Now Is the Time for New Zealand To Abolish the Monarchy

New Zealand has a new King. 

He was born in Buckingham Palace, 18,034km from Cape Reinga, in a city the antipode of which is in the South Pacific ocean, 933 km from Dunedin. He has visited our country ten times in his life. 

The face on our coins and on our $20 note will change from his mother’s to his. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who claims to be a republican, said in a ceremony recognising our new head of state, that she “expects New Zealand’s royal ties to ‘deepen’ under King Charles III.” Yet not one person voted for him — not in Britain, or in Aotearoa, or anywhere else. He rules over us all the same. 

“Now is not the time to debate this”, many will cry. “We should be mourning Queen Elizabeth II. How disrespectful to politicise her death”. And that sentiment — that we should mourn now and leave the debate to an undefined time in the future, whilst the institutions of the monarchy hasten to anoint King Charles III — is precisely how they get away with it. 
 

The Queen is Dead – Long Live the King! 

The ascension of a new monarch to the throne needs to be swift and decisive if the new monarch is to have a successful reign. The institutions of the British royal family — from palace staff to the British government to the BBC — know this well, and have been planning for what to do upon the death of Elizabeth II and her succession for decades. Everything has been perfectly choreographed. 

The Queen passed away aged 96 on Thursday 8 September; on Saturday 10, Charles was proclaimed King Charles III of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; and in the following hours, he was proclaimed King across the Commonwealth, including King of New Zealand on Sunday morning. Charles is 73 years old, and his entire life has been building towards this juncture. 

At precisely the moment when everybody is adjusting to the idea of Prince Charles becoming King Charles III, when his legitimacy is not yet set in stone, the message is coming down from all of the royal institutions — including the vast majority of the mainstream media — that we must grieve for Her Majesty, and that it would be disrespectful to raise talk of a republic or to question Charles’ right to rule. This message is strongest in the UK itself of course, but it is still prevalent in Aotearoa.  Even over here, we had a national holiday for the Queen. 

Hence why even the Greens and Te Pāti Māori, our most left-wing political parties, sent out messages of condolences to the royal family in the hours after the Queen’s passing without any mention of republican sentiments. One only has to look at the backlash against Australian Green Party leader Adam Bandt for tweeting that his thoughts are with the Queen’s family, but that Australia needs to become a republic, to see how strong the message of obedience and mandatory mourning is right now, even on the other side of the world. 

But we know exactly why this is happening — because right now is precisely the time when the monarchy must be challenged. To cover up the normalisation of the new monarch and the arcane traditions associated with his ascension, the royalist establishment is required to weaponise the Queen’s death and the grief many ordinary people do genuinely feel. Royalists are doing precisely what they accuse republicans of doing — politicising her passing. 

The Divine Right to Rule 

What they are trying to cover up is that we don’t have a choice. Under the system of monarchy, none of us get a vote on whether or not Charles III becomes our head of state — not in Britain, not in the occupied north of Ireland, nor Aotearoa, Australia, or any other Commonwealth country. The Church of England, which Charles is now the head of, was founded on the basis that King Henry VIII and all his descendants had a divine right to rule — above and beyond the authority previously held by the Pope over such matters. This ideology has been used for centuries to justify what has always been a system based on a complete accident of birth. We don’t get to decide. 

We can have popular and widely well-regarded monarchs such as Queen Elizabeth II just as easily as you can have brutal tyrants such as Henry VIII — or, for that matter, our new King’s namesake, Charles I, who waged a civil war with parliament over his divine right to rule, lost, and was beheaded in 1649. The monarchy was briefly abolished, but it proved too early, and unlike the French Revolution, England’s first and so far only attempt at having a commoner as head of state ended in 1660 with the Restoration of Charles II, son of Charles I. 362 years later, Britain has its third King Charles on the throne. 

There could be some parallels between Charles I and his modern-day namesake. Attempting to dissolve parliament and exercise absolute power, and fighting a civil war with parliament, is extremely unlikely in modern times, of course. But Charles III has the same tendency as Charles I to believe himself more worthy of direct political power than his predecessor. It has long been documented that Charles as Prince of Wales attempted to meddle in affairs of state in a way that Elizabeth II was unwilling to do publicly (though she did privately put pressure on the government to further her interests at times). 

Some progressives may welcome Charles III’s reputation as an environmentalist. But he is by no means progressive. He supports homoeopathy and other forms of alternative medicine, and worse, has made comments about how overpopulation is to blame for environmental problems, and that more “population control” is needed in the developing world. The British royal family in its long history has presided over countless famines, genocides, massacres and military occupations in its colonies, and as recently as 1952-1960, when Elizabeth II was on the throne, British forces committed war crimes in their brutal suppression of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya. The British established detention camps which its own officials described as "distressingly reminiscent of conditions in Nazi Germany or Communist Russia". The deeply uncomfortable implications of Charles, the heir to the throne at the time, calling for population control in the developing world, were apparently lost on him and his advisors. 

Even if he was a radical left-wing environmentalist who campaigned passionately for climate action, Charles’ tendency to think that his royal station gives him the right to intervene in politics would be worrying. It goes against everything that Elizabeth II and her father George VI stood for — the style of governance which maintained their legitimacy during the 20th and early 21st Centuries as the world changed rapidly around them — which is that the monarch should be a purely ceremonial figure who expresses no opinions of their own and simply acts as the administrator of the rituals and traditions of the state, while their Prime Minister and Cabinet do all of the governing for them. 

If Charles III were to break with this ideology, it would represent an attempted return to a more authoritarian monarchy, similar (though on a much smaller scale) to Charles I. His approach could increase republican sentiments, just as his namesake did… though beheading him would perhaps seem a bit over the top in this day and age. 

The Lottery of Birth 

Partially as a result of his meddlesome approach, as well as his mistreatment of and divorce from his widely admired late wife Princess Diana, Charles is less popular than both his mother Elizabeth II, and his eldest son and heir. There is a bitter irony in the fact that, when polled in 2021, 47% of Britons wanted William — now Prince of Wales and heir to the throne — to become the next king, with just 27% preferring Charles. Every single one of those people who wanted William to succeed Elizabeth II needs to be asked: do you believe in monarchy, or not? Because the entire point is that you don’t get to choose. Your preference does not matter. If you believe in monarchy, you believe that Charles is the rightful king; if you believe that you should get a vote on skipping Charles and going straight to King William V, then you simply don’t believe in having a monarchy at all. 

The accident of birth gets more scary, however, when you consider the case of Prince Andrew. Andrew is the third child of Elizabeth II, but comes before his older sister Princess Anne in the succession, because the law up until recently stated that male children should come before female children — and although that law was changed in 2015, the new status quo only applies to royals born after that date. This makes Andrew eighth in line to the throne, after Prince William, his children, then Prince Harry, and then his children. 

Prince Andrew was a known associate of convicted sex trafficker and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Virginia Giuffre, a survivor of Epstein’s crimes who is now a campaigner for fellow survivors of sex trafficking, has alleged that, as a minor, she was trafficked to Prince Andrew by Epstein, and sexually abused by Andrew. British authorities have been unwilling to prosecute a member of the royal family, whilst Andrew declined an interview with federal prosecutors in the United States. As a result, Giuffre took the Prince to court in a civil trial, which was settled out of court in February this year. 

Eighth in line to the throne does not sound too bad. But consider this: had Andrew been born before Charles, or had Charles died young or been incapable of having children, or even if something terrible happened today to William, Harry and their children, Andrew would be the heir to the throne of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. This demonstrates how fragile and frightening the notion of divine right to rule truly is. 

The divine right to rule, and the acceptance of the lottery of birth that is the royal succession, is all based on Britain’s ‘good chap’ theory of politics. It is the idea that you don’t need a written constitution — which neither the UK or New Zealand have — or direct rules around the powers of the monarch or parliament. You can have extremely centralised power concentrated in the hands of the monarch, and bestowed by the monarch upon parliament, because we’re all good chaps really, the establishment is trustworthy, and what could possibly go wrong? The British armed forces are sworn to serve the King and his heirs, not elected officials, and the power still possessed by the monarch is quite extraordinary — as is the power of parliament, in New Zealand as well as Britain. 

The British Prime Minister until Tuesday 6th September — two days before the Queen’s death — was Boris Johnson, and he truly put this theory to the test. Johnson’s governance exposed the fact that if you’re not a “good chap,” there is a lot you can get away with, and if you have a clear majority in parliament, only your own political party can stop you. The amount of destruction this caused was extreme, with the worst result being Johnson’s lockdown-reluctant approach to Covid causing over 200,000 deaths in the UK, many of which were preventable. 

The monarch has the power to dissolve parliament at any time; to refuse requests to form a government; to refuse to give royal assent to any piece of legislation; to appoint lords and bishops, who can vote on legislation through the unelected House of Lords; the list goes on. In practice, these powers are never used by the monarch these days, and everything the monarch does is under the advice of their Prime Minister. But to put that much potential power into the hands of one family and assume that there will never be a monarch who abuses that power in any way, shape or form, is an extremely risky gamble. One wrong move by the monarch could throw the United Kingdom, and the entire Commonwealth, into a constitutional crisis. For that to happen only requires that one irresponsible individual happens to inherit the throne one day. It’s possible that Charles III could be that person — we would never know until it was too late. 

Aside from the hypothetical scenario of Prince Andrew being higher up the line of succession, there are two prominent examples in recent history where this power structure was thrown into question. 

The first was in 1936, when Edward VIII ascended to the throne. King Edward was impatient, and did not show a huge deal of respect for the traditions of the institution he had inherited — immediately causing alarm bells to ring among the government and his advisors. He swiftly caused a constitutional crisis by attempting to marry an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson, in a move which would have incensed the Church of England of which he was the official head. This conflict with the Church eventually caused him to abdicate before the end of the year, thrusting his brother George VI unexpectedly into the role of King, and future Queen Elizabeth II into the position of heir to the throne. 

The entire episode was a huge blow to the monarchy’s ideology and position in society. If a King, supposedly anointed by God with a divine right to rule, could simply abdicate after less than a year, what meaning did the institution ever have? That being said — it was extremely fortunate that Edward VIII did indeed abdicate, given that he later turned out to be a Nazi sympathiser. He was so nearly King during the Second World War. 

The second example was in 1975, when Australian Labor Party Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was sacked by the Governor General, the official representative of Elizabeth II. Whitlam was seen by the establishment at the time as too radical, and at a time of crisis, his government was under a huge amount of pressure. The fact that he was simply removed from office by an unelected representative of the British monarchy caused a constitutional crisis in Australia, which was never truly resolved. It is a stark warning to every country in the Commonwealth, including New Zealand, that all of our governments in reality exist at the whim of a royal family who lives thousands of miles away. 

No unelected individual should ever have as much power as King Charles III has just inherited. Not to mention the wealth which goes with it — most of which was stolen from colonies of the British Empire, and should be returned. It is the height of irresponsibility to allow such a system to exist where one bad faith actor could throw the entire Commonwealth into chaos. It is not guaranteed to happen, but the fact that it could happen is reason enough to question the rationality of the system. 

Why is Charles III King of New Zealand? 

The British royal family represents nearly a millennia of extreme power and privilege. Charles III can trace his roots back to the Norman invasion of England in 1066, which put King William the Conqueror and his dynasty on the throne. In the 956 years since, the Kingdom of England conquered Wales and Ireland, merged with the Kingdom of Scotland, and became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. From there emerged the British Empire upon which the sun never set, covering a quarter of the planet’s landmass. The crimes committed by this empire are countless — war, colonisation, plunder, theft, enforced famine, and genocide — in some cases cultural genocide, and in other cases, such as Australia, literal genocide. 

In the last hundred years, Britain was forced by rebellion and economic decline to relinquish almost all of its empire, including most of Ireland, except for the north, which remains under an occupation which is contentious to this day. So many countries were colonised by the British that, roughly every seven days, a different nation celebrates its independence from the United Kingdom. 

But why is he King of New Zealand? 

In 1840, many — but importantly, not all — Māori rangatira signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi with representatives of Queen Victoria and the British government. Te Tiriti granted the right of governance to the British crown. A separate text, written in English rather than Te Reo Māori, used the word sovereignty, but that mistranslation — which some argue was intentional — is not what Māori agreed to. Nevertheless, the British Empire had achieved what they wanted. They proceeded to launch a campaign of divide-and-conquer, establishing the capitalist colony of New Zealand, with a central government which to this day unlawfully claims sovereignty over Tangata Whenua. 

In 1860, Māori owned roughly 80% of the land of Aotearoa; today, they own approximately 5.6%. Through the disease, war and poverty inflicted upon Tangata Whenua by British imperialism, the Māori population is estimated to have fallen from around 100,000 before Europeans arrived to 42,000 by 1896. Charles III is King of New Zealand because of brutal, bloody conquest. 

It is also important to note that the British royal family has no right to rule over Pākehā either. Those Pākehā such as myself who are British or directly descended from the British — I was born in England to an English mother and a Pākehā New Zealander father — never consented to being ruled by the royal family; their “right” to rule us was established through millennia of feudal rule over which peasants and workers had no say. From the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, to the Diggers in 1649, to the Peterloo Massacre in 1819 — when peasants and workers rose up to fight for their rights, they were met with brutal violence from the ruling class. I do not consent to be ruled or represented by Charles III. 

The large population of Irish settlers in this country were themselves victims of British imperialism at home. They have even less reason to be ruled by British royalty. Likewise the over 20% of New Zealanders who were not born in either Aotearoa or the UK. 

Every shred of authority that King Charles III and his family have over the people of Aotearoa is soaked in blood — particularly the blood of the indigenous people of this land. He has no right to governorship over us, let alone sovereignty. It’s long past time we accepted this, and abolished the monarchy; now that the Queen is dead and the succession has come, it is the perfect time to do something about it. 

Do We Believe in Democracy? 

The late Tony Benn, an English democratic socialist and long-serving Labour Party MP, had five questions he said you must always ask the powerful to determine whether or not their authority was legitimate. 

“What power have you got?” 

“Where did you get it from?” 

“In whose interests do you use it?” 

“To whom are you accountable?” 

“How do we get rid of you?” 

King Charles III cannot answer any of those questions in a satisfactory manner. As of Thursday 8 September 2022, he holds enormous power. He inherited it as his “birth-right,” not because of anything he had done, or because anyone chose him in a democratic fashion. We are yet to see how he uses that power, but no doubt it will be in the interests of the British elite — that is whom the royal family have always served, as they are at the very top of that power structure. They are accountable to no one; they can dismiss parliament and create a constitutional crisis if they are ever challenged. And to get rid of them, we will need a mass movement to demand an end to hereditary wealth, power and privilege. 

Let this be the year when that mass movement begins. You can either support monarchy, or support democracy. Never both. I know which side I am on. 

Elliot Crossan is a socialist writer and activist. You can read his writing at Watermelon Media