In a particularly unpleasant demonstration of the British difficulty with democracy the Daily Mail newspaper has identified republican beliefs as evidence of hatred of Britain.
An article by Geoffrey Levy, seemingly intended to undermine Labour Party leader Ed Miliband by attacking his father Ralph, accused the senior Miliband of hating Britain. It cited his “hatred” of the monarchy and the Church of England as evidence of this.
It is not new for monarchists to put forward support for hereditary privilege in state affairs as a requirement of true Britishness. In it’s most vicious form it is expressed through the requirement that legislators, judges and military officers swear or affirm their loyalty to the Windsor clan. But this anti-democratic bias is not often expressed so virulently.
Much the same is true when it comes to the Church of England. Ralph Miliband was Jewish, but even if he had been a Methodist, Catholic or atheist no intelligent patriotism would require that he admire a state church, with its anti-democratic privileges and often disreputable history.
Another of Levy’s charges against Miliband was that he hated Britain’s independent school system. Opinions may differ on whether or not such hostility to what the writer perversely referred to as “public schools” was justified or not. But it seems significant that it should be suggested that such schools, which have had a close association with class privilege, are so ingrained in Britishness that patriotism requires support for them. This could be taken as suggesting they have a place in the country’s power structure that gives weight to the suspicions about them.
Britons who believe that the thoroughly democratic institutions required by republican values would serve their country better than the remains of feudalism that scar the constitutional landscape are not likely to accuse their opponents of lacking patriotism. But conservatives who slander as disloyal, so as to put beyond the pale, those who oppose Britain’s feudal leftovers, put in doubt any claim they might have to be democrats.