The Radical Independence Campaign issued the following statement for the Calton Hill republican rally on May 6th.
WE ARE CITIZENS NOT SUBJECTS
The Radical Independence Campaign initiated the 2023 Declaration of Calton Hill, signed by nearly 3000 people. We welcome those attending today’s rally organised by Our Republic. We are here to challenge Charles’ coronation – a UK state-orchestrated ‘Britfest’.
We are expected to give homage to Charles and all his heirs as if we still lived under a feudal monarchy. Under feudalism the state was ruled directly from above by kings and queens, backed by whatever level of force they thought necessary. Lords, ready to swear homage, were licensed to oppress their feudal ‘inferiors’. In return they provided military backing for the monarchy whenever required.
There have been significant changes since those days, but is it is revealing that the British ruling class still wants to impose a servile subject status upon us. We are not citizens but live in a state where sovereignty lies with the Crown-in-Westminster. This means Charles exerts little power in his own right. The Windsors enjoy obscene privileges in terms of property, income and status, but these are rewards given for their role in supporting and promoting the interests of today’s wider British ruling class.
So, anybody declaring their homage to the dysfunctional Windsor family, is also being asked by Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer to give sanction to the City of London (with its special UK constitutional protection) and the greed-driven corporate CEOs (hiding their cronyism behind a screen of Westminster-backed market confidentiality). Together they helped bring about the 2008 Financial Crash and have made massive profits during Covid. Meanwhile, any security of employment and domicile, access to health and social care are being decimated. We are also being asked to approve major attacks on our democratic rights, whether as striking workers, environmental demonstrators, asylum seekers, potential voters or critics of the BBC. And that now extends to the Proclaimers’ I’m Gonna Be – 500 miles from that anti-democratic cesspit in Westminster and Buckingham Palace. Nobody elected Sunak to be UK PM. And nobody voted for Charles Windsor.
And in Scotland, we now have another deeply anti-democratic Crown institution, the Supreme Court, denying our right to hold IndyRef2. Exercising this right was voted for by the Scottish people in the 2021 Holyrood election. But the Tories, with active complicity or little opposition from Labour, has gone further. They are now rolling back the powers of Scottish parliament voted for by 74% in 1998. Power is being transferred from Holyrood to the UK hub just off the Royal Mile. This is BOSS – British Occupied Subject Scotland.
We no longer have the constitutional means to achieve Scottish independence. Our protest today anticipates the organised withdrawal of participation in the UK state’s directly imposed institutions. And beyond that we look to extra-constitutional, non-violent, direct action until we have completed Scotland’s unfinished Democratic Revolution.
Nae tae BOSS – British Occupied Subject Scotland
Aye tae a Scottish Democratic Republic
Freedom come all ye
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also see:
James Connolly and the coronation of Edward VII – James Connolly, Marxist Internet Archive
What does republicanism mean? – Allan Armstrong, bella caledonia
Announcing the 2023 Declaration of Calton Hill – Allan Armstrong, bella caledonia
RIC reconstituted and the 2023 Declaration of Calton Hill – Allan Armstrong