‘Artists are the gatekeepers of truth’ said Paul Robeson. As a playwright I have to write this:
Never mind the bollocks, “God Save the Queen” and all the rest of it. Political people must assess political reality. And the political reality is that Queen Elizabeth II of England was primarily Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. These armed forces swore allegiance to “Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors” and to no one and nothing else.
During her reign these armed forces did a lot of killing. So if there is mourning to be done, let us mourn the hundreds of thousands of the wretched of the earth who laid down their lives battling the forces of the British Crown, occupying their lands and carrying off their riches. They were brave and impoverished human beings who fought desperately and against all odds to free their nations from foreign domination.
Rebels gave their lives to this noble cause in Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Egypt, Kenya, Oman, Jordan, Borneo, Uganda, South Africa, Namibia, Dhofar, Biafra, Aden, Sierra Leone, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen and of course Ireland.
During the reign of Elizabeth II, British Crown forces ruthlessly put down such rebellions by all means necessary, often employing soldiers of one Commonwealth nation against the people of another when – as in Malaya – soldiers of the home nation could no longer stomach the murder of their own population.
During the reign of Elizabeth II, British Crown forces fought nineteen wars against uprisen peoples. During her reign there were concentration camps in Kenya, where rebels were beaten to death and castrated, as was accepted recently in the British High Court. British crown forces conducted a murderous campaign that left tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, dead. Around 1.5 million Kenyans were confined to a network of detention camps and heavily patrolled villages in what has been described as “Britain’s Gulag”.
The British Crown supported the mediaeval butchers and international drug dealers who fought against a popular revolution in Afghanistan. The regime they supported after the 2001 invasion – which was carried out by known drug dealers, armed religious fanatics and brutal warlords – installed an oil executive as president, and legalised rape.
The military and political tactics used during this bloody, multinational and protracted counterrevolutionary rampage were painstakingly described for the benefit of future Crown forces by one of Queen Elizabeth’s most decorated soldiers, General Sir Frank Kitson, her personal aide-de-camp from 1983 to 1985.
General Kitson learned his trade during the Kenyan bloodletting and later led the department tasked with “dirty tricks” against the Catholic community in the north of Ireland, including encouraging the murder of well-known civilians such as local shopkeepers by armed gangs so as to sicken the local population and turn it away from the fight.
Kitson’s writings advocate “psyops” or acts of “black propaganda” such as dressing up as rebels to carry out outrages that can be blamed on rebels themselves. Kitson blithely recommends military penetration of all aspects of civilian government as secretly as possible, so as to control political outcomes. He suggests that at times of rebellion the law can be used as “a propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the public”.
History records that it wasn’t just armed rebels British Crown forces killed during this bloody repression. So let us mourn the million or so people who died in the Indonesian slaughter in 1965, during the anti-communist campaign, when British and Australian Crown forces stood in the wings. They directed operations, provided vital radio communications and organised political cover for the massacres, which were carried out by specially selected local gangsters and designed to destroy the roots of the biggest communist movement in Asia.
Let us mourn the ten thousand people deliberately starved to death in Biafra from 1967 – 1970, including six thousand children. The decisive role played in this by British Crown forces was exposed in 2020 in the Guardian by the British writer Fredrick Forsyth, who was there at the time working for the British. And of course this is a catastrophe very similar to the current situation in Yemen which the British Crown is deliberately perpetuating, via their proxies the Saudis.
Let us mourn too the more recent and more mind-boggling five hundred thousand children reported by the UN to have died as a result of illegal sanctions on Iraq jointly enforced by British crown forces who had after all secretly participated in the creation and perpetuation of the Saddam regime in the first place.
Let us mourn the two million deaths that have resulted from the 2002 invasion of Iraq jointly by British Crown forces, which western military forces refused to count but which The Lancet later exposed.
Let us also mourn the hopes and dreams of the countless millions that suffer poverty and disease in the Commonwealth to this day. That vast well of wretchedness that looks set to last forever as western oligarchies suck out the life blood of these nations with the willing help of Oxbridge-educated elites and Sandhurst-trained militaries.
Let us name the deadly western oligarchies that owe their reign and security to British Crown forces and their allies: oil, gas and mining; banking and finance; and of course the military-industrial complex.
Was Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth of England, monarch to a fifth of the world’s population, personally ignorant of all this slaughter and suffering? Did she tell herself she was a force for light in an otherwise infinite darkness? Or did she secretly see herself as matriarch to an ancient warrior clan that deserved respect for its magnificence and irresistible power? It is after all one of the greatest and longest lasting dynasties the world has ever seen, protected by a nuclear-powered army who have sworn allegiance to her heirs and successors and no one and nothing else.
So many social and military catastrophes, so much misery and blood that so many in Britain remain ignorant of, or refuse to acknowledge. So much easier to go along with the notion that the successors to the British crown are a strange and possibly dysfunctional family, but nonetheless reassuringly enduring as leaders of an otherwise divided nation. Or simply that she was a nice old lady.
Let us say it. She was proud commander-in-chief of one of the most ruthless and aggressive military forces in human history as it sought to destroy world-wide opposition to the military, political and financial domination of her class over the world, no matter what the human cost.
Let us mourn the fallen with all our hearts, and swear allegiance to their memory.
Ed Edwards has just written a play for the political comedian and activist Mark Thomas, the play is currently in development and will appear at next year’s Edinburgh festival and will tour shortly thereafter.
