Last weekend I changed my plans to go for a walk outside London and instead headed to Buckingham Palace to observe the mourning and tributes to the recently deceased Queen Elizabeth II (1926 to 2022).

I came out of Charing Cross tube and walked across Trafalgar Square and along the Mall only to find the area around St James’s Palace fenced off and filled with a crowd liberally sprinkled with what looked like mostly foreign TV presenters talking earnestly into cameras on tripods. According to a security guard I got chatting to, the crowd was there because there were rumours that a car might or might not enter or exit St James’s Palace and might or might not contain a Royal of some degree. Last Saturday we knew Charles and Camilla were at Balmoral so it was puzzling that a crowd of two or 300 had gathered on such a remote offchance.

There may well be a madness of crowds (I think of Ian Gilmour’s enjoyable book, ‘Riots, Rising And Revolution: Governance and Violence in Eighteenth Century England’, and all the decisive journées of the French Revolution). But the hysterical outbreaks of mob violence maybe have a kind of milder cousin – the curiosity of crowds. A couple of people stop to look at something happening in a shop window. A few more join in to see what they’re looking at. A crowd gathers. People on the edge of the crowd have no idea what they’re doing, but it’s something to do / something must be going on / they were curious to see what was happening.

People at the floral tributes to the Queen in Green Park, London

Anyway, the short cut through to the Mall was closed so I was forced to walk up St James’s Street to Piccadilly and then along the frontage of the Ritz to the tube station entrance to Green Park. There was a big crowd and entrance and exit to the tube barriers were separated by a crash barrier. I asked the security guy nicely and he let me slip through and 30 seconds later I was amid the crowds walking up from the tube station into Green Park.

It wasn’t football crowd density but it was very packed. I noticed the number of people carrying bouquets, hundreds of people. Almost immediately I heard one of many crowd stewards yelling through a megaphone that both the Mall and Constitution Hill were fenced off with crash barriers and so inaccessible. I went up to speak to her. I like chatting to officials. I was friendly and sympathetic but she didn’t need much provocation let out a string of complaints about the crowds who were all heading gently downhill through the park bearing their bouquets intending to put them against the railings of Buckingham Palace as per tributes to Princess Diana (1997) and the Queen Mother (2002). Then they discovered the Mall was completely locked off by crash barriers, turned around and began drifting back up the hill, bumping into the continuing crowds heading down, creating an entertaining mix of confusion.

A fallen tree festooned with floral tributes to Queen Elizabeth

The steward was trying to tell everyone there was no way through to the Palace to lay tributes against the fence and to direct everyone with flowers towards a special Floral Tribute Area half way down the gently grassy slope. So I headed in that direction and discovered quite a long queue because the Tribute Area, also, had (relatively simple) crash barriers around it, enclosing an area smaller than a football pitch and roughly almond shape. People were waiting patiently in line bearing their bouquets, mainly families with young children or older couples. Not many teenagers, some Asians, amid the crowds I saw one young black woman.

A hand-written acrostic tribute to the Queen

Once inside what immediately became clear was the utterly amateur nature of nearly all the tributes. People had written them themselves in a wide variety of styles, some with stylish scripts, some on banner shaped long placards, but more on humble sheets of A4 paper. A huge number were obviously from children, most as individuals but some obviously organised by teachers and signed off as coming from class so and so at such and such primary school. Looked like many infant and junior school teachers had incorporated the activity into the curriculum.

Thank you note to the Queen

It wasn’t the flowers, it was the sincerity of so many of these hand-written tributes which, after a while, began to move me. It was the feeling of a huge love, a nationwide feeling of love and emotion uniting so many people, so many millions of strangers from all round the country brought together by strong emotion, sorrow and respect.

Row of floral tributes to the Queen

Many of the flowers had been arranged in long narrow rows or banks and the sheer volume of bouquets, notes and gifts laid out like this was very moving. But I was struck by the way some people had also been festooning trees, laying bouquets against their trunks and attaching notes to their branches.

This struck me as unusual, not in the English tradition. The accidental presence of a Japanese woman in this photo made me wonder what countries it comes from. Is it English? I don’t know enough to decide, but I love trees, we need trees so there was a kind of respect for nature or involving nature in the mourning process which I liked. And also the idea of the tributes hanging in the air, easier to read but somehow closer to the sky, more airborne. Lots of ideas and images and symbols.

A tree in Green Park decorated at the roots with bouquets with numerous written tributes attached to branches

Written tributes everywhere but also…a surprising number of cuddly toys. There were two types: Corgi dolls and Paddington dolls; when I say dolls I mean more like bears, the kind of toy bears my children had when they were small, fake fur and cuddly.

Toy corgi among tributes to the Queen

In an as yet relatively untouched area of grass I came across a bloke and his family creating an installation. They’d already used stems from bouquets to spell out ER with some ribbons between the letters to make a heart shape. Now the bloke and his 2 junior school kids were gathering brown leaves to make a frame, to turn it into a picture or a 3D card. A bit overwhelmed by the atmosphere of love and friendliness and openness, I went up and asked him if I could help. ‘Join in, mate,’ he said, so I spent the next few minutes grabbing handfuls of brown fallen leaves off the grass and adding them to the frame.

Ad hoc tribute made of leaves

While I was helping, a small crowd gathered and the bloke addressed them suggesting they write a big THANK YOU with leaves. I didn’t want to get too involved, I knew I’d start to take it over and direct things; I very much wanted to only make a fleeting contribution and move on, leaving space for others.

But it set me thinking about all the installation art I’ve seen in the last 40 years, much of it accompanied by high minded statements from the artist or the curators talking about installing art in places where it can be enjoyed by ‘the people’ or about removing the barrier between art and ‘the people’, and so on. Well, here was a bloke and his family spontaneously creating something lovely, full of love and respect, and just one of thousands writing messages, doing drawings, hanging notes in trees, arranging their bouquets just so. I’m not saying it was ‘art’, as such, but it felt like it came from the same urge to create and beautify and say something, that art comes from.

Monarchy and republicanism

I’m not that interested in the arguments for or against the monarchy. When I went to university I discovered that 100% of the really vehement republicans I met had been to public school and that put me off republicanism in the same way that a lot of public school socialists put me off the Labour Party. It doesn’t strike me as being a ‘national debate’ but a squabble among the ruling class, between Rupert who attended Eton and the Guards, and his wildcat sister Polly who became a webel at university.

At university many a public school liberal told me how we will only get equality in this country when we abolish the monarchy because it stands at the apex of the entire system of privilege, power and money. Sometimes I’d reply that it would be easier to scrap public schools and thus hamper the perpetuation of an elite of boys and girls who have been bought privileged life chances and, very often, entrées to positions of power, by their parents’ and grandparents’ money.

But the reality is that neither of these things will happen. No political party seriously intends to abolish private schools which are, in my opinion, the single most important means by which the ruling class of Britain not only preserves itself, but is flexible enough to incorporate a steady flow of new money and new talent into its ranks. If you can afford it, you’re in (to the schools, and then to the ruling elite across numerous industries and institutions).

But back to the monarchy, and opinion polls suggest support for abolishing the monarchy and creating a republic fluctuates between 15% and 25% of the adult population. Call it 20%. Therefore any political party which puts republicanism in its manifesto automatically alienates 70 to 80% of the electorate, which is why even Jeremy Corbyn, the most ‘radical’ leader of the Labour party in a generation, realised it was not a battle worth fighting. If he wouldn’t take it on, no politician will take it on.

The argument that the monarchy stands at the apex of the system of privilege and inequality which holds Britain back, prevents the UK from fully modernising, has a number of counter-arguments:

1. America is a republic, has been since its inception. Would you say America is a paragon of fairness and equality? No. It appears to become more unequal and fractured with every year. How about republican France, dominated by a technocratic elite? Or Italy, just welcoming a semi-fascistic party into power. Or Russia? Simply being a republic doesn’t guarantee fairness and equality, far from it. Lots of other political and social elements are needed, too.

2. If we get rid of a monarchy we would almost certainly create a head of state, usually a president, to replace it. You only have to say the name Donald Trump to realise that having a president, elected by universal suffrage, does not solve your problem. If we did create a republic and have an elected head of state, what’s the betting the first one would be Boris Johnson who, despite all his lies, corruption and incompetence, remains surprisingly popular? You only have to consider the existence of President trump and President Putin or the possibility of President Johnson, to realise that straight constitutional swap for republicanism might be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

3. Conversely, it is proveable that nominally monarchical states can demonstrate a high degree of fairness, equality and progressive values. Left Liberals generally praise the equality and liberal values of the Scandinavian societies, Denmark, Sweden and Norway – yet all three are monarchies.

In other words, being a monarchy doesn’t prevent the development of a liberal egalitarian society (Scandinavia) while overthrowing a monarchy and instituting a republic does not guarantee equality and fairness (America, France).

There’s the economic argument: republicans argue that the monarchy costs the country a fortune, that the monarch owns a grotesque amount of land and assets which could be redistributed to help the poor, and so on. Monarchists tend to emphasise the earnings the monarchy brings in through tourism and the export of prestige brands with the royal seal of approval etc around the world.

There’s a politico-psychological argument: republicans argue that the existence of monarchy keeps Britain in arrested development and infantilises citizens who compete for a shake of the royal hand or the soft feel of the sword on their shoulder as they’re knighted. Conversely, monarchists point to the enormous achievements of schemes set up and sponsored by the Royals, including the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme and the Princes Trust, which have done more than any government ‘Back to Work’ scheme to help the poor, the working class, the young. Republicans may concede their effectiveness but say the same kind of thing could perfectly well be run by an elected government, but could it? The actual governments we’ve had in recent times, the governments of Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss?

Monarch or no monarch, Britain would still be lumbered with the blinkered, ideologically driven, heartless and incompetent politicians we always seem to end up with.

Rebalancing the British economy

In any case, the real economic and social problems facing this country eclipse squabbling about the head of state. I am strongly influenced by Correlli Barnett’s two histories of wartime and post-war Britain:

• The Audit of War by Correlli Barnett (1986)
• The Lost Victory: British Dreams and British Realities 1945-50 by Correlli Barnett (1995)

These analyse the deep structural issue in the British economy, namely that we built towns and cities around the industries of the industrial revolution which have now disappeared. Towns and cities built around coal mining, shipbuilding, steel or car manufacturing, have all lost their raison d’etres. If you add in the fishing ports all up the east coast of England you arrive at a list of the Red Wall constituencies which have suffered terrible decline over the past 50 years, where high unemployment sits alongside poor educational achievement.

At the moment the British economy is underpinned by the cash cow of the City of London, engaged in money laundering for the Russian mafia, casino gambling on products it barely understands (see the 2008 financial crash), a nexus for the international insurance industry. All this is a result of the historical ‘accident’ of Britain building a worldwide empire and adapting more flexible and innovative financial systems than its rivals (France or Holland). However this is a fading asset. Brexit is just the latest blow which will encourage some of these financial services to relocate away from London.

So my belief is that the real challenge facing the country is to do with rebalancing the economy in such a way as to bring worthwhile jobs to those northern and eastern towns and cities, to create new industries which provide employment and give a sense of worth and dignity in people’s lives. Maybe some of this would come in the form of a renewables industry, green industries, with factories creating wind turbines, solar panels, home insulation products, carefully located in those towns. Maybe a focus on computer skills required in the 21st century digital economy by setting up centres of digital education, training and excellence in the north.

I’m no expert but it’s clear that what the country needs is an intelligent long-term plan to transform the lives and futures of its people. At the moment we have a government which combines fine talk of levelling up with no actual, tangible plans for how to achieve it, while on the ground most people are experiencing a series of crises which seem to make life relentlessly harder and harder, with the prospect ahead that things are only going to get worse, a lot worse.

You can see why people, ordinary people, living out there in Hartlepool and Ipswich and Devizes, far from the highfalutin’ intellectual arguments of the London commentariat, really need something to believe in. You can see how the Queen, quietly going about her duties with unhesitating commitment and optimism, gave many people an often forgotten, but always present, underpinning of continuity and hope, confidence that things would be alright if she was there.

Her death represents or symbolises many things, to many people, as I saw in Green Park. But for some I think it’s one more nail driven into the coffin, one more element contributing to a sense of national decline and the collapse of old certainties.

Likely prognosis

In reality, nothing will change because nothing in this country ever does. At least that’s how it often feels. Republicans hope that Charles will so miserably fail to fill his mother’s shoes that their cause will gain strength. It’s possible, but I doubt it. To even begin to get the republican ball rolling you’d have to persuade the crowds I saw in Green Park and all the adults and children who have written tributes to the Queen that they are wrong, that it is emotionally immature and politically backward to care so much for a monarch. That doesn’t seem very likely.

British Republicans can make all the logical arguments they like – but you can’t disprove love, the love I saw pouring over Green Park, and that’s what they’d have to do.

Punk queen

After a surprisingly emotional morning, I walked to the west end of Green Park and then undertook the long polluted trek along Grosvenor Place, at the rear of Buckingham Palace, down towards Victoria. South of Buckingham Palace is a warren of streets, many of them with large imposing modern buildings, many of them housing government departments. I used to work in one, the Department for International Development which the Conservatives, as they always do, have now merged with the Foreign Office. Like all big modern buildings these have service bays, scrappy concrete yards where lorries can deliver essential goods.

In a concrete cul-de-sac formed by steps up from such a bay (you can see cabling coming out of the wall at the bottom left of this photo, and general litter on the floor) someone had gone to a lot of trouble to create the following massive spray-painting-cum-collage of the Queen.

This too is a tribute, a backhanded testament to the extraordinary achievement of Queen Elizabeth, the solid, reliable, good humoured, long serving, loyal, loving and patriotic backdrop to the lives of everyone who’s lived in this country for the past 70 years. Even our rebellion was coloured by her.

Collage graffiti on a concrete wall near Buckingham Palace