WHAT IS WELSH REPUBLICANISM?
AT its simplest, we want to rid ourselves of the Prince of Wales, who represents the English monarchy in Wales. The con-trick, that the Prince of Wales is ours, was first thought up by King Edward I in 1301 and the Welsh people have largely bought it for seven centuries.
The present Charlie was made Prince of Wales at the Investiture of 1969, during a tricky time for the British state when the Welsh natives began to get restless. 34 years on and with our coal-mining industry destroyed, our steel industry decimated, our rural economy in tatters, the Welsh language tottering on its last legs in Y Fro Gymraeg, Welsh people are beginning to waken up.
That is why our first demand is for the Divestiture of the Prince of Wales. Its not much to ask. Let us rid ourselves of this tiresome upper-class twit who cares nothing about Wales and has done nothing for Wales except spend some small change on a few chosen kids through the Prince of Wales Trust. This man has a personal fortune of £290 million and an annual income of £5 million, spends his time playing polo or hunting, shooting and fishing and is cocooned in luxury wherever he goes. Look, I know that the main royalty debate is normally about whether to hang em or shoot em, but how about compromising a bit and just banning him from Wales. Not that he comes here very often anyway.
Of course, it isn’t as simple as that. The Prince of Wales is merely the tip of the iceberg, the rest of it being the English monarchy and the British constitution. Let’s not forget that we are Her Majesty’s subjects and will be prosecuted in her name if we break the criminal law. Those who win democratic elections must swear an oath of allegiance to her in Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. Despite the fact that she has an enormous personal fortune we also pay her £7.9 million a year through the Civil List and subsidise her palaces, travel arrangements and administrative expenses with another £30 million pa. As she is leader of the British ruling class, we often wonder why the British left do not adopt a republican position, but, there again, that’s their problem.
We are opposed to the English monarchy because we are opposed to the British state, its old-fashioned undemocratic constitution and the capitalist economy that it preside over. For Welsh socialist republicans, the answer is not to tinker with the British state ( we’ll leave that to Tony Blair) but to leave it and create a Welsh alternative, a republic that is democratic and socialist, organised from the grass-roots up.