, civic and political compass? What does it have to say about the promise of a new settlement with Indigenous Australians? What of our attachment to the land and to one another? What new civic and national ideals will guide its implementation? And how is it possible to see the republic’s promise of a shift in national consciousness when the arguments for its coming are targeted so narrowly? </p>
<p>If Republic Day is ever to rival Anzac Day, Australians will need to discover a new way of speaking about the prospect of change, one that finds the courage to imagine that national dignity and constitutional renewal will come not from the removal of monarchy alone but from within.</p>
<p><em>This is an edited version of an essay published in <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/honest-history/">The Honest History Book </a>(New South Publishing) edited by David Stephens and Alison Broinowski.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74303/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark McKenna has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council.
He is a member of the Australian Republican Movement.</span></em></p>As Australians once found spiritual communion through allegiance to the British monarch, they find similar virtues in Anzac today. Can the republican movement connect with a large enough number of people in a similar way?Mark McKenna, Associate Professor of History, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/607762016-08-05T05:30:51Z2016-08-05T05:30:51ZWhither anarchy: freedom as non-domination<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125826/original/image-20160609-3506-1ywe8h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anarchists once took constitutionalism very seriously and might well do so again to develop radical decision-making practices. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/kjd/2502535352">Kim Davis/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century. This article is the second of four perspectives on the political relevance of anarchism and the prospects for liberty in the world today.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Which institutions are best suited to realising freedom? This is a question recently asked by the republican political theorist <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/%7Eppettit/">Philip Pettit</a>. </p>
<p>Anarchists, by contrast to republicans, argue that the modern nation-state and the institution of private property are antithetical to freedom. According to anarchists, these are historic injustices that are structurally dominating. If you value freedom as non-domination, you must reject both as inimical to realising this freedom.</p>
<p>But what is freedom as non-domination? In a nutshell, by a line of thinking most vocally articulated by Pettit, I’m free to the degree that I am not arbitrarily dominated by any other. I am not free if someone can arbitrarily interfere in the execution of my choices.</p>
<p>If I consent to a system of rules or procedures, anyone that then invokes these rules against me cannot be said to be curtailing my freedom from domination. My scope for action might be constrained, but since I have consented to the rules that now curtail my freedom, I am not subject to arbitrary domination.</p>
<p>Imagine, for instance, that I have a drinking problem and I’ve asked my best friend to keep me away from the bar. If she sees me heading in that direction and prevents me from getting anywhere near the alcohol, she dominates, but not arbitrarily, so my status as a free person is not affected. </p>
<p>Republican theory diverges from liberal theory because the latter treats any interference in my actions as a constraint on my freedom – especially if I paid good money for the drink, making it my property.</p>
<p>Neither republicans nor liberals suggest that private property and the state might themselves be detrimental to freedom, quite the opposite. By liberal accounts, private property is the bedrock of individual rights. In contemporary republican theory, property ownership is legitimate as long as it is non-dominating. </p>
<p>Republicans further argue that a state that tracks your interests and encourages deliberative contestation and active political participation will do best by your freedom.</p>
<h2>The special status of property and the state</h2>
<p>But why should we assume that property or the state is central to securing freedom as non-domination? The answer seems to be force of habit. For republicans like Pettit, the state is like the laws of physics while private property is akin to gravity. In ideal republican theory, these two institutions are just background conditions we simply have to deal with, neither dominating nor undominating, just there.</p>
<p>While anarchists don’t disagree that property and the state exist, they seek to defend a conception of freedom as non-domination that factors in their dominating, slavish and enslaving effects. Anarchism emerged in the 19th century, when republicanism, particularly in the US, was perfectly consistent with slavery and needed the state to enforce that state of affairs.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125828/original/image-20160609-3475-hqnq0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125828/original/image-20160609-3475-hqnq0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125828/original/image-20160609-3475-hqnq0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125828/original/image-20160609-3475-hqnq0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125828/original/image-20160609-3475-hqnq0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125828/original/image-20160609-3475-hqnq0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125828/original/image-20160609-3475-hqnq0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anarchists denounce the institutions of dominance under industrial capitalism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Quinn Dombrowski/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The abolition of slavery and the emergence of industrial capitalism were predicated on the extension of the principle of private property to the propertyless, not only slaves, who were encouraged to see themselves as self-possessors who could sell their labour on the open market at the market rate. </p>
<p>Likewise, in Europe millions of emancipated serfs were lured into land settlements that left them permanently indebted to landlords and state functionaries. They were barely able to meet taxes and rents and frequently faced starvation.</p>
<p>The anarchists uniformly denounced this process as the transformation of slavery, rather than its abolition. They deployed synonyms like “wage slavery” to describe the new state of affairs. Later, they extended their conception of domination by analysing sex slavery and marriage slavery.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.spunk.org/texts/writers/proudhon/sp001863.html">Proudhon’s</a> twin dictums “property is theft” and “slavery is murder” should be understood in this context. As he noted, neither would have been possible but for the republican state enforcing and upholding the capitalist property regime. </p>
<p>The state became dependent on taxes, while property owners were dependent on the state to keep recalcitrant populations at bay. And, by the mid-20th century, workers were dependent on the state for welfare and social security because of the poverty-level wages paid by capitalists.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/karl-polanyi-explainer-great-transformation-bernie-sanders">Karl Polanyi</a> noted, there was nothing natural about this process. The unfurling of the “free market”, the liberal euphemism for this process, had to be enforced and continues to be across the world. </p>
<p>Republicans might encourage us to think of the state and property like the laws of physics or gravity because this helps them argue that their conception of freedom as non-domination is not moralised – that is, their conception of freedom as non-domination does not depend on a prior ethical commitment to anything else. </p>
<p>But as soon as you strip away the physics, it appears that republican freedom is in fact deeply moralised – the state and private property remain central to the possibility of republican freedom in an a priori way. Republican accounts of freedom demand we ignore a prior ethical commitment to two institutions that should themselves be rejected.</p>
<p>Anarchists argue that private property and the state precipitate structures of domination that position people in hierarchical relations of domination, which are often if not always exacerbated by distinctions of race, gender and sexuality. These are what Uri Gordon calls the multiple <a href="http://news.infoshop.org/opinion/anarchism-and-multiculturalism">“regimes of domination”</a> that structure our lives.</p>
<h2>Looking to constitutionalism as a radical tool</h2>
<p>Anarchists are anarchists to the extent that they actively combat these forces. How should they do this?</p>
<p>Typically, the answer is through a specific form of communal empowerment (“power with” rather than “power over”). This would produce structural power egalitarianism, a situation in which no one can arbitrarily dominate another. </p>
<p>But is this realistic or desirable? Would a reciprocal powers politics not simply result in the very social conflicts that anarchists see structuring society already, as Pettit has argued?</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128442/original/image-20160628-7851-e226ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128442/original/image-20160628-7851-e226ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128442/original/image-20160628-7851-e226ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128442/original/image-20160628-7851-e226ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128442/original/image-20160628-7851-e226ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128442/original/image-20160628-7851-e226ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128442/original/image-20160628-7851-e226ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128442/original/image-20160628-7851-e226ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Even anarchists need rules to guide group decision-making – such as these ones at Occupy Vancouver.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sallybuck/6381994175/in/photolist-aHrq5g-asTREh-bkWFhF-ayMM4U-ayK6Tc-aHXowk-avJLrY-awjZ3F-asRfxv-awfUQE">Sally T. Buck/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And what about radical democracy? Perhaps anarchists could replace engagement with the state with radical practices of decision-making? The problem is that anarchists haven’t even defined the requisite constituencies or how they should relate to one another. What if my mass constituency’s democratic voice conflicts with yours?</p>
<p>There is one implement in the republican tool box that anarchists once took very seriously and which might be resurrected: <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/constitutionalism/">constitutionalism</a>. Without a state to fall back on or private property to lean on, anarchists like Proudhon devised radically anti-hierarchical and impressively imaginative constitutional forms. </p>
<p>Even today, when constitutionalism is almost uniformly associated with bureaucracy and domination, anarchists continue to devise constitutional systems. By looking at anarchist practices like the Occupy movement’s <a href="http://www.occupyboston.org/general-assembly/reaching-consensus/">camp rules</a> and declarations (We are the 99%!), we can revive anarchist constitutionalism and show how freedom as non-domination may be revised and deployed as an anti-capitalist, anti-statist emancipatory principle. You can <a href="http://www.anarchyrules.info">see more about this here</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/whither-anarchy">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60776/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Prichard receives funding from the ESRC, under the 'Transforming Social Science' scheme, for a project entitled 'Constitutionalising Anarchy'. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ruth Kinna receives funding from the ESRC, under the 'Transforming Social Science' scheme, for a project entitled 'Constitutionalising Anarchy'.</span></em></p>If anarchists reject private property and the state, they need to devise alternative, radical practices of power-sharing. Republican constitutionalism offers one way to think about this.Alex Prichard, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of ExeterRuth Kinna, Professor of Political Theory, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/593282016-05-12T13:12:49Z2016-05-12T13:12:49ZWhy has the British government raised the Irish terror threat level?<p>It has been 21 years since Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, voiced the famous soundbite that the IRA “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ira-has-not-gone-away-adams-warns-ministers-ira-has-not-gone-away-1596152.html">haven’t gone away, you know</a>”.</p>
<p>During two decades of relative peace in Northern Ireland, Irish republican violence has almost entirely fallen off the radar for the British public. Organisations such as Al Qaeda and Islamic State have long since been seen to pose a far greater security risk.</p>
<p>Yet the UK home secretary, Theresa May, announced that the official <a href="https://www.mi5.gov.uk/threat-levels">Northern Ireland-related terrorism threat</a> has been raised from moderate to substantial in Britain. In Northern Ireland, the threat is rated as “severe”. This means that an attack in Britain is seen as a “strong possibility” and in Northern Ireland, an attack is “highly likely”.</p>
<p>All this evokes memories of the dark days between the 1970s and 1990s when a ring of steel was erected around London and the IRA brought the battle across the water. However this throwback to past decades has not just appeared out of the blue. It has been shaped by a number of factors, both historical and contemporary.</p>
<p>The threat has been building up in Northern Ireland for a number of years. There have been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-10866072">attacks on police and prison officers</a> and the security forces fear the emergence of a new dissident super-group that brings together the various republican factions. If such a group emerged it would then lay claim to being the authentic face of the Irish republican tradition rather than the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/northern_ireland/2001/provisional_ira/default.stm">Provisional IRA</a>. </p>
<p>Concern about this is particularly high in 2016. This year marks the centenary of the Easter Rising in Dublin – the armed insurrection against British rule that eventually paved the way for independence in 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties.</p>
<p>But it is also the date sold by Sinn Fein as the critical point in its <a href="http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/well-have-a-united-ireland-by-2016-says-mcguinness-25922555.html">contemporary ambitions for Irish reunification</a>. And through much of the 1990s and early 2000s this goal appeared to be semi-realistic, if ambitious. Sinn Fein, the main voice of Irish republicanism, was on the rise at a time when the Catholic population was increasing too. </p>
<p>At the very least Sinn Fein and many political commentators anticipated that by 2016 close to 50% of the vote would be republican/nationalist. However, this vote began to stall at around the 42% mark in the mid 2000s. In the recent <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2016/northern_ireland/results">Northern Ireland Assembly</a> elections, held on May 5, it fell back to 36%. That’s the worst combined share of the vote for these parties since the early 1990s.</p>
<p>The slide is partly due to voter apathy, but there also appears to have been an increase in Catholics voting for the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2016-northern-ireland-36252478">Alliance Party</a>, which now has eight seats in parliament. This group deems itself to be neither unionist or nationalist and has never been hostile to the idea of Irish unification by consent. There has also been an increase in people voting for parties such as the Greens and the <a href="http://www.peoplebeforeprofit.ie/">People Before Profit Alliance</a>.</p>
<p>The main reason for the drift away from nationalism and republicanism, however, appears to be the failure of Sinn Fein and the SDLP (the other main nationalist party in NI) to present a clear vision that reflects the aspirations of voters. They have not offered much on either bread-and-butter issues or a realistic approach to unification.</p>
<p>This has possibly also acted as a spark for the dissidents whose vision has always been clear and brutal. They want an end to British government involvement in Ireland, and the right of self-determination for their people. They do not believe Sinn Fein’s strategy is working and are prepared to resort to violence to achieve reunification. They know very well that attacks in Britain will generate hysteria and division. Such attacks might also generate forms of repression that will harden attitudes among Northern Ireland’s Catholics, as happened in the 1970s after such events as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guildford_pub_bombings">Guildford pub bombings</a>. </p>
<h2>Loss of support</h2>
<p>Times are different though. My own research due to be published later this year suggests relative happiness with the status quo of power sharing among today’s Northern Irish Catholics. It seems that although 80% of them, including some Alliance Party voters, still aspire to a united Ireland, they don’t want to see it happen through violence. There simply isn’t an appetite for violence or any immediate demand for unification among the Irish nationalist population, north or south of the border.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the harsh reality is that within the tradition of physical force republicanism there is a belief that a mandate for violence is not required. They cling to those events of 1916, where an apathetic Irish population was roused into calling for independence after the British overreacted to the insurrection in Dublin. Maybe it is important, then, for the rest of Britain to heed the lessons of history too – and not overreact to the decision to raise the terror threat. </p>
<p>The solution will not be found in any ring of steel around London. It will have to be found in the long term by the political parties and the people of Northern Ireland.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59328/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Breen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The home secretary has announced that the threat of terrorism related to Northern Ireland is now highly likely in Britain.Paul Breen, Senior lecturer, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/521492016-02-29T00:23:44Z2016-02-29T00:23:44ZHave faith: civil religion can counter the lure of eternal life for jihadists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109596/original/image-20160129-27342-19c1xll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Statue of Liberty stands as a beacon of the civil religion that is the contemporary faith in human rights.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixabay.com/en/statue-of-liberty-new-york-city-79931/">Pixabay.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p>Everyone wants to die for Allah. We all want to live the best life in the hereafter and we want to make it to the top of the seven levels of Jannah – heaven.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So thinks a young “<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2015/s4334796.htm">anonymous Islamic State supporter</a>” who was friends with the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/parramatta-shooting-gunman-identified-as-farhad-jabar-khalil-mohammad-20151003-gk0jze.html">Australian Muslim teenager</a> who murdered a police worker in Sydney before he was shot dead. Perhaps this kind of mantra also resonated in the minds of the Islamic State (IS) killers who carried out the 2015 <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/paris-attacks-2015">massacres in Paris</a>.</p>
<p>Many politicians and public intellectuals have called these murderers “<a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13178582.Obama__The_West_will_defeat__extremist_nihilism__of_the_Islamic_State_terrorists/">nihilists</a>”. This betrays a typically secularist way of thinking about religion. It assumes that eternal life does not exist and that the aspiration to an eternal life is nonsensical, such that killing in the name of a paradisiacal life must mean killing for the sake of “nothing”.</p>
<p>Anthropologist Clive Kessler recently <a href="http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2015/12/01/what-is-islamism/">put forward</a> another typical Weberian reading of political Islam where the prophet is a religious leader whose message is later politicised by other forces.</p>
<p>But what if this is not the case? Everything changes if you underscore that the prophet is a constitution-giver, not a founder of a “religion”. In a political context, this perspective allows us to interpret prophetic religions democratically and philosophically, rather than theologically and juridically.</p>
<p>The question then becomes: what kind of public discourse is appropriate to counter the jihadist’s chosen path? How does one address the desire for “eternal life” that seems to motivate their willingness to sacrifice human life?</p>
<p>Should one respond that the “true” teachings of all religions preach “love of the neighbour” or “love of the stranger”, rather than the jihadist “hatred of the enemy”, as the straightest road to salvation? Although this is, for the most part, correct, it fails to tackle the underlying issues of radicalisation and fundamentalism.</p>
<p>These religious teachings do not reconcile “love of the neighbour” with the political life of citizens. Instead, they teach that to exercise charity means to become a “good citizen” of another sublime kingdom, whose representatives on this earth are churches and priests or mosques and imams. In practice, this has always had the effect of politically dividing citizens and setting them against each other.</p>
<h2>Can secular societies respond in other ways?</h2>
<p>What if one were to take a different starting point? After all, the belief that eternal life exists is shared by the founders of the republican political thought that forms the basis of Western democracies.</p>
<p>It may be worthwhile to revisit another approach that the tradition of <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/republicanism/">republicanism</a> advocated: <a href="http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/civilrel.htm">civil religion</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106206/original/image-20151216-25618-1h7fyul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106206/original/image-20151216-25618-1h7fyul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106206/original/image-20151216-25618-1h7fyul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106206/original/image-20151216-25618-1h7fyul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106206/original/image-20151216-25618-1h7fyul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106206/original/image-20151216-25618-1h7fyul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106206/original/image-20151216-25618-1h7fyul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sydney’s Anzac memorial.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frank Wittig/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The “Anzac spirit” can be understood as a manifestation of civil religion. For many Australians, calling into question the sacrifice made by the young men and women in arms is to utter an impiety. Yet the Anzac is not part of any spiritual religion. Interestingly, the spirit of the Anzacs is not something that any political party or leader can appropriate for themselves alone without desecrating it.</p>
<p>Another example of civil religion is the faith billions on our planet share in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the international “democratic charter”. Our adherence to universal human rights has become something like a global civil faith. </p>
<p>The struggles for basic rights have their prophetic troops such as Médecins Sans Frontières and Amnesty International, along with individuals like Edward Snowden and the Chinese citizen who stood alone in front of a row of tanks in Tiananmen Square, as many have done in other public squares since.</p>
<p>Even before the emergence of liberalism, political thinkers like Machiavelli, Spinoza, Rousseau and Jefferson understood the need for a civil religion where love of thy neighbour and charity were embodied in republican institutions so that tolerance would effectively become the new “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=rg4m04-j_psC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=religion+of+the+citizen+rousseau&source=bl&ots=mWcNh_QtbU&sig=rCEy7j_DMOE0rbPjtt9tL5f5Ifo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEoQ6AEwCGoVChMIvrW3lNSRyQIVQeemCh0vKA8L#v=onepage&q&f=false">religion of the citizen</a>”.</p>
<h2>Reinterpreting prophets in republican terms</h2>
<p>But how can this be possible? How can prophets like Moses, Jesus or Muhammad be given a republican interpretation? And, conversely, how can the political virtues of Greek and Roman republics be harnessed towards the egalitarian and cosmopolitan ends voiced by true prophets?</p>
<p>Machiavelli’s solution was a new interpretation of the figure of the prophet. The prophet’s role was not to found a new church or empire, but to bring to his people a constitution that guarantees that power shall remain in the hands of the people, not their spiritual or worldly representatives. Hence, a civil religion is a philosophical idea of religion that allows us to interpret prophetic religions in a way that is supportive of republican constitutions.</p>
<p>The first person to have this idea may have been <a href="https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/al-farabi-abu-nasr-c-870-950/v-1">Al-Farabi</a>, a 10th-century Muslim philosopher. His fundamental thought was that the prophet was both a legislator and a philosopher, rather than a theologian or a political leader. </p>
<p>Prophets are legislators because they give their people a political constitution that brings them worldly happiness. Such constitutions are meant to bind the wills of the people and stand higher than any king, prince, priest or imam.</p>
<p>But the prophet is also a philosopher: legislation must be rational, oriented by the idea of the public good. As a product of a philosopher-legislator, the constitution will be based on political principles that are hypothetical in that they must be verified experimentally by the democratic life of peoples that they make possible.</p>
<p>Lastly, for Al-Farabi the true prophet is also a poetic genius. He must be able to communicate the wisdom of a free and equal political life in a way that is accessible to all future individuals regardless of their social or economic condition.</p>
<h2>A religion of worldly happiness</h2>
<p>At this point, some advocates of the liberal solution to the problem of religion will say: why can’t the state just be “neutral” with respect to the pursuit of salvation and happiness and leave it at that?</p>
<p>Certainly, governments must be neutral towards how individuals pursue their private happiness and salvation, but this is not the whole story.</p>
<p>Constitutional governments depend upon the expectation that citizens will achieve public happiness by following their laws. Hence, a constitutional government cannot remain neutral with respect to whether and how its citizens attain public happiness. If the government gives up on its responsibilities in assuring the public happiness of citizens, their energies will be drained by the private pursuit of happiness, which in turn will lead to their disempowerment and eventual unfreedom.</p>
<p>Contemporary social science, for instance, has shown that unless inequality is kept within reasonable limits in a society, the freedom of all citizens – not just the poor – will begin to erode and ultimately vanish. The measure of inequality is a measure of public happiness, not a private one.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106229/original/image-20151216-25606-19hmmmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106229/original/image-20151216-25606-19hmmmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106229/original/image-20151216-25606-19hmmmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106229/original/image-20151216-25606-19hmmmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106229/original/image-20151216-25606-19hmmmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106229/original/image-20151216-25606-19hmmmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106229/original/image-20151216-25606-19hmmmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106229/original/image-20151216-25606-19hmmmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many, like these protesters in Melbourne, believe the treatment of refugees shows a dangerous disregard for the natural rights of people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/takver/5918017660/in/photolist-a1Xotf-afcjze-afcmKe-fFbsG6-fFt3Dh-fi9anQ-fjMYSQ-2Uc4-y4A97h-fjMZaW-fASk4W-fASDVu-affemN-fASSQh-fkPGJD-fihyTL-afcq7B-afcmfP-afcnWk-afck8X-affgzN-a1UwtZ-fmYEgY-9vccJH-afcsUR-affdMC-afcpug-afcoVD-aff8Ss-afcnnR-afcost-affeSu-afffrh-fACskP-fAC5Ep-fASaxQ-fjMYoC-zYK1HM-8rW3EG-8rSUve-8rSSve-8rSV4D-8rSWYT-8rVZ9E-8rSY46-8rSVAn-fhEdxu-8rVXEs-8rW38j-8rW3oC">flickr/Takver</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A similar argument can be made for adopting immigration policies that embody the spirit of cosmopolitan constitutionalism. For if one disrespects the natural rights of stateless peoples, one is cementing the dangerous illusion that the rights of citizens depend exclusively on obedience to their government.</p>
<p>According to the perspective of civil religion, the goal of governments should be the worldly public happiness of their people. This means that any politics or policy that demands sacrifice in this world to be compensated in some “beyond” is illegitimate.</p>
<p>While the idea of “worldly” happiness transcends the human order of things into the natural world, it never leaves our human existence in our human universe. The reality is that we are a part of nature; nature is not a part of us. Hence the God mentioned in the civil religion of the <a href="http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html">Declaration of Independence</a> is called “Nature’s God”.</p>
<p>This means that modern natural science, which is the way we can come to know Nature’s God, has an important role to play in a republican civil religion. The civil-religious function of natural science is to uphold and defend the belief in the eternity of nature.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109603/original/image-20160129-27331-2lvela.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109603/original/image-20160129-27331-2lvela.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109603/original/image-20160129-27331-2lvela.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=713&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109603/original/image-20160129-27331-2lvela.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=713&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109603/original/image-20160129-27331-2lvela.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=713&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109603/original/image-20160129-27331-2lvela.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109603/original/image-20160129-27331-2lvela.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109603/original/image-20160129-27331-2lvela.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Parallel universes offer us another way of looking at ‘eternal life’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/chingster23/11937781733">flickr/Lee Davy</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>What does this belief have to do with the pursuit of public happiness and eternal life? Well, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-theory-of-parallel-universes-is-not-just-maths-it-is-science-that-can-be-tested-46497">recent advances</a> in the scientific study of the universe have suggested that nature, rather than being created out of nothing in a single event, is characterised by a rhythm of expanding and contracting parallel universes. </p>
<p>This civil religion of Nature’s God offers a scientifically and politically sound alternative to counter the interpretations of eternal life that spiritual religions offer.</p>
<p>If these scientific theories are correct, then one thing seems to follow: everything that did not happen to you in this world, everything that you regretted doing or omitting to do, everything that has led you to place your faith in “another” world, paradise or beyond, has happened to you not once, but countless times.</p>
<p>In a parallel existence, in some other version of this universe, which may or may not be this very life that you are now living, you have always been happy, you have always “made it to the top” – in fact, you are eternally there. </p>
<p>The idea of eternal recurrence may very well contain the deepest meaning of worldly happiness: if nature contains an infinite number of variations of you, the life you are living is neither the only one you shall ever live, nor is it a life for which you need to seek redemption by sacrificing your life or that of others.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52149/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Miguel Vatter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The tradition of republicanism offered us civil religion, a foundation of belief that could counter any politics or policy that demands sacrifice in this world to be compensated in some “beyond”.Miguel Vatter, Professor of Politics, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/274972014-06-02T21:20:01Z2014-06-02T21:20:01ZCan Spain’s monarchy survive the abdication of Juan Carlos I?<p>The Spanish monarchy has been thrown into crisis after the king, Juan Carlos I, announced his decision to abdicate the throne after 39 years in favour of his son Felipe. The news was conveyed via the <a href="https://twitter.com/CasaReal/status/473383285486546944">royal household’s Twitter account</a> and confirmed by a <a href="http://twitter.com/CasaReal/status/473383285486546944/photo/1">letter signed by Juan Carlos</a> and posted shortly afterwards. He then made a televised address to the nation thanking the Spanish people for their support.</p>
<p>But the smooth succession from father to son was put in doubt after thousands of people <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/02/king-juan-carlos-spain-protests-referendum-monarchy">took to the streets</a> to call for a referendum on the future of the monarchy and more than 70,000 people signed an online petition urging Spain’s politicians to use this “historical opportunity to promote a public debate that will help regenerate democracy and determine the future of the monarchy”.</p>
<p>Whatever else may be written about Juan Carlos, his four-decade rule has enabled Spain to transition from the right-wing dictatorship of Generalissimo Francisco Franco to a modern pluralistic social democracy. In the course of his reign the king has been one of Europe’s most popular monarchs, although scandals in recent years have tarnished his record somewhat and are probably partly behind the popular demand for a constitutional debate.</p>
<p>Born in Rome on January 5, 1938, Juan Carlos moved to Spain aged ten where he was groomed by Franco as a successor. In 1969 Franco named him as his heir, giving him the title of Prince of Spain. At this stage Juan Carlos publicly supported Franco, even acting as proxy head of state for Franco during the dictator’s final days – but all the while he was holding secret meeetings with reformist politicians.</p>
<p>He became king on November 22, 1975, two days after Franco’s death. It was a time of uncertainty and flux in Spanish politics. Many questioned the role Juan Carlos would play in Spain’s fledgling democracy and he immediately found himself at odds with right-wing politicians for not continuing Franco’s authoritarian policies, instead looking to left-wing, republican parties for support. </p>
<p>An early defining moment came during the abortive military coup of February 1981 when, as captain-general of the armed forces, in full uniform, he addressed the nation in a television broadcast to support the democratically-elected government <a href="http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/fue-noticia-en-el-archivo-de-rtve/archivo-mensaje-del-rey-juan-carlos-tras-intentona-golpista-del-23/393739/">during a TV broadcast</a>. He used this to contradict claims by the coup leaders that he supported their actions. The coup failed and his popularity soared – even Santiago Carrillo, the leader of the just-legalised Communist Party who had dubbed the king “Juan Carlos the brief” in reference to what he presumed would be a short reign – expressed his admiration for the king’s decisive action.</p>
<p>Despite some remaining republicanism and independence movements in Catalonia and the Basque region, public support for Juan Carlos remained strong for the next three decades. Juan Carlos travelled the world as an effective ambassador for Spain and Spanish interests and the weddings of his three children were celebrated as major international events. In 2007 he became a YouTube sensation in the Spanish-Speaking world when, at an Ibero-American Summit in Chile, he interrupted the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez by asking him “why don’t you shut up?” (<em>¿Por qué no te callas?</em>). This phrase was picked up by the Spanish public and soon featured in the press, in jokes, on t-shirts and on social media.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Why don’t you just shut up?</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Scandal and crisis</h2>
<p>But the economic crisis in 2008 brought a change in public perception of the monarchy, particularly their use of public money to fund an extravagant lifestyle. A biography of Queen Sofía reported her views against gay marriage, and the king’s eldest daughter, <a href="http://www.hellomagazine.com/royalty/200911262481/infanta-elena/divorce/spain-royal/%3E/">Infanta Elena, divorced in 2009</a> – the first child of Spanish royalty to do so.</p>
<p>Meanwhile Juan Carlos’ personal popularity took a dive in April 2012 when a photograph was published showing him posing with a dead elephant during a hunting trip to Botswana. The expensive trip was perceived as a slap in the face of crisis-hit Spaniards, even though the royal household insisted it had not been paid for with taxpayers’ money. In addition, as honorary president of the Spanish branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature, the king’s behaviour was criticised as irresponsible. The WWF responded by <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18942736">removing him from his post as honorary president</a> and the king <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17752983">issued a rare apology</a>. What made it worse was that it emerged that he had not been travelling with Queen Sofía, but with German aristocrat Princess Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. It later transpired that she had accompanied him on several trips. The press, who had always respected the privacy of the royal family, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/9949809/The-lonesome-king-of-Spain-how-Juan-Carlos-fell-from-grace.html">began to print stories about alleged infidelities</a>.</p>
<p>The royal family was further rocked by the revelation that Infanta Cristina’s husband, Iñaki Urdangarín, was under investigation for an alleged embezzlement of millions of euro of public money. He was later charged. Cristina was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/09/princess-cristina-spain-scandal-court">formally named as a suspect in 2013</a> and charged early in January this year. </p>
<p>The growing sense of scandal and waste has taken its toll on his popularity – his approval rating fell to 41% and there were further calls for his abdication, even from people who had previously supported him. His health has also been poor: he has undergone a series of hip operations after several falls. In January this year Juan Carlos made his first public appearance in two months for the “Pascua Militar”, the opening of the military year. Looking frail, his speech was hesitant and he stumbled over his words, which prompted renewed talk of abdication.</p>
<h2>Can the monarchy survive?</h2>
<p>In his abdication statement, Juan Carlos referred to Prince Felipe, 46, as “the incarnation of stability” – and he is well prepared for the job, having studied in Canada and the US as well as completing his military training in Spain. He has stood in for his father on several occasions and his personal popularity has remained strong with an approval rating of about 66%. </p>
<p>Felipe VI will bring a new style to the Spanish monarchy, with his wife, former news anchor Letizia Ortiz, styled as “<a href="http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2014/06/02/actualidad/1401702757_497884.html">the first middle-class queen</a>”. The couple is generally well-liked, but the institution of monarchy has suffered in the last few years – and Felipe won’t have the opportunity, like his father did, to appear as the saviour of democracy. </p>
<p>The revisionists are already at work. Despite all the recent criticism, the Spanish media are falling over themselves to praise Juan Carlos and his many achievements. And when the dust settles, Felipe will have to face some difficult challenges: Spain is still deeply in economic crisis with high unemployment and a political class dogged by accusations of corruption. As for Felipe, all eyes will be on his investment ceremony (there will be no coronation as the king of Spain doesn’t wear a crown) and how much public money is spent on it. </p>
<p>Meanwhile he will have to weather the storm of his own sister’s trial. Regardless of her guilt or innocence, if she is cleared, the public will assume preferential treatment. If Cristina is found guilty and sentenced, all eyes will be on how she is punished. The outcome of the trial, and Felipe’s reaction to it, will be a key point of reference for how he is perceived by Spaniards and perhaps the future of the Spanish monarchy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27497/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fernando Rosell-Aguilar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Spanish monarchy has been thrown into crisis after the king, Juan Carlos I, announced his decision to abdicate the throne after 39 years in favour of his son Felipe. The news was conveyed via the royal…Fernando Rosell-Aguilar, Lecturer in Spanish, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.