The Queen is Dead; Long Live The King!

LAST Sunday started a real true blue week that was for Great Britain, as the last voting day for a new ruling Conservative Party Leader, who would automatically become the next Prime Minister; on Monday came the official announcement that Lis Truss, the Foreign Secretary, had defeated ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak; on Tuesday, Mrs. Truss flew to Scotland to meet the queen and returned as Prime Minister; on Wednesday she named her new Cabinet and Parliament met for the first time since the third woman prime minister took office (after Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May), all from the Conservative Party.

The optics looked good on screen from Westminster: PM Truss sitting between women and men of colour, representing African and Indian descendants in Britain, with the top positions of Chancellor, Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary not being held by whites – for the first time.

The ruling party seemed bent on showing Labour it could play the “minorities” game better and the new Prime Minister, having outlined her expected right-of-center conservative policies that will protect the rich and tax the poor, was coming under early attack by Opposition Leader Sir Keith Starmer.

The new lady Prime Minister looked and sounded ready to battle her way to the next general elections as early as 2024.
And then came Thursday’s bombshell, starting with news that the queen was still suffering from mobility issues and unable to return to Buckingham Palace for scheduled appointments, then that she was not well but being attended to by doctors and advised to rest, then that her condition was worsening, then expressions of royal concern about her survival, then about the royals flying to Scotland to be by her side – and a ‘drip-drip’ set of reports on BBC World that suggested to me, from very early, that the queen might have died already — and the nation was being softened for the blow of the announcement.

The announcement eventually came in a one-sentence message from the Buckingham Palace, posted on its gates in black, in keeping with the tradition when a British ruler dies.
We’ve become quite accustomed to and expect the exquisite and exceptional choreography and pageantry that attends royal and ceremonial events in the UK, but it’s never been because any one person is smart enough to plan it all, everything instead being planned throughout the reigning monarch’s life, no matter how long — and including what should happen if and when they die.

So, in this queen’s case, they’ve been practising what to do when she died for at least 70 years; and Prince Charles, who’s been preparing to succeed his mom for seven decades and finally got the job at age 73, through a succession transition just as flawless because, here too, it had all been rehearsed since he was only three years old.

The whole issue of what happens “if and when” a king or queen dies in office in the UK, is written in black-and-white — and cast-in-stone — in a plan called “Operation London Bridge,” also hundreds of years old – and through which, when any monarch dies, the heads of government of the 14 countries of which she is still head of state (and world leaders after them) get a coded royal death announcement saying: “London Bridge Has Fallen!”

The world has been mourning the queen while welcoming the new king with a good mix of regret over her death and skepticism about her son and the future of the commonwealth under the new king’s leadership, whether he’ll be able to stay out of trouble and stop courting controversy, even whether he’ll last as long as her.

Naturally, those who miss her more than others feel those who criticize Elizabeth’s legacy are being insensitive, even unfair, but the critics naturally don’t agree.
I won’t hold against anyone anything they feel they should say about the late queen, as I’m instead guided by the following words of wise advice from another late emperor, this time Ethiopia’s Haile Selassie I, King of Kings and Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the closest living being traced to Jesus Christ while he lived — and to whom all kings and queens bowed.

In a book entitled ‘The Wise Mind of H.I.M. Haile Selassie I’, in Chapter One on ‘Peace’ (Section 1:11) the late monarch of the only African country never colonised, but attacked by Italy with bombs blessed by the Pope of the day, Haile Selassie says: ‘Memories of past injustice should not divert us from the more pressing business at hand. We must live in peace with our former colonisers, shunning recrimination and bitterness and foreswearing the luxury of vengeance and retaliation, lest the acid of hatred erase our souls and poison our hearts.’

That said, I am more interested in what the new king will do to about 14 now independent ex-British West Indian colonies’ calls, since 2013, for Reparations for Slavery and Native Genocide.
The Royal Family established the Royal Africa Company in 1655 and opened the way for the Transatlantic slave trade and the royal family grew richer-and-richer off its investments in Chattel Slavery, which was perfected as an advanced form of capitalist accumulation economics in its time — and was, to Britain and Europe, more about making money and building an Empire than about racism and inhumanity.

That’s what I want to know – King Charles on Reparations — and that’s what I’ll look out for during what’s left of my life and his reign, as successive heirs and successors of victims of slavery and perpetrators of what The United Nations has declared ‘The Worst Crime Against Humanity’ in history.

Until the bell tolls for reparations for the 20 million people spread across these 14 Caribbean nations, whether under King Charles III or not, all I’ll say (now and in this space today) is: The Queen is Dead, Long Live the King!