Establishment or Anti-establishment

absent that's just daft LOL!

My situation is even more absurd than that experienced by granjura. I am a British citizen by right of birth so I have never had to swear loyalty to the Queen and her successors. However, if I want New Zealand citizenship after the relevant number of years residency, I shall have to swear loyalty to the British crown. I'm not sure whether the swearing involves a Bible but suspect that some sort of affirmation may be used instead.

Yes Wilma, I'd be happy with that. We have a plan

granjura, it's ridiculous, if not abolished at least give people a choice

I would go for that too. I don't mind the Queen and the Royal family doing its bit for the country, I just don't want to pay for it out of our taxes. Even if you ignore the things held in trust for the nation, the Queen is one of the richest women in the world and could pay her own way (there must be a better way of expressing that). I would be happy for the revenue from royal buildings, etc., to go in to the pot and any other revenue raising ventures. The Royal family is nicknamed The Firm, so run its finances like a business.

Any oath of loyalty should be to the country and the ties with jingoism cut.

Annie I had no choice when I wanted a British passport in 1972- had to Swear and Oath of Allegance to the Queen and her Successor- holding the Bible. Not sure I would do it now- but as said, there was NO choice.

I think it is way past time for swearing in oaths to be a pledge of loyalty to the UK not to the queen, I have no loyalty for the queen I have for the country , enough of all that for queen and country

I wouldn't mind the Queen/King staying as a figurehead, but would want to see all the trappings and the "My government" and "My ministers" bit got rid of. They are OUR government and they should always be reminded of that. Perhaps as well we could form a Royal reenactment society- a bit like the Civil War reenactment people. They could stage events at the Royal palaces for tourists.

I understand that Eloethan. I accept the arguments against the monarchy but I do wonder what could be put in its place that would improve life in the country, to put it simply.
I certainly feel that reducing the financial support, including police protection etc for so called 'lesser' royals is long overdue. How do Andrew's daughters afford to be on what appear to be permanent and very expensive foreign holidays. I don't have an 'off with their heads' approach but I do believe that group should get proper jobs and support themselves like the rest of the population.

Iam64 People tend to think of presidents as having an active party political role like American presidents but it doesn't have to be that way. A president can be just a figurehead who has very little or no power and whose role is primarily to represent the country at official state events at home and abroad.

In developed countries, presidents tend to be elected and allowed to serve for only a specified number of years. Also they can be removed if they are found to be corrupt or dishonourable.

I'm still of the same mind I was at 16- socialist, C of E but only occasionally actually going (only like traditional prayer book services) and still wanting to sweep away restricted practices, secret elitist organisations (Freemasons etc) and wanting equal opportunities for all.

I am fascinated by how much has been attributed to me that I didn't actually say.

I think like Jane10.

Growing up in our house we were encouraged to challenge everything to understand better. No one was every short of an opinion and I think this upbringing made me and my brothers avid readers with curious minds, always wanting to know more. In this respect the dawn of the Internet was such a great gift to us. We can now listen to exactly what someone said, watched what happened for ourselves. History is written by the victors, the media is hugely powerful, but the truth is also available for the telling.

So I would say that I am both establishment and anti-establishment, and neither. It depends on what is being discussed.

The wonderful 3 part series The Ascent of Women has just finished on BBC2 and if you want to see how women have always challenged the establishment, then do try and catch it.

Yes Eloethan, I can't say I've affection or respect for Charles and Camilla but in recent years I have genuinely struggled to name a potential future head of state. I can't get beyond Nelson Mandela or Archbishop Tutu.

I'm neither one thing nor the other. My DF always brought us up to question everything and to form our own opinions independently of what others around us might be thinking or saying. It wasn't easy when I was young. The young seem to want to conform but I stuck to my guns and drew up opinions on an issue by issue basis. Still the same today. Question everything and don't necessarily believe what I am told or read. So I'm not establishment or anti establishment just an independent thinker.

I am from Hull. I was taught all about the slave trade in my primary school. We used to go to the Wilberforce Museum.
It was fortunate that I was because the high school I went to probably had descendants of the slave traders, which is why I knew a bit about another class of people, and became a socialist, although I didn't know the word at the time.
I did not study history at the high school, but I have found I have learned more from studying family history. I have quite a few books about studying your ancestors, including women in the wars, coalmining ancestors, servant ancestors, ancestors childhood and aristocratic ancestors.
Some of these books go back to Norman times, and give history from ordinary people's lives, not just the winners.

The queen won't go on for ever Iam64 - then what?

My political views began to be formed by Miss Slater's teaching of history when I was 13. We studied the slave trade, drew diagrams of the triangle between Africa, USA and Britain and learned about the terrible exploitation of some people by others, with the aim of making huge profits. The suffering of the so called 'white slaves' who worked the cotton mills in Lancashire wasn't covered by Miss Slater but I was an avid reader and talked with my grandparents who'd worked in the mills.

One way in which my anti establishment views have softened is that I no longer stand silent when the national anthem is sung. I'm not a royalist but I no longer believe the country would be better off without the Queen. I honestly can't think of anyone who could carry off the role of head of state as well as she does and I find it impossible not to admire her 60 years of public service. Yes, I know, all those castles and palaces, all those hopeless sons but I no longer get het up about the monarchy. I don't know if this makes me 'patriotic'. I love britain, feel I'm English, enjoy the odd sense of humour, the peculiar monarchy and the irony with which many Brits regard it.

I dislike 'patriotism' for its own sake. It reminds me that my grandfather's believed there would never be a repeat of 'their' WW1 because my generation, that is we hippies in the 60's and 70's wouldn't respond as they did, to "the king or the kaiser like the German lads did". Grandpa's both saw us as better educated and informed and so unlike them, we wouldn't be sheep to the slaughter.

Our history is distorted as a result of the bias.

I was going to say exactly the same myself trisher. I expect many of us had the dates of the various monarchs and wars drummed into us at school but little attention was given to working people - who, although being the majority - seemed to be hardly visible. Women were doubly disadvantaged.

MOnica I don't believe there is a disproportionate number of books about the lives of working class people. There are certainly still plenty of books published about World War I, Hitler and The Empire. We were all taught about our kings and queens in history and about other famous people but little attention was paid to the everyday lives and achievements of working class people. Some historians have partly redressed the balance. Prof Carl Chinn, for instance said " "ordinary" people have too often been excluded from or marginalised by formal history."

The racist and bigoted views and behaviour of the working classes cannot be denied but they were certainly not confined to the working classes. Supposedly highly educated people who one would have thought should have known better were every bit as prejudiced - as the admiration of Hitler by several members of the British aristocracy amply demonstrated.

I have no need to justify anything I choose to do

Trisher I didn't say that about you and I made that clear in the last paragraph. My first comments were generalised ones about attitudes. There are always very good reasons for studying any sector of society.

I've gone the other way. I started off as 'establishment', heavily influenced by my mother (bless her), but as I get older I lean towards my father's anti-establishment views (bless him!). Neither of my parents are around now but I suspect my mother would have been shocked recently when I said I certainly would not curtsey to the queen or to anyone else. My father would have applauded, though!

The reason I choose working people (and working women in particular) MOnica is not because of any "endowing the working classes with a certain level of sanctity* but simply because it is an overlooked area with a great deal of information that has never been researched and that still hasn't the recognition it deserves. It has widely been held that working women did little politically, that isn't true. For example between 1906 and 1918 there was an organisation called the Women's Labour League that brought thousands of women into the Labour movement. In 1918 it was absorbed into the Labour Party and virtually forgotten. That is why it interests me.

The new conformity is to endow the working classes with a certain level of sanctity, and, implicitly, make anything that is socially above that faintly distasteful, almost immoral.

To study the social and local history of 'ordinary working people' is to gain plaudits, study the wealthy and unless the work is aimed at discrediting them, then you are discredited.

I am fascinated by the history of the landscape and I really do not care whether the person who formed it was a Saxon peasant or a great landowner. Many of the latter were enlightened and benevolent, others, of course, weren't, but the same thing applies at every level of society. My family are Irish. My mother remembers signs in windows of rooming houses saying 'No dogs, no children, no Irish and I can remember only too well the racial hate in working class areas of London like Notting Hill in the 1960s.

I am not criticising the study interests of the posters above. Any research is fascinating and adds to the sum of human knowledge. It is just the feeling that they feel a need to emphasise the working class nature of their work to justfy doing it.