DEATH OF THE ENGLISH QUEEN AND JOHN DONNE by Bill lee

Last Thursday, like everyone in the world it seems, I read, saw and heard that the Queen of England had died. Since then, every news outlet of every type, as well as social media, has been jam packed full of stories about the Queen and of how almost all people are mourning the loss. While the general reaction has been sadness and there has been a huge outpouring of sympathy for the “Royal Family”, there have been alternative reactions. One, which I understand, is the position that the British Monarchy has a long history of Imperial and colonial crimes. In the spirit of the well known “full Disclosure”, personally, I come at my view of the British Monarchy, in part, from my Irish heritage, with various ancestors fleeing the country because of resistance to the British colonizers and the poverty, in great part caused by the British land holders who squeezed their Irish tenants and did everything they could to exterminate Irish culture and identity. The last of my ancestors to flee to Canada was a great grandmother who, as a girl of 15, survived a crossing on one of the dreaded “coffin ships” at the height of the Famine’s or the Great Hunger, in Black 47.

There are however two other aspects of my condemnation of the British Monarchy. First, the modern Monarchy is essentially part of the capitalist system of domination of the working class by the monied classes. A Facebook post by man named John Riemman reflects my views here.

I watched a little bit of CNN's coverage of the crowds streaming in to pay homage to Queen Elizabeth, who just died. They did brief interviews with some of them. They were all talking about how sad they were that she had died. Sure, the US capitalist news pumps up the British royalty, but why? Just like the ruling class anywhere in the world, the British capitalists need certain cultural traditions to legitimize their rule. It's a very visible reminder that ‘thou shall not rule by force of arms alone.

There is another related but more historical view. James Connolly, the martyred Irish revolutionary: “We confess to having more respect and honour for the raggedest child of the poorest labourer in Ireland today than for any, even the most virtuous, descendant of the long array of murderers, adulterers and madmen who have sat upon the throne of England.” I’ve been hearing, from some of my friends in the Indigenous community, echoes of this deeply held view. They, legitimately, see the British Crown as an institution which underwrote or sanctioned or legitimated the colonial oppressions and genocides that were visited upon their ancestors and experienced by them, in Canada. We all have heard, or read, similar anger from many of those living in (or from) Africa to South Asia to the Caribbean. At the same time, it would be unfortunate to allow a reasonable condemnation of the Crown, as the “official” head of government, to deflect from the fact that it was the Canadian government which was the effective author and funder of the theft of Indigenous land (Daschuck, 2013) and the horror of the residential school system (CBC News, 2021)1.

I suspect that for many, maybe most, of those who raise their voices against the monarchy (though obviously not all) that it doesn’t involve any particular personal animosity to this specific monarch, though that is not the same as feeling any particular sense of loss.

I confess that I take a somewhat different feeling, neither gladness at the death of a “monster” as I’ve read here and there or any particular feeling of loss when I hear of the death of any personage who really has no relevance to my life as a Canadian. The Queen is, after all, a figurehead, a representative of an outmoded institution that, these days, only has power as a legal fiction.

I don’t possess much notion, if any, of the nature of the “hereafter”, or whether there is an actual hereafter. From my experience however, I have come to believe that every human person has a significant and compelling sense of their life as real, and that life has true meaning and value. Not only however, do our lives have importance and meaning to us, but as social beings they have meaning and value to others. For what it’s worth, I’m a firm believer in Donne’s wise and compelling observation that, “any [person’s] death diminishes me, because I am involved in [humankind].”2 On the other hand, the Brits who care about the institution of the Crown that Elizabeth II represented, may spend time mourning this passing. It is their institution after all, and their Queen. For me, as a Canadian, I only hope the legal fiction of it being a meaningful Canadian institution disappears in our country ASAP. It will please me no end. But as to the death of Elizabeth II, I simply observe the event as one more loss of a fellow human being, like any other, and will note, not celebrate it. RIP.

Resources:
CBC News. (2021). “Your questions answered about Canada's residential school system”. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-residential-schools-kamloops-faq-1.6051632. July 1.
Daschuck, J. (2013). CLEARING THE PLAINS. DISEASE, POLITICS OF STARVATION, AND THE LOSS OF INDIGENOUS LIFE. University of Regina Press.

1 I have to admit that this point is somewhat undercut by the fact that while both the Government of Canada and the Papacy have at least delivered apologies to Indigenous people for the genocidal actions with which they have been so deeply involved, the British Crown, including the late Queen, has remained silent. 2 Here is Donnes’s beautiful poem in full. It is well worth reading: No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.