HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II

Your Majesty,

1. You must surely agree that, by birth and upbringing, by the surroundings in which you live and the company you keep, you cannot possibly understand the feelings and the way of life of the millions of ordinary people it is claimed you keep united in one big happy family. It is a claim you have never contradicted, but in your heart of hearts, deep inside yourself, you know how absurd it is.

2. You are known to be among the wealthiest women, if not the wealthiest woman, in the world. It is not wealth that has been created by any business acumen of your own, or even of your financial advisers (though they have helped). It is wealth that has been built up by invaluable, fabulous and unique tax concessions granted by Parliament, and never refused by you. You do not even pay taxes on the profits of your private estates at Sandringham and Balmoral. Whatever many of your people believe, you pay no income tax. You receive a refund of any taxes deducted from dividends on investments. You pay no capital gains tax. You pay no death duty. What do you do with it all?

3. Large numbers of those known as 'your people' share the views I hold - many more than you are led to believe. They regard the institution of Monarchy as an instrument used to make respectable to the unthinking and the irrational a social and economic class system which is unfair, divisive and often cruel.

4. There are still a few people around who think that the divine right of kings lingers, that you still retain some real political power. But whatever else you have - it is not political power. The so-called royal prerogatives, the 'right' to appoint your own Prime Minister, the 'right' to dissolve Parliament, are now no more than ritual play-acting.

5. Meanwhile, you are to be seen at your radiant best at annual high-society horsey events, and, quite frankly, at your most uncomfortable among factory workers, or even children.

6. I suspect you to be the willing victim of circumstance, that you are suffocated by hoards of sinecured hangers-on. We may not know what any of these are paid or what they do. Questions about their salaries are courteously turned aside. Almost all members of the Royal Households are titled nonentities, drawn, it seems automatically, from one narrow section of the community.

7. But then your daily round, your common task, furnishes you and yours with even more than you need to ask. Your sense of financial security and well-being is a dream yearned after by millions of your people. They cannot understand why you and your family should be so privileged and they so deprived. They look to you for genuine moral leadership, but do not hear from you or your husband one

l 'unequivocal word on the evils of racial prejudice when two million of your subjects in Britain alone are coloured. You encourage cruel blood sports, yet remain President of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

8. Many long to hear from you one occasional speech that contains not just colourless, negative cliches, but a forthright and passionate sincerity, a personal conviction.

I remain,

Your wayward subject,

W.W.HAMILTON

THE MONARCHY

Test

Information check

I. Give definitions for the following:

a) consort

regent

peer

Governor General

figurehead

b) the Privy Council

the Civil List

the "Way Ahead" committee

the Privy Purse

the Commonwealth

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 842