Today, the Queen is 80, and people around the world are running to pay her respects, commonwealth leaders, monarchs, africans, asians, europeans, are all bundling forward. But what about England? In England its even more of a rush as we suddenly remember that we have a Queen, and struggle to come up with the most tear-jerking eulogy possible. Now i'm a firm anti-monarchist, but i'm always struck by the willingness of the British to take it all so naturally, here we have a firm authoritarian, hierarchical establishment right in the heart of our "democracy". But of course it can all be explained in terms of nationalism right? We equate English identity with all things tied up with tradition, tea, biscuits, firm, stout, secure, and above all royal! It is a brilliant sheme of the monarchs to equate themselves with Britishness and thus iron out all the contradictions that they pose in relation to democracy. Paul Gilroy talked about football's ability to revive British feelings of "greatness" and "imperial might" in "Their Aint no Black in the Union Jack" and i suspect he would say the same about the Monarchy. Thus seeing images of commonwealth leaders paying their respect to the Queen builds up an image of the past, of a time when England was at the centre of the Imperial World. A question that must be asked for those against the monarchy is the way in which we can seperate the Monarchy from Britishness, and indeed Britishness from its imperial past. Recent events of Nazi-helmet wearing English supporters marching through Germany are definite representations of this.

Cheers, Riku