The Campaign Company specialises in social research and behaviour change. This is your guide to what we’ve been reading. Here’s what’s coming up this week:
Following the sad death of Queen Elizabeth II last week, there was no newsletter last Friday. Today we return to the fold, in a bulletin reflecting on the complexities of constitutional monarchy. With a Clement Attlee essay on this subject doing the rounds online, we examine the idea that our Royal family is a buttress against forms of populism or extremism.
And of course, there’s Charlie’s Attic, which this week recalls some of the weirdest and most wonderful moments from the past seven days.
The sad death of Elizabeth II last Thursday, following 70 years on the throne, prompted extracts from a little-known Clement Attlee essay to do the rounds on social media. Within it, the 1945-51 Labour Prime Minister argued for the importance of monarchy as a “common symbol of unity.”
Clement Attlee’s monarchism might be a surprise to very casual of observers, insofar as he is best known as the socialist who led Britain’s most radical reforming government. Yet as John Bew’s excellent biography Citizen Clem shows, much of Attlee’s politics were driven by a commitment to ideas around tradition and civic duty – including by a sense of duty to the Royal family.
In the essay in question (entitled ‘From Victorian to Elizabethan, The Role of the Monarchy’) Attlee described “the serious disadvantage of combining the symbol of the nation and the party leader.” He elaborated that “the monarchy attracts to itself the kind of sentimental loyalty which might otherwise go to the leader of a faction.”
In a great article for The Critic this week, about Labour’s relationship with monarchy, the academic Richard Johnson explores this topic further. He points out that the King or Queen’s “legitimacy rests…on their non-partisan character.”
These are interesting points and are perhaps under-discussed among progressives. Is our politics less vulnerable to totalitarian strongmen because the public affection is instead channelled towards our studiously impartial Royal family? Republicans would no doubt scoff at this claim, and may well be right to do so. But in a week where the outpouring of popular affection has been so evident, it is interesting to ponder whether there is something to it.
And finally this week, Charlie’s Attic, the jewel in the crown of our Friday missive:
