• DOI:10.1080/0307102042000337297
• Corpus ID: 144979227

The conditions of royal rule: Australian and British socialist and labour attitudes to the monarchy, 1901–11.

@article{Kirk2005TheCO,
  title={The conditions of royal rule: Australian and British socialist and labour attitudes to the monarchy, 1901–11.},
  author={Neville Kirk},
  journal={Social History},
  year={2005},
  volume={30},
  pages={64 - 88}
}

• N. Kirk
• Published 1 February 2005
• History, Political Science
• Social History

The various ‘crises’ and scandals that have recently gripped the royal family and the royal household have reawakened serious questions about the future health of the monarchy and the renewed potential for the appeal of republican ideas in Britain and the Commonwealth. They have also been a factor in the growing interest in what has traditionally been a neglected topic of historical research: the behaviour of, and popular attitudes towards, the monarchy in the past. Offered as a contribution to this renewed interest, this article examines similarities and differences in Australian and British socialist and labour attitudes to the monarchy between the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and the coronation of George V in 1911 – attitudes that have barely figured in the published historical record for the period in question. My substantive focus is set within a historiographical context in which three different and largely competing viewpoints may be identified. The first of these, based mainly upon records left by those in positions of power and authority, and essentially reflecting and reinforcing ‘the view from above’, highlights consensus, continuity and stability. Thus David Cannadine and Linda Colley have elegantly and forcefully argued that the rituals, ceremonies and ‘invented traditions’ of the British monarchy in the modern period have had the desired effect of cultivating a strong and enduring sense of unity, loyalty and obedience among many of the monarch’s subjects, both at home and abroad. There is undoubtedly a good deal of truth in this argument, as reflected in part in the remarkable longevity of the monarchy in the modern