Coronation.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 15, 16 June 1911, Page 8

Coronation.

The Coronation of King George is a ceremonial of no value to tlio workingclass. Quite the contrary.

Kings are oxifc of date. The hereditary principle is indefensible or Democracy is a fraud. Monarchy is a superstition, and Kingship a fetich. Progress has spewed them out, evolution has proved them useless. They linger as a crass anomaly. They are ornamental merely, and exist by the grace of Plutocracy. Cunning Money Power.

Economically, Kingship is a couple of systems behind the times. Kingship lasts in Great Britain by that curious turn of events which at the Revolution led to a compromise between the victorious middle-class and the old feudal nobility, whereby the nobility retained the forms and ornamentation of power and the real power became Capitalistic.

ivingship struts the stage a little longer by permission of Capitalism and as its creature. It is now a Capitalistic institution, and is for all tho disgraces, deceptions and degradations of the present system.

Neither good kings nor bad kings make any difference to the workingclass. Workers' conditions and their lot arise from workers' exploitation by profit-mongers.

Let the papers and the politicians and the parsons be never so fulsome and greasy nothing can obscure the essential fact that lloyalty is undemocratic and anti - democratic. Royalty is an effete and dangerous institution, dangerous because effete and marionette of Monopoly. If harmless of itself, for some reasons stated, Kingship is nevertheless a sinister force in its psychological communication, and for what it symbolises i*as tempered by Cai^italism. In respect to the Coi'on at km no real and truo democrat but what must feel heartache at the sycophancy now running amok. It is painful and insulting, is symptomatic of the terrible influences pressing mankind upon its belly.

The extravagant laudation of a very ordinary man, the clothing hini with God-like attributes and virtues , tlio paeans of gross adulation poured forth from press and platform—all this is co

palpably and plainly pretence and hypocrisy—or worse, vulgar toadying and menacing snobbery—that its very condonation pro-claims society's degeneracy. Always the lavishness of a people's ceremonial is in direct proportion to their servility. The real curse of tho Coronation jingoism is the attempt at moulding the school kiddies' plastic minds to how and defer in grovelling reverence to outgrown ideas and institutions. Always a people which defers gets enslaved. In our schools, in preparation for tli© Coronation, brains have been rotted with suggestions and instructions of barbaric origin. Gaudy splendour and bulging Imperialism make the cross upon which our childhood is crucified. All that is passing around us in tho way of lickspittle and slobber, show and advertisement, is something to shrink from in wretched dismay. How can we respect a press which oils and lies as the press is doing? How can wo be tolerant with a church which grovels to Fashion and Court, and whose ''ministers of God" paint for popularity a King that never was and never will b-e ? Think you C'arlyle had made George V. a hero ? The Coronation is symbol of Caste, of unjust distribution of wealth, of right of Royalty to gorge at the people's expense. "Loyalty," "Patriotism," "Empire"—are the workers forever to be economically leg-ironed by echoing such cries? Those who teach them tho cries de-spiso them, spurn them, prey upon them. There are thousands deifying the King who would forever imprison mothers of the workingclass in the prison or poorhouso, and drive to the streets of shame the daughters of the workingclass endlessly. There are those exulting in the Coronation luxxiry who are careless to the point of wickedness for millions left to fight in the -awful abyss of semi-starvation and social misery. The Coronation is the propaganda of Royalism. Capitalism is. pulling the strings. The aim is to distract and betray class rightly struggling to be free. " Hence, the paraded' gravity, grandeur, solemnity: in reverence is there spinelessness. The workingclass of New Zealand ought to refrain from participation in the Coronation. Let the workingclass celebrate its own days, organise its own processions, strengthen its own demonstrations. Labor at the Coronation is Labor biting the dust. Labor developed in discontent, antagonism to caste distinctions and ruling-class ceremonial, and as foe of ruling-class conventions and customs. It was republican, antiimperialistic, eo«ial-democratic. Labor at the Coronation is falsifying its own

foundations and its own objectives

In the land of the Kaiser the workingclass party is braver. Germany is the Empire of the biggest workers' vote in the world, and a Socialist vote at that; 720,000 workers pay dues to the Socialist party. At the far-famed congress of last year the Social Democratic party carried this resolution: "The conference further declares the participation in Court ceremonies and monarchical expressions of loyalty to be incompatible with our Social-democratic principles, and enjoins on members of the party. the diity of abstaining from such manifestations." Worker, dare to bo a Daniel; daro to stand alone. Now's the day and now'a the hoiir. The present holocaust of isho apotiieosis of Xroie, tiio falsehoods and the Pecksniffian. sham— these cry aloud for a repudiation and a recoil.