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Alan Morrison introduces his republican poetry collection published by Culture Matters in time for the Coronation.<\/em><\/p>\n [Note: This article was originally published on 5 May 2023].<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the poems towards the end of Wolves Come Grovelling<\/em><\/strong>, \u2018Grasp the Nettle\u2019, attempts to do as its title suggests by grappling with the thorny issue of monarchy and democracy, subjecthood and citizenship, reminding us that England was once, albeit briefly (1650-1660), a republic without a king but instead a Commoner, Oliver Cromwell, as Lord Protector.<\/p>\n That decade in the middle of the 17th<\/sup> century seems to have been airbrushed out from our royalty-dominated history. But republicanism has remained, among a significant minority, as an enduring dream of generations who have dared to imagine a true democratic society with no hereditary head of state and whose sovereignty is properly represented by Parliament, and implicitly in the People.<\/p>\n \u2018Grasp the Nettle\u2019 picks up on the mystical symbolisms currently being reasserted in the ritual, choreography and rhetoric surrounding the Coronation of Charles Windsor, some of which disturbingly echoes the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, once fatefully invoked by Charles Stuart and which in part triggered the English Civil War, or what Marxist historians term the English Revolution (which led inexorably to the trial and execution of that monarch):<\/p>\n Charles Stuart invoked Divine Right of Kings For his Coronation: a consecration We must perhaps pinch ourselves to remember that this is 2023, and not 16<\/em>23 (or thereabouts: Charles I was coronated in 1625). The monarchic institution should demonstrate a little humility in the 21st<\/sup> century but instead seems to be doubling down on its hubris.<\/p>\n Days before the Coronation, many of us across the country have been flabbergasted at a royal request that we join in unison with a \u2018Homage of the People\u2019: a pledging of allegiance to the new monarch and his heirs and successors to be said out loud, or chorused (almost like a royalist travestying of the clapping and pot-banging we were encouraged to participate in during the early days of the pandemic). This has never been done before, and certainly should not be done now\u2014such a crypto-feudal \u2018request\u2019 is utterly anachronistic, anti-democratic, and insulting to all of us.<\/p>\n It seems even before Charles is crowned king, his evident take on kingship seems about as privileged, entitled and absolute as is possible in a so-called \u2018parliamentary monarchy\u2019 (though with all its royalist sycophancy most of Parliament might well be perfectly happy with it), rather than the emphasis\u2014as was constantly assured us during the long reign of his late mother\u2014being on \u2018public service\u2019. For surely, in the spirit of \u2018public service\u2019, Charles should have instead invoked a \u2018Homage to<\/em> the People\u2019: his swearing of allegiance to his \u2018subjects\u2019 who after all subsidise his supreme privilege (through the obscenely inflated Sovereign Grant) and are, absurdly, paying for his Coronation, through our taxes.<\/p>\n All this combined with last-minute missives sent to anti-monarchist groups to warn of severe prison sentences should any public protests\u2014such as Republic\u2019s planned \u2018Not My King\u2019 demonstration by the statue of Charles I\u2014be seen to disrupt the pomp and ceremony of the Coronation and its Union Jack-draped pageantry.<\/p>\n It seems then that the mask of monarchy is slipping rapidly in spite of Charles Windsor having previously been anticipated as a more modernising and progressive sovereign. But is ever more deference and subservience for a hereditarily entitled, unelected head of state really a tenable settlement even for backward-looking post-Brexit Britain?<\/p>\n Wolves Come Grovelling<\/em><\/strong>, then, is my republican response in poetry to the Coronation. The collection also contains poems on other subjects, such as Brexit, the proroguing of Parliament, the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and other vicissitudes of recent years. But the overarching theme is one of republican resilience and defiance at the start of our second Carolean Age.<\/p>\n The Wolves of the title are the wolves of poverty as paraphrased from a speech by David Lloyd George made in 1909 at the triumph of his hugely progressive People\u2019s Budget:<\/p>\n ‘I cannot help hoping and believing that before this generation has passed away, we shall have advanced a great step towards that good time, when poverty\u2026 will be as remote to the people of this country as the wolves which once infested its forests.’<\/span><\/p>\n The Grovelling we Wolves are expected to do is, well, demonstrably, symbolised in that very \u2018Homage\u2019 of blind allegiance that we have been \u2018requested\u2019 to observe, and which makes my title poem something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, since I composed it last year during the Jubilee when it appeared in the Morning Star<\/em>, before any of us were expecting to hear the title \u2018Charles III\u2019. I have since updated it:<\/p>\n Out of the forests of towns & hovelling, Forget soaring bills & the cost of living His crowned head, minted on our pound sterling Grab the bank holiday, string out the bunting, It\u2019s all just so much Cat-Rat-&-Lovelling Mark the Coronation by volunteering \u00a0<\/p>\n
To his detriment, & lost his kingdom\u2014
Charles Windsor summons this shadow doctrine
Of anointment by God, or its symbolism:<\/p>\n
With chrism oil made from olives pressed in
Jerusalem spiced with neroli, rose, jasmine,
Orange blossom, amber & benzoin.<\/span><\/p>\n
Wolves Come Grovelling (Again)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n
Wolves of poverty, howl out in worship,
Bow to your Wolf-king, wolves come grovelling.<\/p>\n
For one weekend, spaff on wolf-fellowship,
Out of the forests of towns & hovelling.<\/span><\/p>\n
& postage stamps, shadows our hardship\u2014
Bow to your Wolf-king, wolves come grovelling.<\/span><\/p>\n
You\u2019re Subjects of strung-along citizenship\u2014
Out of the forests of towns & hovelling;<\/span><\/p>\n
Of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha & kingship\u2014
Bow to your Wolf-king, wolves come grovelling.<\/span><\/p>\n
Community penance\/unpaid stewardship\u2014
Out of the forests of towns & hovelling,
Bow to your Wolf-king, wolves come grovelling.<\/span><\/p>\n