Monarchy and the peculiarities of the English

Despite the long-standing view that modern societies have gone through a process of secularization in which the churches have declined, and religious world views have lost their authority, religion continues to play a major part in the political life of modern societies. Jose Casanova (1994) played a significant role in recognizing the political importance of public religions. However, his argument was confined primarily to societies in which post-Vatican Catholicism was the dominant religion in Poland and Spain for example. His argument is on the face of it less relevant to societies in which Protestantism is dominant. In that regard, the reign of Queen Elizabeth II presents an interesting case study of religion and politics for the sociology of religion. Shils and Young (1953) published their famous article on the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth. It underlined the importance of ritual and religion in public life and gave expression to Shils’s understanding of centre and periphery in the structure of society. Shils was no stranger to English high culture. He was a fellow of Peterhouse College Cambridge in the 1960s. In many respects, Peterhouse was one of the most exclusive elite colleges at Cambridge, but he also had connections with the London School of Economics. Apart from Shils and Young, British sociologists did not engage with the sociology of monarchy despite the relevance of the monarch to the state, the Church and society.

The public celebrations around the monarchy can perhaps be understood in terms of Emile Durkheim’s sociology of religion (Ramp, 2014). While Durkheim had nothing to say specifically about colonization rituals, his insights into collective effervescence and symbolism are clearly relevant. Collective representations of the sacred get their greatest intensity when large groups of people are assembled for such celebrations.

To appreciate the Shils and Young article, we need to pay attention to the specific context of the Coronation. The National Health Service had been created in 1948 but rationing in post-war Britain did not come to an end until 1954. Consumer goods were in short supply and the range of meat and vegetables available in shops was limited. The British were ready to put war-time conditions behind them and the new Queen was a youthful sign of new opportunities. The Coronation was an occasion for a collective celebration of a new beginning. However, in this article I focus on the end of Elizabeth’s reign and not its beginning.

To understand the significance of Elizabeth II and her funeral and lying-in state at Westminster Hall, it is important to address three peculiarities of the British Isles. I borrow to some extent from E.P. Thompson’s famous article in The Socialist Register (Thompson, 1965) in which he debated the character of British history. I use this construction ‘the British Isles’ rather than the United Kingdom or Great Britain for reasons that are to follow. The idea of the British Isles does capture the fact that Britain is an archipelago of diverse cultures, languages and histories that have at various times been united behind the monarchy. Welsh and Gaelic are still spoken, but the last speaker of Cornish was Dorothy Pentreath (1692–1777) who lived in Mousehole Cornwall.

The first peculiarity is that the British Isles have not been successfully invaded since 1066 when the Norman French defeated King Harold at the Battle of Hastings. The invasion had many consequences and not least on the evolution of the English language. At a later stage and unlike much of Europe, Napoleon did not transform the British political system and Nelson’s defeat of the French Navy laid the foundation for the British Empire.

The second is that Britain had no transformative revolution unlike America in 1783, France in 1789 and Russia in 1917. England had a Civil War ending in the execution of King Charles 1 in 1649 which was followed eventually by the Restoration. Whereas the American revolution protected the religion of the individual from the state, the French revolution protected the state from the religion of the individual. In Britain, the monarchy is the head of the state and the Church. After the French revolution, Edmund Burke emerged as the great interpreter of the common law and English conservatism. The result is that Anglicanism has been deeply embedded in English conservatism (Scruton). The constitutional connection between state and Church was very much on display in the rituals surrounding the Queen’s burial. The Left in Britain has subsequently complained much about the political consequences of British gradualism (NLR).

The third and perhaps the most significant peculiarity is that it is not clear what we mean by ‘England’, ‘Britain’ or ‘Great Britain’ refers to the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. However, ‘British’ and ‘Britishness’ were not used in the 19th century and in fact the first public reference to ‘British’ did not occur until 1905 (Young, 2008). The Victorians appear have been interested in the racial composition of England and Europe. The first ‘anthropological’ study of the ‘races of Britain’ was published by Beddoe (1885) based on a survey hair and skin colour. The task was to sort out the differences between a range of categories such as Saxon, Anglo-Saxon, English and Celts. These categories may have disappeared from everyday life in modern Britain. However, despite this constitutional reality, ‘England’ is often used to describe ‘the United Kingdom’ given its numerical and political power (Kumar, 2003).

These national components have in many respects retained their own separate legal systems, cultures, identities, religion and politics. The viability of this system was severely challenged by Brexit. The death of Queen Elizabeth in 2022 in fact further opens the fissures in the system. It has created opportunities for Scotland to hold a referendum on independence and now that Roman Catholics out number Protestants in Northern Ireland the prospect of a united Ireland is being discussed. The future of the Commonwealth is also part of the new political agenda in the West Indies, Africa and Australia. During her very long reign these discordant components were managed or submerged, but they are now aspects of a global change. Perhaps many observers might be forgiven by surprise as the scale of the pageantry of her ending and the widespread public grief. It was genuine but the post-war generation are also mourning the passing of their Britain/England.

There were two occasions in which Elizabeth II was challenged by public opinion. The first was the dismissal of Gough Whitlam (1916–2014) the 21st Australian Prime Minister. He was a leader of the Labor Party and a popular figure, who had brought in many reforms, but had run into difficulties following the 1973 oil crisis. The circumstances of his dismissal are much debated, but essentially the House of Representatives cut off supply leaving the government in crisis. Sir John Kerr the British Governor was in touch with the Queen who has persuaded to accept the dismissal. There is an inconclusive debate about whether the Queen could have rejected the advice of the Governor. However, the incident will play an important part in future political support for a republic. The second incident was the death of Lady Diana. This very public tragedy was challenging in terms of the Queen’s relationship to the British people. The Queen was criticized for her tardy response to Diana’s death. Princess Diana had been embraced by the Labour Party as a symbol of social change. Tony Blair celebrated her role as an aspect of the New Britain which was to shake off the cultural legacy of the Conservative Party and to launch a new image of Britain as ‘the place to be’ for social dynamism and cultural creativity. The emotional outpouring over Diana’s death contrasted with the silence from the Royals. The reluctance of the House of Windsor to respect her tragic death, for example by lowering the flag over the Palace, had a negative effect on the standing and popularity of the Queen. She survived the Diana tragedy just as she survived Tony Blair.

The death of the Queen, the public mourning for the end of her reign and global interest in her final burial, provided opportunities to recognize the end of an era of relative stability and economic decline. The mourning was also a celebration of collective memory (Assmann and Czaplicka, 1995). However, the rituals surrounding her death and burial may prove to be the last occasion on which the two bodies of the monarch were on full display: ‘The Queen is dead; long live the King’ (Kantorowicz, 1957). The tasks facing the new King are too obvious to describe. If we express the issue in terms of Emile Durkheim’s basic proposition: ‘Religious beliefs proper are always held by a defined collectivity that professes them and practices the rites that go with them. These beliefs are not only embraced by all members of this collectivity as individuals, they belong to the group and unite it’ (Durkheim, 2001: 42). It is difficult to imagine that the Church of England continues to hold the collectivity together. The widespread expressions of grief at her death might lend support to Durkheim’s account. Here again Durkheim took a different view: ‘Mourning is not a natural impulse of the private sensibility bruised by a cruel loss; it is a duty imposed by the group’ (Durkheim, 2001: 295). Perhaps the issues are political rather than religious. The question is whether the reign of King Charles II will witness the end of ‘Great Britain’ and the beginning of ‘Little England’. In terms of Shils’s sociological framework, the question is whether the centre will hold or will Britain break-up into its peripheries?