Disqualified

I couldn't do that. I couldn't take an oath while crossing my fingers and believe that gave me an excuse to lie. That's what little children do. It's not proper for adults - certainly not for adults who become MPs and magistrates.

I'm disqualified from being either. Plenty of MPs and magistrates lie when they take the oath, or make a mental reservation that, if they had the chance, they would vote against a monarchy or call for a referendum to let the people decide.

I don't think I'd make a particularly good MP, though once I would have liked to stand for parliament. I briefly thought I could consider being a magistrate but didn't have to investigate further. I'm disqualified. If there were a referendum I would vote for a republic and that means I'm disqualified from a range of positions. I couldn't even join the police although, oddly, the Royal Navy is exempt from the oath of allegiance.

Of course, I can lobby my MP and ask him to vote for the abolition of the monarchy. But my MP was only able to take his seat after swearing allegiance to the Queen and her heirs. Moreover, even if he changed his mind and became an ardent republican, Members of Parliament aren't allowed to pass any laws affecting the Crown without the Queen's express permission.

There's criticism of royal expenses but, on the whole, the Queen is admired. I don't think republicans would win if there were a referendum to abolish the monarchy. Although I would almost certainly vote for abolition, I don't make a great deal of fuss about the matter. I have many more urgent political concerns.

Yet it irks me that I, and other honest republicans, are banned from so many posts simply because we would be unwilling to comence our public service with a public lie. It worries me that, were people to vote for an honest republican in such numbers that he or she were elected, the new MP would be banned from the House of Commons. And I'm really annoyed that MPs aren't allowed to debate this unless they first ask for the Queen's permission.

There's a simple petition on the Downing Street website which urges a change in the law. It asks that MPs and lords should no longer be required to swear allegiance to the Crown. In my opinion, it would be a good first step in making this country a proper democracy and opening public service to all who care about it. It would widen the choice for voters and put honest republicans on equal terms with those who swear dishonest oaths.

The petition closes tomorrow (5th July, 2008). It already has sufficient signatures to gain a response from the government. If you would like to sign the petition and receive that government response when the petition closes, click here. Monarchists can sign as well as republicans. The petition seeks honesty, responsibility in public life, and true democracy - that is, giving all the people the right to choose.

Religion, guns and country lanes

(first posted 20th April)

Obama's "wobble" may be over now, though we shan't know until the Pennsylvania primary. It was strange to hear what he'd done wrong. He'd suggested that some small-town Americans were defending the values of gun-ownership and religion out of frustration and bitterness. It didn't seem an unusual or controversial statement. Of course people who see jobs vanish and communities under threat look for shared values, often rooted in an imagined past. And it's easier to place blame on outsiders and newcomers than to analyse the problems of global economics or the defects of big corporations.

But many United States citizens see small-town America as part of their essential identity. Small towns are the inheritors of the pioneers or the settler villages where, according to myth, the white inhabitants needed guns to fight off attacks from marauding natives. The barbarity with which native villages were destroyed and crops uprooted is less well known and I've never heard an American cite Washington's command to employ terror as a weapon against native men, women and children.

Obama didn't address the complexity of history. He certainly didn't talk about massacres and violence. He simply suggested that small-town Americans were not perfect - and was instantly accused of elitism. Columnists suggested that this might lose him the nomination or the election. He had offended against the vision America has of itself.

United States myth-making is potent and piecemeal. Hollywood contributes, and advertising, and the sonorous phrases of the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address and the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge, recited daily by schoolchildren facing the flag, was, like the others, adopted, defended and altered when the United States felt itself at risk. Until 1942 it could involve a salute with the right arm outstretched and raised slightly above the shoulder with the palm facing down. This pose ended only when the U.S. entered the Second World War. It was evidently awkward that American schoolchildren declaiming "One country! One language! One flag!" looked strikingly similar to little Nazis.

I learnt about Britain from biscuit tins and Quality Street boxes. Tudor houses and pretty villages meant England. So did the redcoated soldier standing just behind a woman in a purple bonnet and fancy dress. England was a stagecoach drawn up outside a country inn. Scotland was bright tartan, castles and bagpipes. It was highly improbable and soldiers were expected to die for it. "There'll always be an England/ While there's a country lane," the song went.

I'd never seen a country lane, though I knew the paths through Richmond Park. Nobody put bright modern council estates on biscuit tins. Perhaps the government would take more care of council estates and the people who live there if they saw them as essential England.

I wonder what bitterness is inspired by our myths of an England that never was.