Diamond jubilee? I won’t be dancing in the street

To the East Anglian Daily Times, 5th January 2010 (published 07/01/2010):

Dear Sir,

So Peter Mandelson wants us all to show our “pride and affection” for The Queen in 2012 with a public holiday. Well pardon me if I don’t join you all dancing in the streets. I find nothing to be proud of, or affectionate towards, in the House of Windsor. For me the monarchy represents deference, hereditary privilege and covert political influence.

The principle of an hereditary monarchy harks back to a time when everyone was expected to know their place and accepted their lot in life. But that is no longer a picture of civil life that most of us want to see in Britain.

Instead of allowing this celebrity family to have such a stranglehold on the nation’s mindset we should be looking to create a modern democracy fit for the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.

I want to be able to elect a head of state that can represent Britain as a modern, forward-looking society in which a person’s skills and experience are valued more highly than blood lines and breeding. No nation that claims to value democracy should also value a national institution based on elitism and social exclusion.

If we all want another day off there are any number of occasions worthy of celebration or commemoration. The continuation of a medieval anachronism isn’t one of them. But a British nation in which in which we, the people, own, control and take responsibility for our political destiny : now that would really be something worth celebrating.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Steve Smedley

Blaxhall, Woodbridge

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