Elizabeth Windsor divides opinion. Many feel that she is a dignified figure who deserves the love of a grateful nation. A grudgeful few hold the view that she’s the matriarch of a bunch of parasites who should be obliged to live on benefits in a council estate on the outskirts of an insalubrious northern English town. Where the readers of this site stand on the issue I cannot venture to guess.

Mrs Windsor has always been a bit of globetrotter and, like many well travelled people, she has not taken the time to see what’s on her own doorstep. That’s probably why she is going to visit Dublin in the near future.

One view, expressed in the Belfast Telegraph, is that “there is no blacker mark on the Republic, no greater sign of political immaturity than its failure, to date, to afford the common courtesy of welcoming the head of state of its nearest neighbour.” I’d have thought that a political culture with systemic corruption, a boom based on property speculation and the highest levels of social inequality in Europe would have been rather more telling statements about the place but then I’m neither liberal nor unionist and so use slightly different criteria.

Now that the Celtic Tiger has been gelded Mrs Windsor’s proposed trip is a useful reminder of the Irish bourgeoisie’s subordinate place in their state’s relationship with British imperialism. In both the northern and southern press the dominant narrative seems to be “let’s put all that behind us now”. That was the message too following the Saville Report. There will be no further serious investigations of the state’s crimes because it was all so long ago and anyway we’ve not done that sort of thing in years.

The visit will be an interesting challenge for Sinn Fein which is now administering the part of the island which Mrs Windsor claims as her own. The party used to have fairly strong views on the matter and will probably decline to take part in any of the official ceremonies. On the other hand they were quite happy to sit down with George W when he was commissioning war crimes in Iraq so who’s to rule out a private chat over a cup of tea?

You would think that the Irish state has better things to spend its money on right now than a feast of flunkeyism.But the political symbolism of the visit is clear. The Celtic Tiger is rolling over to have its tummy tickled by Mrs Windsor. It is declaring its acceptance of the division of the Irish working class in the clearest possible way and it’s embracing its neo-colonial status in front of the whole world.

The Irish working class has been her before. Below is a superb little polemic by James Connolly about the visit of Queen Victoria. You can change some of the facts and names and Connolly’s words are as relevant now as when he wrote them.

Fellow Workers,

The loyal subjects of Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India, etc., celebrate this year the longest reign on record. Already the air is laden with rumours of preparations for a wholesale manufacture of sham ‘popular rejoicings’ at this glorious (?) commemoration.

Home Rule orators and Nationalist Lord Mayors, Whig politicians and Parnellite pressmen, have ere now lent their prestige and influence to the attempt to arouse public interest in the sickening details of this Feast of Flunkeyism. It is time then that some organised party in Ireland – other than those in whose mouths Patriotism means Compromise, and Freedom, High Dividends – should speak out bravely and honestly the sentiments awakened in the breast of every lover of freedom by this ghastly farce now being played out before our eyes. Hence the Irish Socialist Republican Party – which, from its inception, has never hesitated to proclaim its unswerving hostility to the British Crown, and to the political and social order of which in these islands that Crown is but the symbol – takes this opportunity of hurling at the heads of all the courtly mummers who grovel at the shrine of royalty the contempt and hatred of the Irish Revolutionary Democracy. We, at least, are not loyal men; we confess to having more respect and honour for the raggedest child of the poorest labourer in Ireland today than for any, even the most virtuous, descendant of the long array of murderers, adulterers and madmen who have sat upon the throne of England.

During this glorious reign Ireland has seen 1,225,000 of her children die of famine, starved to death whilst the produce of her soil and their labour was eaten up by a vulture aristocracy, enforcing their rents by the bayonets of a hired assassin army in the pay of the –best of the English Queens’; the eviction of 3,668,000, a multitude greater than the entire population of Switzerland; and the reluctant emigration of 4,186,000 of our kindred, a greater host than the entire people of Greece. At the present moment 78 percent of our wage-earners receive less than £1 per week, our streets are thronged by starving crowds of the unemployed, cattle graze on our tenantless farms and around the ruins of our battered homesteads, our ports are crowded with departing emigrants, and our poorhouses are full of paupers. Such are the constituent elements out of which we are bade to construct a National Festival of rejoicing!

Working-class of Ireland: We appeal to you not to allow your opinions to be misrepresented on this occasion. Join your voice with ours in protesting against the base assumption that we owe to this Empire any other debt than that of hatred of all its plundering institutions. Let this year be indeed a memorable one as marking the date when the Irish workers at last flung off that slavish dependence on the lead of ‘the gentry,’ which has paralysed the arm of every soldier of freedom in the past.

The Irish landlords, now as ever the enemy’s garrison, instinctively support every institution which, like monarchy, degrades the manhood of the people and weakens the moral fibre of the oppressed; the middle-class, absorbed in the pursuit of gold, have pawned their souls for the prostitute glories of commercialism and remain openly or secretly hostile to every movement which would imperil the sanctity of their dividends. The working class alone have nothing to hope for save in a revolutionary reconstruction of society; they, and they alone, are capable of that revolutionary initiative which, with all the political and economic development of the time to aid it, can carry us forward into the promised land of perfect Freedom, the reward of the age-long travail of the people.

To you, workers of Ireland, we address ourselves. AGITATE in the workshop, in the field, in the factory, until you arouse your brothers to hatred of the slavery of which we are all the victims. EDUCATE, that the people may no longer be deluded by illusory hopes of prosperity under any system of society of which monarchs or noblemen, capitalists or landlords form an integral part. ORGANISE, that a solid, compact and intelligent force, conscious of your historic mission as a class, you may seize the reins of p
olitical power whenever possible and, by intelligent application of the working-class ballot, clear the field of action for the revolutionary forces of the future. Let the ‘canting, fed classes’ bow the knee as they may, be you true to your own manhood, and to the cause of freedom, whose hope is in you, and, pressing unweariedly onward in pursuit of the high destiny to which the Socialist Republic invites you, let the words which the poet puts into the mouth of Mazeppa console you amid the orgies of the tyrants of today:

But time at last makes all things even,
And if we do but watch the hour,
There never yet was human power
That could evade, if unforgiven,
The patient hate and vigil long,
Of those who treasure up a wrong.