If you’re looking for someone to blame, Churchill deserves some. Many Prime Ministers before him as well.
But I don’t think Philip deserves any. You call them a symbol, that’s all they are. They’re someone to point at and say “yeah that’s our country”, so no single politician can claim that mantle. As an Indian you must be aware how easy it is for a politician to claim they’re the personification of the nation (“India is Indira and Indira is India”). That cannot happen in the UK because the PM is merely a temporary caretaker appointed by the monarch. The symbolism matters.
Source: The English Constitution by Walter Bagehot (1867)
Heres the opening for Patrick Freyne in the Irish Times on the British Monarchy:
"Having a monarchy next door is a little like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and has daubed their house with clown murals, displays clown dolls in each window and has an insatiable desire to hear about and discuss clown-related news stories. More specifically, for the Irish, it’s like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and, also, your grandfather was murdered by a clown."
>You call them a symbol, that’s all they are.
Yet swastikas are illegal in Germany. Symbols have meaning and the British monarchy does represent imperialism and colonialism even if it makes British people feel uncomfortable.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/harry-and-me...
If you read the complete thread, you'll see that it's not random. And I disagree that bringing up something negative after someone dies is bad taste.
Yeah, I don't think we'd get along.
From 'bidirectional' above :
It should be noted that the 'staying out of politics' is
a public phenomenon. In her weekly meeting with the Prime
Minister, The Queen makes her political stance well known
(that is the entire point of the meeting).[1]
While you say:
They haven’t had a say in British policy for around 2 centuries.
Although the monarch meets the Prime Minister every week, they
cannot tell the PM what to do, unless it affects the royal
family personally. The PM listens to what they have to say but
charts their own course.
One would think her influence particularly would have gone unquestioned to a larger degree, by the PM or politicians & their constituencies in general, in that era - when the royal family enjoyed far greater popularity than it does now.
So the OP isn't too far off the mark to assume they deserve ample blame.
In fact, in some sense, there is an attempt to try to deify/lionize the PM as a royal. I don't think that it is a symptom of the failure of parliamentary democracy, rather it is a tendency among people.
For me there's little point making people feel shame for what country they happened to be born in - we do not get to choose. However it's important that we do not forget what caused these awful atrocities and make sure that we never let them happen again.
Personally I feel that we do not learn enough about these atrocities at school in the UK, and would be happy if we focused on them more but I wouldn't want people to feel too guilty about things that could not control.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjTSgP6Lm0A
Here's a interesting tweet about how the global north is sucking dry the global south: https://twitter.com/jasonhickel/status/1377180178690940934
nothing new, see “religion”.
I see two main obstacles to this apology.
1. Teaching kids history. Currently British kids learn all about Henry VIII’s wives ... and then it’s straight to the World Wars. It’s hard to tell a nation of 70 million people to reckon with their past when they know nothing about it.
2. Philip himself was quite old. He grew up at a time when the Empire was a great thing, something that helped resist the tides of Nazism. Britain could not have managed it without the colonies. And later, he became old. I’m willing to give older people the benefit of the doubt - they can’t change their minds easily.
But if his grandson can’t come to grips with it either when he becomes monarch, I won’t be making any excuses for him.
I do agree that more should be taught about the details of colonialism but the idea that British history started with Henry VIII and skipped to WW1 is nonsense.
I can say that I did Ancient Greece, Romans, Tudors, touched a little on the Spanish Armada before skipping straight to WW2.
Neither of the two schools I attended touched on Colonialism in any recognisable degree, and Slavery was more "We stopped slavery, good job england", when in reality it wasn't done from a place of morality, and instead was driven by mass slave revolts, a decline in plantations culminated by an era of overproduction by slavery, which was leading to economic decline.
When we were very young it was the tudors and earlier, then there was a little social history where we covered things like the building of canals and the invention of the spinning jenny, the industrial revolution, enclosure etc, then Cold War history IIRC. Big blank spot where colonial history might have been. You'd think it might be relevant...
It is mandated that pupils learn about "ideas, political power, industry and empire: Britain, 1745-1901" [1]. Some examples schools can choose are the transatlantic slave trade, the American civil war, Ireland and Home Rule and the development of the British Empire with a depth study (for example, of India).
For 20th century history, only learning about the Holocaust is actually mandated. But Indian independence and end of Empire can be chosen by schools and is quite a common choice.
Kids are learning about these things. Maybe not as much as they could be and likely with some bias, but it's not true that it jumps from Henry VIII's wives to world wars.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curricul...
I feel like "The Empire was great otherwise we would all be living under Naziism" is a poor take.
It assumes that whatever features of the world existed then must have been necessary to accomplish whatever was accomplished.
Imagine the US was still a British colony, and Hitler was still defeated. It would stand to reason then, that it was because the US was still a British colony that Hitler was defeated, right?
In a made-up timeline when Britain had already voluntarily broken up the empire, we're in a very different world, once that perhaps wouldn't include Germany trying to expand its power and/or wouldn't have felt itself under threat from the surrounding pre-WWI European empires.
Re your second, you are a much more mature and compassionate person than I am about this. I am completely ambivalent about his death. He was a very old man who lived a spectacularly privileged life and had little to no worries. I care not a jot whether he found peace.
- As an infant, was evacuated from Greece with his (and his family's) life in grave danger. Spent his childhood mostly estranged from his family
- As a young man, served on a naval ship as part of the campaign to defeat fascist Germany and Japan. At least once helped save his ship's crew from a German bombing attack. Probably faced many other threats to his own life and to his comrades.
- Spent the rest of his life as an ambassador for his family and country, and counsel to his wife whose job it is to ensure the country and Commonwealth continues to function with stability and prosperity, including through political/economic crises, national emergencies, local/global cultural shifts, etc.
- Attended 22,000 official events and delivered 5000 speeches. Was an early advocate for environmentalism and animal welfare. Conceived and headed a youth development organisation for most of his public life.
- Endured family tragedies, relentless media/public scrutiny and criticism, and constant campaign against his family's wealth and role in the political system.
You may not like him. Fine. I didn't care much for him, and I don't hold a great deal of pity for him for the difficulties he and his family have faced.
But "little to no worries" is a giant leap.
If you are bothered by his passing then fine, I'm sorry for your loss. But maybe trying to pick fights on HN is not the most productive way to grieve.
Calm down, dear.
Also, it's interesting that it's you that is casting personal aspersions...
I'm fairly sure many people of more actual worth die every day with no one here giving a shit. The monarchy is a relic that really should be dismantled.
There is no such thing as a 'self made' millionaire or billionaire. They just got lucky and most of the time somebody helped them.
I have always felt strongly against monarchy. Especially against the British royal family, more so as I am an Indian. They never apologized for any of the massacres (Jallianwala is just one example) or pogroms committed at their behest and in their name. I do believe they are a disgusting symbol of colonialism, racism, subjugation. It is very disturbing that a good part of the world and an entire nation validates them, bows to them officially.
But again, he was a fellow human being after all - I hope he finds peace if at all there's something after this and I hope he was at peace and content towards the end.