FURTHERMORE

Why I won't be going to the republican party

PETRONELLA WYATT

The time has come to pronounce on the two parties. I am referring, of course, to the republican and monarchist parties. Accord- ing to the newspapers, everybody is divid- ing up. One does not wish to be left out. There is the story of the girl who, on hear- ing about a Workers' Revolutionary Party, asked why she hadn't been sent an invita- tion. I should like to go to the party too.

Last week it appeared that the republi- can party was becoming the hotter ticket the constitutional equivalent of the Duchess of Devonshire's ball, as it were, though, one suspects, without the Duchess. The Sun published opinion polls suggesting that for the first time a majority of Britons wished for an end to the monarchy.

One's choice of party, though, would ulti- mately depend on the respective guest lists. A few days ago the Guardian obligingly printed them. The republican party includ- ed George Walden, the Tory MP; Rik Mayall, the comedian; Salman Rushdie; Melvyn Bragg; Christopher Hitchens, the journalist; and Martin Amis. At the monar- chist party one would be more likely to encounter Nicholas Soames, Sir Philip Ziegler, Jonathan Dimbleby, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, Frank Bruno and Lord Rees-Mogg.

On the strength of this alone one would perhaps incline towards the monarchist party. This might be what is known as nega- tive action. It is not that the monarchists are so very marvellous, but rather that the republicans are so very awful. The roll call of their names sends one's spirits on an inexorable downward spiral.

Republican smart-alecs, of course, would say that Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber alone represents the most inexorable downward trend. But this would be typical of the small-minded republican attitude. If one had to define the salient characteristics of the republicans it would be these: an indig- nation, a choler, an overwhelming sense of envy. Many of the republicans, notably Mr Amis and Mr Rushdie, are artists. The artist is bound by the laws of convention to be against his country, to be opposed to the environment in which God has placed him. He is a more delicate person than we are and therefore less able to enjoy himself under the conditions which he and and we alike must face. Take Mr Walden. Mr Walden is an MP, but, through his articles in the London Evening Standard, he occa- sionally aspires to artistry. The most fre- quently recurring theme of Mr Walden's essays is the great contempt in which he holds the English, and the swooning admi- ration he feels for the French.

This sort of thing is equally true of those self-professed 'democrats' or puritans who are not fortunate enough to be as artistic as Mr Walden. If you pump envy out of democracy and republicanism you drain these concepts of their very life-blood. They are both immovably grounded in one man's hatred of the other man or woman who might be having a better or more 'priv- ileged' time. They are usually explained, naturally enough, in other ways. Republi- canism is depicted as a system of brother- hood and equity. But there is only one real impulse behind it: the desire to punish any- one held to be better than anyone else.

It has been claimed that this is the centu- ry of republicanism. It was after the first world war that monarchy ceased to be the predominant form of government in Euro- pean states, as Vernon Bogdanor, a mem- ber of the monarchist party, has written in his recent book, The Monarchy and the Constitution. This had very little to do, how- ever, with the triumph of republican doc- trine. It was, rather, because of the military defeat of Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia and the revolutionary tumults of that period. As Mr Bogdanor points out, with the exception of the USA and Greece, republics do not usually come about through adherence to the superior virtues of republicanism.

Contrary to what Mr Walden would have us believe, the instabilities which led to the introduction of a French republic did not help prosperity or progress. After 1789, France, with 16 constitutions, has found it difficult to find a stable form of republican government. Russia overthrew the Tsar only to find itself in the long night of com- munist terror. In Germany the abdication of the Kaiser caused the Weimar govern- ment to lose the symbol that might have prevented Hitler's rise to absolute power.

Here is a further piece of republican sophistry. The monarchy legitimises social conventions and behaviour — deference, for instance — that hold back Britain and prevent it from taking its place as a pro- gressive industrial nation. Mr Amis has claimed that a republic would be more `adult'. Mr Hitchens has said: 'It's time to grow up and do without this public immola- tion of a family.' On the Continent, howev- er, it is the monarchies — Denmark, Nor- way and Sweden — that are significantly more egalitarian and 'progressive' than countries such as France. In Japan, a monarchy more traditionalist than ours has presided over the development of one of the world's 'tiger nations'.

Still, as one leading anti-monarchist put it, 'the republic must come, and at the rate at which we are moving, it will come in our generation.' It is only a pity — for republi- cans, that is — that this quote is from Jos- eph Chamberlain, and the date of it 1871.

Everything these days is reduced to porn — that is, by the commentators. The latest example of this concerns a film called Kids, which is about the lives of some New York teenagers. The film features explicit scenes of sex, including a rape. My new col- league, Matthew Parris, wrote in last week's Spectator of the subversion of good old-fashioned expressions such as 'gay' and `cuckoo'. But what of the good old-fash- ioned word 'pornography'?

What is pornography? According to a new book, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France by Robert Darn- ton, it has little to do with what is on show in Kids or most other so-called pornograph- ic works. The word pomographe was devised in 1769 by Restif de la Bretonne from the Greek word for harlot. Bretonne used it to argue, rather non-salaciously, for a state-run system of legal prostitution.

Even when the word acquired a some- what wider meaning, there were conven- tions which the pornographer was supposed to observe. These included metaphysical dialogues: in the seminal 18th-century work Therese Philosophe, copulation is always fol- lowed by conversation. In 20th-century pornography, copulation is always followed by copulation.

The censors of pre-Revolutionary France had a further proviso. It was not enough for something to be explicit; it had to cause sexual arousal. This is rarely true today. As in music, there has been a movement in pornography towards authenticity. In music this means playing things on the original instruments. In the film Kids it involves playing on the bodies of actors who look `real' — in other words, ugly. Authenticity may work in music, but it does not work in pornography.