1/6/2024 0 Comments Don t ever give up![]() ![]() The royals have long claimed that they give the proceeds to charity, after deducting costs, but much of the money has in fact been used to renovate the king’s own properties. Under a custom that dates to the medieval period, the king claims the assets of anyone who dies intestate in the duchies of Cornwall or Lancaster. It isn’t just their wills that have been sealed from public scrutiny for more than a century nothing is transparent. The death of the queen encouraged people to follow the money, which the Guardian has been doing since its Cost of the crown investigation began on the eve of the coronation. This year, it’s hitting £560,000 Graham Smith, Republic Membership has doubled since the coronation. King Charles is seen as a character more likely to please himself, whether in his personal life or his public stance. “While the queen was alive, it was much harder to convince people that getting rid of her was a good idea.” Even among people who were lukewarm about the royals, she was seen to embody the spirit of public service and the connection to the past – its greatest hits – by which the institution justifies itself. “I was a realist,” said Brian Woolneough, 57. That opportunity was emphatically passed up by King Charles, who has given no indication that he is a wind of change. There was a sense among them that her death should have represented a break in the clouds, a moment of clarity in which to examine the institution and see how it might change for the better, even if that didn’t necessarily mean the family “tiptoed away and said sorry, so we could all stop genuflecting”, as Peter McLoughlin, 69, put it. What has happened to galvanise this ambient, abstract disapproval?Īll the protesters I spoke to at the state opening of parliament had joined Republic in the past two years – more than half since the Queen died last September. The royal family stands firmly against those values.” But all that has been true for a very long time it’s more or less what the Levellers said in 1647. ![]() As Smith puts it: “Most people in this country believe in democracy, equality, accountability and so on. The case against having a monarchy is simple. On the death of the queen, we had £70,000 in donations that month. It was £172,000 the next year last year it was £286,000. “Membership has doubled since the coronation. “We’ve now got 140,000 registered supporters – up from 30,000 – and 10,000 members,” says Smith. Really, though, this story takes place in the past four years. Many supporters donate, too, though, so there is little practical difference.) (Members pay dues, while registered supporters just get emails. The number of registered supporters also started growing in 2018. Even over the birth of Prince George, we did a Born Equal campaign.” During the 10s, membership grew by about half, to 2,000 people. We decided to keep on campaigning all the way through the big events. There was a deliberate change of tack to make more noise during royal celebrations: “That plays into the idea that the whole country is celebrating. “These big events are really helpful to us,” he says. There was a membership surge in 2011, when the Prince and Princess of Wales got married, and another two years later, during the queen’s diamond jubilee. When we meet, he walks me through the numbers. Graham Smith, who has run Republic for 20 years, is a softly spoken, unexcitable man. You could say that Republic, the organisation that brought these protesters together, had shot the opening scenes of the monarchy’s disaster movie, the bit where the smouldering cigarette is dropped in the parched forest and no one notices. ![]() Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/Zuma Press Wire/Shutterstock Graham Smith (centre), the chief executive of Republic. ![]()
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