Barbados declares itself a republic. Yes! It can be done!

Ceremony swearing in Dame Sandra Mason as Barbados’ first President, November 29, 2021.

For the information of readers, we are reposting two articles on the declaration of Barbados, November 30, 2021 that it will become a republic.

Renewal Update

Today, November 30, Barbados became a Republic. The Republic of Barbados was declared at a ceremony late in the evening on November 29 at the National Heroes Square in the capital, Bridgetown, to coincide with the anniversary of Barbados’ formal independence from Britain, 55 years ago.

With this action, Barbados has become the fourth of Britain’s previous colonies in the Caribbean to become a republic, following Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and Dominica which have had already taken this path forward.

Royal family’s fortune from the slave trade

From the enslavement and deportation of the Irish to British colonies in Oceania and the West Indies to the kidnapping of Africans, the British Crown made much of their vast personal wealth from the human slave trade. Every monarch and their family from Elizabeth Tudor onwards were financiers and beneficiaries of this trade in human flesh.

Queen Victoria – The Famine Queen

On the Occasion of Imperial Day (now called Victoria Day)

Recently campaigns have been underway in Ireland, like that in Cork, to remove the name Queen Victoria, known as the “Famine Queen”, from street signs. That her main statue at Leinster House in Dublin survived until 1948 (26 years after the creation of the Free State) is something of a miracle. She was monarch when Ireland was beset by a famine organized by rich English and Irish landowners and millions starved or emigrated. After gathering dust in Ireland for some years, Victoria got a trip to Sydney, Australia to be “planted” outside the Queen Victoria Building, despite some bids from Canadian buyers. Writing in the Irish Times, Myles na gCopaleen (Brian O’Nolan/Flann O’Brien) the following month was not overly bothered with its removal – her statutes were more harmful than her statues, as he put it. “Besides, look at it this way,” he wrote. “Time has given the mere Irish their revenge. The fact is that Victoria has turned green. Of hue she approaches our decent Irish letterbox. And it is the price of her.”

Excerpt from Tony Seed, Signs of Change in Ireland

Poll shows Canadians do not care for monarchy

Royal jubilee tours’ stop in Canada not welcome

The latest Angus Reid poll confirms that 51 per cent of respondents are in favour of abolishing the monarchy in the generations to come, while 24 per cent of respondents are unsure. Files from news agencies report the following:

The rest of the wasteful and farcical tour

Royal jubilee tours’ stop in Canada not welcome

Heritage Canada announced that during the visit of Prince Charles and Camilla to Ottawa on May 18, Charles will be invested as an Extraordinary Commander of the Order of Military Merit by the Governor General, lay a wreath at the National War Memorial, then meet with the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.

Reports of a sanitized “royal tour”

Royal jubilee tours’ stop in Canada not welcome

Bronze statue of Shanawdithit, believed to be the last of the Beothuk, stands at Boyd’s Cove on Newfoundland’s northeast coast.

Charles and Camilla arrived in St. John’s, Newfoundland on May 17 with an official welcome by the Prime Minister and Governor General and inspection of a guard of honour, a prayer in Inuktitut, Innu drumming and Mi’kmaq music, and visit to the place called “Government House.” It is called “Government House” even though it is the residence of the Lt. Governor of Newfoundland and Labrador who represents the British Crown – a constant reminder that Canada’s institutions pay obeyance to a foreign monarch. There a ceremony in memory of Indigenous victims and survivors of residential schools was held. Then a meeting with Campaign for Wool Canada and a visit to Quidi Vidi, a former fishing village, artisans and a brewery. They then left for Ottawa.

High time Canadians renounced the monarchy!

The heir to the English throne Prince Charles and his wife Camilla Parker Bowles are visiting Canada from May 17 to 19. They are called “working Royals.” These are members of the British Royal Family who live off the wealth produced by the British working people and Crown holdings, and on this basis are paid to represent the Royal Family. The Trudeau government’s ministry called Heritage Canada announced that they are visiting three cities — St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Ottawa and Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. It is all part of a ” platinum jubilee tour” to mark the current monarch’s 70 years on the English throne. The so-called working members of the British royal family have been dispatched to visit the 14 Commonwealth “realms” — former British colonies that retain the British monarch as their official head of state. These “Platinum Jubilee” tours have so far taken different members of the House of Windsor to six Caribbean countries, Australia and Papua New Guinea, and now, the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall have arrived in Canada.

Barbados sheds imperial monarchy

Countries around the world are re-examining their post-colonial identity after Barbados moved to remove the English queen as the head of state. The island has said that it is planning to become a republic as it moves to withdraw from the Commonwealth and “leave its colonial past behind”.Most of the population of Barbados have ancestors who were victims of colonial slavery. It is estimated that between 1627 to 1807, some 387,000 Africans were shipped to the island against their will by English slave traders.

The Queen’s Speech – Eva Dance

We are not in this together, because the authorities in command have for thirty years unleashed a vicious anti-social agenda on society. The motto of the ruling classes today is: All for One. That’s it.

For only the fifth time in her 68 years as “Queen of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland” and “Head of State of the entire British Commonwealth of Nations”, on Sunday, April 5, Elizabeth II gave a special address “to the nation and to her subjects”. The monarch has now cancelled the artillery salute on the occasion of her birthday for the first ever time as “inappropriate.” 

The media and pundits, including those employed by CBC and CTV,  lauded the speech to the skies saying that, even though it was less than five minutes long, its “We’re all in this together” message was very sincere and heartfelt and brought tears to their eyes.

For your information: British royal wedding II

Front page of The Sun newspaper on January 13, 2005 shows a photograph of Britain’s Prince Harry wearing a red and black swastika armband and an army shirt with Nazi regalia at a friend’s fancy dress party, which he attended on January 8, 2005 – two weeks before Queen Elizabeth was due to lead Britain’s holocaust memorial events. He later apologized.

Once again, the media has been carrying wall-to-wall coverage fawning over yet another royal wedding held on May 19 of the Victoria Day weekend formerly celebrated by imperial decree of 1904 throughout the British Empire as Imperial Day to honour Queen Victoria’s birthday. Every hook is being used to catch one’s attention: a “Canadian connection”; a multimillionaire “American princess”; the war pilot and Invictus Games of “wounded warriors”; a dysfunctional family; “expectations” of the new African-American member of “the family”; the royal bling, etc. 

May 18 holidays

Canada and Quebec should be renewed on a modern basis

Monument to the Patriots in Napierville, Quebec, which reads, “It is here that the Republic of Lower Canada was proclaimed on November 4, 1838 by Robert Nelson. I remember.”

May 18 is “Victoria Day” – an official holiday celebrating the birthday of the Queen of England. The holiday is named after Queen Victoria (1819-1901) and has been commemorated in Canada since 1845. In Quebec, the national holiday, called Patriots’ Day, celebrates the memory of the Quebec Patriots who fought and faced the guns, exile and the gallows of the British colonial power in 1837-1838.

The dodgy ‘Duke of Cornwall’ and his dirty dealings

Renewed focus on the “Duke of Cornwall” and his so-called “human rights” – Following a British Supreme Court ruling that the correspondence of the Prince of Wales to government must be released, the Kernow branch of the Celtic League assert that the activities of his estate in Cornwall should also come under focus, and they want people to get involved. MICHAEL CHAPPELL*

Monstrous hypocrisy: Duke Charles and the greening of Cornwall

Incensed to read a recent article in the Independent newspaper – ‘Prince warns of planet in crisis’ Independent The News Matrix: Thursday 26 February 2015 – the people of Cornwall responded in kind.

Duke Charles of Cornwall – not to forget Prince of Wales and Duke of Rothesay; Prince and High Steward of Scotland and Lord of the Isles; Admiral in the Royal Canadian Navy, General in the Canadian Army and General in the Royal Canadian Air Force*; and Extra Knight of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle – is reported to have addressed the Royal Society in London on Feb. 25 warning that global warming is “already causing ecosystem collapse, loss of habitation, poverty, starvation, migration and conflict.” The prince declared: “Actions which are good for the planet are also good for human health.”

The monarch-in-parliament and the use of the royal prerogative

The Use of the Royal Prerogative

Royal assent, royal consent – The beneficiaries of the Royal Prerogative

The archaic character of the Westminster parliamentary system has been further exposed by the publication on January 15, 2013 of a previously confidential Whitehall pamphlet entitled “Queen’s or Prince’s Consent,” publically indicating for the first time the extent to which senior royals are asked to give their consent to legislation. The 23-page document, now available on the Cabinet Office website, details situations where this Royal Consent is required and gives various examples where it has been sought.

Scottish independence: ‘We are not amused.’

Steve Bell in The Guardian, 16 Sep 2014

15 September 2014: The British Queen Elizabeth II warned voters to “think very carefully about the future” before the Scottish independence referendum. House of Windsor soft-speak for “don’t dare vote Yes.” The Windsor family has holiday homes at Balmoral Castle, Aberdeenshire and Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh. The royal injunction issued as part of the fear-mongering “Better Together” campaign reminds us that the fiction that the “constitutional monarch has no power” and that the Queen of England is just a “titular head of state” and not involved in politics – a romantic institution of another supposedly “shared” British institution that is not of much relevance – is a fraud.

Reality check: The Windsor family’s Nazi king of England

Hitler, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in October 1937. Joseph Goebbels wrote of the former King Edward VIII: “It’s a shame he is no longer king. With him we would have entered into an alliance.”

The great times they could have had

By PAUL FOOT

Wallis: Secret Lives of the Duchess of Windsor by Charles Higham

Sidgwick, 419 pp, £17.95, June 1988, ISBN 0 283 99627 7

The Secret File of the Duke of Windsor by Michael Bloch

Bantam, 326 pp, £14.95, August 1988, ISBN 0 593 01667 X

Original source: London Review of Books, Vol. 10 No. 16 · 15 September 1988, pages 12-13 | 3450 words

A GREAT MANY BOOKS and articles have been published recently about the possibility that a former head of MI5 was the agent of a foreign power. Could there be anything more horrible, more unthinkable? Well, yes, according to Charles Higham’s extraordinary biography, there could. He suggests that not long ago the most dangerous agent of a foreign power was the King; and the second most dangerous was the King’s lover. Both were sympathetic to, and possibly active agents for, Mussolini and Hitler at a time when the British Government was about to declare war on Italy and Germany.

Reality check: Windsor family – the admirers of fascism

Charles Windsor, the heir to the British throne, told an individual at the Canadian Immigration Museum in Halifax on Monday May 19th that, “Putin is doing just about the same as Hitler,” ostensibly relating to the accession of Crimea to Russia in March. The venue was a meeting with World War II veterans organized by the Harper government. His press entourage was quick to sensationalize the seeming “private” comment.

What the Queen of Canada is up to

Daily Mail, UK (Dec 12) – THE Queen was “upset” about police officers eating nuts left out for guests before the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles, the trial into alleged phone hacking at the News of the World has heard.

The royals, US infantile propaganda and the republic

The American social and aristocratic class is as rigidly hierarchical as the British monarchy that the US media seems to deride. In fact, evidence shows that those born into the top one per cent continue to enjoy the benefits of the system far more than those at the bottom. The system favours the top one per cent disproportionately to the detriment of others.

By TONY SEED

(July 25, 2013, revised April 1, 2021) – THE omnipresent American media may be cynically mocking the so-called royal baby fever and paparazzi in the United Kingdom after Kate Middleton gave birth to a son on Monday, but its social structures and aristocratic class system are just as fossilized as that of any feudal monarchy and the House of Windsor with its obscene wealth. According to Bruce Covert of ThinkProgress, a think tank linked to the Obama faction, American children have very little chance of climbing out of the social class they’re born into.

Canada Day with the royals (II): Reject Harper’s fascist one nation politics

Part two of a two-part series by TONY SEED. Part one is here.

(July 1, 2001) – THE Canada Day editorial of the Halifax Chronicle Herald is an incoherent rant pregnant with veiled threats against the Canadian people emanating from divine right.

It gives real meaning to “smitten” as in its banner headline “Canadians smitten [1] with royal newlyweds.”

Canada Day with the royals (1): We are not ‘smitten’ nor ‘smote’ nor amused

Protesters wait for the arrival of Britain’s Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, in Montreal, November 10, 2009. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi (CANADA ROYALS CONFLICT)

Part one of a two part series by TONY SEED, Part two is here.

HALIFAX (July 1, 2011, revised July 4) – THE July 1st headline of the Halifax Chronicle Herald leaps into never-never land with its banner of another royal tour: “Canadians smitten [1] with royal newlyweds.” The entire front page of the second section is also given over to fawning coverage of the alleged affair. Then you read more carefully. “A small crowd … at the government airport.” A “walk-about” amongst tourists to the nation’s capital with nothing else to do but touch the elephant! 

Reality check: The Windsor family wealth

THE British royal family, the Windsors, refuse to disclose their personal wealth. They also protest that property Elizabeth Windsor holds as the “sovereign” should not be included, although she has the exclusive use of it and will be able to pass on that use to her children.

In 2008 the Times newspaper Rich List placed Ms Windsor at number 264 in its report of the UK’s wealthiest individuals. Her personal wealth was put at £320 million. (Note: £1 = $1.6)

Actions speak louder than words – Queen of England’s visit to Ireland; what they didn’t show in the media

Irish Republicans gather on O’Connell street in Dublin to demonstrate against the visit of the Queen of England to Ireland even before she arrived

For your information: British royal wedding

Constitutional Monarchy – Remnant of medievalism and colonialism that should be abolished – not celebrated.

THE monopoly media are bombarding Canadians with images of a royal wedding. This is not innocent or detached tabloid journalism having a bit of fun. It is an offensive spectacle of obscene wealth and decadence and a crude reminder to Canadians that they are subjects of a foreign monarch. All the while, it diverts attention from the fact that Canada’s democratic institutions are not based on the consent of the governed but on the Royal Prerogative.

Robbie Burns, Grand Falls, Mackenzie and Gaza

25 January 2009 marks 250 years to the day since Scotland’s national poet was born. PETER EWART* reflects on the legacy of Scotland’s celebrated bard whose polemics against the exploitation, injustice and oppression of his time enraged the establishment and won him enduring love from the peoples of all lands.

The statue of Robert Burns in Halifax’s Victoria Park Square is the centre of innumerable political rallies, as this one in October 2006 against the apartheid wall in Occupied Palestine | Photo copyright 2006, Howard Harawitz, All rights reserved.

MANY PEOPLE IN THE MARITIMES have Scottish blood in them, and the same holds true for people across Canada, especially in parts of Ontario and northern British Columbia where I reside. Indeed, at one point in Canada’s history, Scots were the third largest ethnic group, and they have certainly played an important role in the development of the country.

A good number of these men, women and children are descended from the hardy Scots who were scattered to the wind in the 18th and 19th Centuries, sometimes driven out of their homes and forced off their land, sometimes imprisoned or exiled, other times leaving poverty and hardship, in search of opportunity and a better life.