Why I'll be protesting the Queen's visit

The upcoming state visit by Queen Elizabeth II, the first in 100 years, will certainly be an historic event. For the political establishment and the obsequious Irish press, it represents nothing less than the end of Irish history: a sign that we have reached political maturity as a culture and can accept an empty and meaningless apology for the oppression we suffered under the bootheels of the British Empire with good grace and finally consign Irish anti-imperialism to the dustbin of history. Meanwhile, for the various dissident republican sects that inhabit the fringes of the Irish political landscape, it provides an opportunity to smash shit on the streets of Dublin not seen since Love Ulster (because, of course, the bank guarantee, NAMA, or the IMF/ECB bailout, weren't worth a riot, as they didn't involve loads of Protestants walking down O'Connell St.).

Of course, it's easy to dismiss the "800 years" brigade as brainless, clichéd, anachronistic and, at worst, bigoted (and not without justification) and to forget that, more that just an empty slogan, that "800 years" is shorthand for Ireland's long and bloody colonial history under the British Empire - a history characterised by brutality, poverty and subjugation, which continues to shape our culture, economy and identity today^* - a part of our collective memory which cannot simply be annihilated. As a symbol, the British Queen is the physical embodiment of that State, that Empire and that history. Moreover, Elizabeth herself was head of the British Armed Forces while they carried out atrocities in the Six Counties, and notoriously decorated the Parachute Regiment after Bloody Sunday. Her troops are still garrisoned in the Six Counties, and the threat of a return to British direct rule still hangs like Damocles' sword over the proceedings in the Stormont Parliament.

Outside of Ireland, then, her armed forces still continue to engage in aggressive, illegal and imperialist warfare - albeit now playing second fiddle to the US - leaving a trail of destruction, death, torture and violence in their wake, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, and perhaps quite soon in Iran, which has punctuated the history of the 21st Century. Additionally, as a hereditary monarch, the Queen is the physical embodiment of privilege, inequality and the class system: a wealthy parasite on the British working class and a symbol of working people's subjugation everywhere.

So, far from being a sign of maturity, this state visit by the Queen represents the ultimate victory of British imperialism over the Irish people, the rehabilitation of the British Empire by the fawning Irish political class, the reduction of our anti-imperialist history to abstract words on a page (a past which we have supposedly somehow transcended), the tacit acceptance of the permanence of partition and British military presence in the Six Counties.

In short: Fuck imperialism. Fuck the class system. Fuck the Queen.

(eirigí's No Royal Visit's facebook page)

Poster/Facebook profile pic, for those who want it:


* To take a concrete manifestation of this, consider why it is that Ireland never industrialised, has no indigenous industry worth speaking of, and is consequently dependant on foreign direct investment and the whims of the global markets.