The right of succession still affects us

Elizabeth II at ninety represents succession in a constitutional monarchy ( though see my entry on the Republic of the Untied Kingdom) but we have lost the sense that ancestry provides a validation of a succession to power. That sense existed for centuries. To take a very clear example, the throne of Poland was for a time subject to election ( though of course from a small list of candidates ). One such King sent an embassy to Elizabeth I with a message which the Queen did not like at all, and in a powerful retort she argued that the Polish King, being merely elected, lacked the authority of birth

It may be thought that we have left all that behind, but there are examples of how the accidents of birth in ruling monarchies in the past still have very large effects today

Katherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII had several sons . But they  died almost at once. Had one lived Henry would not have wanted to divorce Katherine in order to have a son, and would not have had to break with Rome in order to achieve that divorce ( marriage declared invalid 1533). He might of course have  been tempted by the riches of the Church which after the break with Rome he seized and gave to his favourites ( as indeed did several of the German princes who followed Luther ). But maybe not.. After all, Henry had written a refutation of Luther's position which led the Pope to award Henry the title "Defender of the Faith" , still held by our monarchs. And, in particular, we should never have heard of Elizabeth I and never have seen the establishment of her amazing compromise between catholic ceremony and protestant theology which remains the Church of England to this day

Frederick the Great of Prussia ( see also my entry) was born in 1712 as the third son of his father King Frederick William. Had one of his two elder brothers not died before he was born,  Frederic would not have become king  And although no doubt providing his brother with excellent generalship, without Frederic  in charge Prussia under a more ordinary man might well not have proceeded  to seize Silesia from the Habsburgs and establish Prussia as a great power. This would have happened in due course anyway,  but the tempo of history would have been different, with large consequences for the interplay of countries and events, such as the timing and structure of a united Germany

And, as a final example, the most dramatic of all, the Emperor Frederick III of Germany came to power  in 1888, but died that year, the same year as his father, of cancer of the throat. He was married to Queen Victoria's daughter ( also Victoria)  and had views far more liberal than those of his son who in the same year inherited as William II ( the Kaiser). How far the German constitution would have been changed under Frederick for the democratic  better is a matter for speculation, as these constitutional matters have their own momentum, but the cards would have been played in a different order.  And in addition, one thing Frederick was highly unlikely to have done was to build a fleet against England, which his son did, making sure that in any war England would be against Germany, and winding up the European tension. These developments would have ensured that the tempo of European history would have been different at the beginning of the 20th century from the tempo actually experienced.. With a different tempo there could well have been a war, as national rivalries were very strong,  but with a different timing the  unusual sequences of events that enabled Lenin  to seize power in Russia, and Hitler in Germany, could hardly .have occurred.  No doubt other tragedies would have been seen, but  two most terrible and evil men would not have found their moments

Royal Opera Night - Coronation 1953

This reception at the Royal Opera House preceded  the first performance of  the opera Gloriana by Benjamin Britten, as part of the events surrounding the Coronation  of Elizabeth II.  This draws attention to certain features of  interest.

One can gather from the atmosphere portrayed that there  was still an assumption and an acceptance of the United  Kingdom as a great power, or anyway a great player in  the world. It was true that India and several other   countries had achieved independence by 1953, but the  first African colony left the Empire only in the late 1950s, and it was around the same future date that  Germany    was to overtake the UK in economic terms. The feel  of the event in this film is remarkable as reflecting this  atmosphere

Nevertheless, the choice of this opera was a significant and indeed a foolish mistake, as was reflected in the reaction at the time. This has nothing to do with the quality of the opera as a work of art. After many years it can stand on its own quality. That the music was not easy  for some to penetrate at the time was a contributory factor but one which would have been less important if the subject matter had been appropriate

Britain had by 1953 suffered decades of hardship and misery. First the years before the Second World War had seen  a tremendous economic crisis following the 1929 Wall Street crash, Then there was the war with all its death and destruction. We were victorious, but the aftermath of the war scarcely gave us any reward as our position in the world - despite the points above - declined sharply, economically and imperially

But then a new queen came to the throne, and the economic position saw something of an improvement.. A new Elizabethan age seemed to dawn and we could look forward to better days. An opera looking back to the reign of Elizabeth I would provide exactly the right subject, covering as it did a threat from a great military power, Spain and the Armada then, Adolf Hitler and the Blitz now........and in both cases an emergence into victory and peace. 

But Britten showed the first Elizabeth in her last days, surrounded by difficulties and facing death. How completely inappropriate and badly judged - just what was NOT needed and in no way reflecting the national mood.One can faintly understand Britten writing thus, in view of his pacifism and therefore his presumed dislike of triumphalism, though it showed a very cramped judgement.  But the fault rested with those who approved, indeed planned,this opera..Lord Harewood was a prime mover and in Kobbe he defends it on musical grounds, but also by belittling the views of "grandees and courtiers".  Others have claimed that in looking forward to more problematic days Britten was more realistic than the audience. In one sense perhaps so, but not in the sense of what was required at the time, especially as a directly relevant subject was clearly available in the defeat of the Armada

Clement Attlee, Prime Minister

Margaret Thatcher said of Attlee that he was all substance and no show, and certainly his calm and detached personality, together with his firm determination, marks him out as a man very suited to be Prime Minister. And he had a talented cabinet.  It is a pity that one has to add that the policies of his government, from 1945 to 1951, were disastrous, establishing the post war consensus that dramatically accelerated the country's decline and led to something close to bankruptcy in the 1970s.

This is not usually a recognised conclusion, as a result, I suppose, of the general tendency to see aims as important rather that the consequences of  government policies. Attlee and his colleagues set out to look after the classes that had been so poor and so unpowerful, but the result of their actions was to hit those sections of society as much as others.

Most frequently the National Health Service is mentioned, but this argument is upset by the fact that a  "Comprehensive National Health Service" was in the Conservative Manifesto in 1945 so would have happened anyway. It was an idea whose time had come. Let us rather look at the main elements of Labour's economic policies in those years, rigorously enforced and disastrous in their consequences

Labour nationalised a whole raft of industries, creating national monopolies which had all the faults of any monopolies.But that was not the worst consequence. These were old industries,  - coal, steel,.  etc - due for decline or needing rationalisation.  Nationalisation kept them going for years when they should have faded or changed -   indeed one could with little exaggeration say that the true beneficiaries of the nationalisation of say coal were the coal owners, who would otherwise have had to bear the burden of the decline.....and anyway the decline would then have taken place over years, with far less pain than their eventual sharp demise,  And in those years they sucked in subsidy after subsidy, using funds better spent elsewhere and employing people better employed elsewhere. The whole system made worse by the pressure from the trade unions to resist change.

Indeed the power of the trade unions was a bane of many governments for many years after the war  ("Get your tanks off my lawn" said Harold Wilson), not only for the influences just mentioned but also in that there was a significant Marxist element in their thinking, leading to a distrust of the market economy which was soon to flourish in Germany. These people illogically  wanted growth and economic success but didn't like profits.

In addition, taxes were sharply raised. It was perhaps not surprising that in an attempt to raise the standard of living of the working class the socialists of that time ( and regrettably of today) saw that raising money from the rich  to pay for better conditions for the poor was justified. But these things are not a zero sum game - by encouraging initiative and investment one raises more wealth for social spending. Tax at 83% on earned income and 98% on "unearned " income led to a denial of  entrepreneurial investment and a clamp on growth.  One feels also that social justice, as perceived by  socialists, was the central aim.......even though the people they were trying to help would have been better off with taxes at half those levels.


And what about Beveridge? He wrote "The State in organising security should not stifle incentive, opportunity, responsibility........The insured persons should not feel that income for idleness, however caused, can come from a bottomless purse"  And much more of the same. No doubt these limitations on welfare were rather unrealistic, but they were anyway ignored by the Labour government which vastly increased spending in these social directions without taking care not to overspend,  whilst at the same time curbing the growth of the economy.

All in all a disaster.  It took Margaret Thatcher to rectify the situation and so engrained were the faults that her policies had to be tough, so that she became vastly unpopular as a result. Tony Blair got the message ( she regarded his conversion as her greatest achievement), and it is a second reason for regretting the Iraq war that his reputation also in economics was clouded, with the result that socialist ideas have revived today in the stupidities of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party