A N Wilson: This baby heralds a new direction for our monarchy

The proposals to loosen the laws of succession show that our royal family is capable of changing to suit the times
Alex Lentati
23 July 2013
WEST END FINAL

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Hoorah! Hoorah! Our prince has come! The double hoorah is for the birth of the baby, and for the fast-tracking of the Succession to the Crown Act, which abolishes the absurd proviso forbidding future monarchs to marry Catholics, and which abolishes the precedence of male over female heirs.

This makes no difference in the immediate future, since Prince William, if he succeeds to the throne, will now be succeeded by his first-born — but only because this happens to be a son.

Anyone normal rejoices at the birth of a baby, which is why the symbolism of Christmas, even for non-believers, brings a tear to the eye, and “Unto us a child is born” is the most cheerful of all the choruses in Handel’s Messiah. One of the Queen’s cousins was quoted recently as saying that “everyone has babies” — with the implication that we should not be making too much fuss. But this is to ignore a fundamental fact about England, Wales and Scotland: that they have been organised, time out of mind, on a hereditary principle.

In Ireland it was always rather different. When the Tudor monarchs began dishing out earldoms to some of the Irish, it was clear to the English that the next person to succeed the father should be the eldest son. So when Conn O’Neill became Earl of Tyrone, it was obvious, thought the English, that the next Earl of Tyrone should be Matthew, his eldest son. But the Irish thought the head of a sept should be elected, and they chose his youngest son, Shane, because he was the best man for the job. The Elizabethan wars in Ireland were nearly all fought not, as we might guess, about religion but about the principle of inheritance law.

The Irish idea of choosing the best person for any particular job has taken a long time to be assimilated by the Welsh, the Scots or the English. Look around you. Until small businesses were ruined by supermarkets most high street shops were So-and-so & Sons. Most doctors, until a generation ago, were sons or daughters of doctors. Nearly all the famous journalists are the sons or daughters of famous journalists, as your Max Hastingses, your Dimbleby brothers, your Victoria Corens and your Harry Mounts would agree. It is just the way the non-Irish Brits do things.

The same principle carried over into politics, with the landed classes, from 1689 onwards, handing on, not merely their rolling acres but their pocket boroughs, their seats in the Commons and their rights to sit in the House of Peers. They also handed on, in effect, their positions of influence in the diplomatic service, their places at Oxford and Cambridge, their bishoprics and the cushier jobs at the English and Scottish bars.

All that, slowly and inexorably, has been changed and eroded. A handful of token hereditary peers sits in the Upper House, and few of them put up a robust defence of the hereditary principle itself. This principle was finally removed from public life in a speech written by Tony Blair and Margaret Jay (who herself rose to great heights by being the daughter of Prime Minister Jim Callaghan). Paradoxically, it was spoken not by an elected member of Parliament, but by the Queen at the state opening of Parliament.

Republican satirists and diehard Tory traditionalists were (as so often) at one in noticing that there was something a little paradoxical in this fact. If Her Majesty was announcing that we had abolished the (ahem) principle of heredity as a way of choosing our legislators, then what logical defence could be put forward for a hereditary monarchy?

You could try to write out an answer to this with what Cardinal Newman used to call (scornfully) “paper-logic”. I don’t think even Walter Bagehot would make a very good fist of it. If we have really given up high streets with Slaughter & Sons (Family Butchers), and if the Duke of Omnium no longer sits as of right in the Lords, how can we defend the idea of someone becoming head of state just because they are born to it?

The answer is a paradox. It is that the monarchy is popular, and most British people want to keep it. It is not just the belief in heredity. It is continuity through people, it is history reflected through one particular family. And that is why we rejoice particularly at the birth of royal babies. Not because we are sycophants who believe the Queen’s children and grandchildren are prettier or cleverer or better than our children, but because we have invested our political life not merely in the dry words of a constitution, and not in the temporality of an elected official — but in the flesh and blood of a handed-on tradition. National life is not merely like family life — in our national life, it actually is family life.

How do we keep a hereditary monarchy up and running when the hereditary system of government has all but gone?

If Prince William had been married by proxy to some high-born European princess, then I suspect it would be very difficult to give a plausible answer to that question. Even if, like his father, he had married a beautiful English aristocrat, there would still have been problems — the monarchy would have been perceived to be a posh elitist club, whereas the reason for its popularity is in part that it is above class — just as it is above politics.

God did us all a good turn when he made Prince William fall in love with Kate Middleton. After a year or two of making “doors to manual” jokes, we all settled down to realising that this was inspired. By marrying Kate, William has stylishly said — in effect — what Martin Amis once said to his children when asked what class they belonged to: “We don’t do that stuff!”

As it happens, William’s heir is now male. But the Succession to the Crown Act has removed two of the gravest injustices of the old system — the precedence of boys over girls, and the discrimination against this little boy growing up to marry a Catholic. Iron out its anachronistic anomalies and the monarchy is revealed for what it is — a vibrant, popular system which shows that greatest sign of life: adaptability.

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