While some Britons are looking forward to the coronation of King Charles III. prepared by buying royal paraphernalia or cooking for street parties, a 21-year-old student in the northern city of Leeds instead ordered 50 beach balls labeled “No more royals”.
The plan is to toss them around on Saturday at a protest in Trafalgar Square, central London, organized by Republic, a group representing Britain’s anti-monarchy movement which its members say is being energized by the coronation becomes.
“The coronation does a lot of good for the movement just because it’s itself,” said student Imogen McBeath in an interview. “Absolutely ridiculous.”
During the events surrounding the death of Queen Elizabeth II last year, the British republican movement laid down, wary of appearing insensitive in a time of grief. But with attention returning to the royal family, the Republic’s anti-monarchists, whose thousands of members range from their teens to their 90s, have adopted a new strategy.
They said they expected at least 1,000 people to come to Saturday’s protests, wearing yellow, holding banners and chanting “Not my king.” Several anti-coronation parties are also planned across the country, with members aiming to use the coronation of King Charles as proof of the absurdity of a modern-day monarchy.
“They will put a glittering gold crown on him in a Christian church“ Matt Turnbull, a 35-year-old Republican who lives in London and planned to attend the protest, said in an interview. “Look at it and just accept that something about it feels weird in 2023.”
Mr Turnbull said he expected the coronation to make his stomach churn, but it also felt good that he was not alone in feeling that way. “The worse I feel when I see it,” he said, “the quicker we’ll work to get rid of it.”
That Charles appears to be less popular than Elizabeth, his mother, also raises the hopes of anti-monarchists. Although 58 percent of respondents in a recent Poll by YouGov Commissioned by the BBC to say it still prefers a monarch to an elected head of state, the figures also suggested a change could be afoot, with just 32 per cent of people aged 18 to 22 backing the idea .
Riz Possnett, 19, a University of Oxford student who uses she/they pronouns, said the monarchy and its colonial legacy are an outdated symbol of modern, multicultural Britain.
“British identity can come from better places than an unelected king,” they said. “The coronation is a reminder of how strange and archaic our system is.”
You and Mx. McBeath, who also uses she/they pronouns, said they once showed their contempt for the monarchy by sneaking into the King’s Bed at Windsor Castle, a building that can be toured as a tourist attraction, and messing around read Prince Harry’s autobiography in protest.
They said the coronation was a key moment to highlight the idea that the only reason Charles will have his own party and holiday is because he was born into the right family – especially as many people in Britain struggle to afford food and electricity.
“I think the pomp and ceremony of all this, the king with a crown, is going to feel like a slap in the face to the people who are fighting,” Mx said. Possnett.
After organizers of the coronation invited millions of Britons to take an oath of homage to the monarch and his descendants – a proposal that met with fierce criticism from many quarters — a friend of Mx. McBeath’s wrote an alternative pledge. “Swearing allegiance to someone and all their children is not democracy,” Mx said. McBeath.
The alternative pledge swears allegiance to “the living earth and her people; not just any nation state or monarch. I will uphold the values of democracy, solidarity, justice, peace and love.”
Mx. McBeath said they planned to attend the protest in Trafalgar Square on Saturday to hear speeches, sing and chant.
“My goal is to have more fun than all the monarchists around,” they said.
