Broken Oars: The Flag of Their Country

Broken Oars Podcast is, for all of the back-and-forth of Lewin and I about North and South, fundamentally apolitical.

 

You row, we row, we all row together.

 

We take and give ribs and jibes in good heart because we believe that the things that unite us as friends, and in a wider context, as people, as communities and as a country number far more than any differences we may have.

 

We believe in discussion, in compromise, in agreeing to disagree and that, overall, most people are fundamentally decent human beings who are doing the best they can in the circumstances.

 

'I was down by the river watching Dan and Tyne United's rowers out on the water when the church bells started tolling up the valley. Church bells in Britain only ring out of time when war has been declared or when a Monarch dies. So, when I heard them, I knew that the Queen had died in Balmoral.'

 

That is the first paragraph of something that I wrote for my girls when I got home on Thursday night to help them make sense of what will happen over the next few days and weeks. Below is the rest, and while I would never think to speak for Lewin, I think it probably stands for us at Broken Oars and might both help and be a palliative for Thursday's news. 

 

'I am not, fundamentally, a Royalist. You both know that the reason that we have a King or Queen is because not too long ago, one person stabbed another to death on a muddy field and said ‘I am King now.’ Kings and Queens take and hold power at the point of a sword.

 

But that does not necessarily mean that I am anti-Monarchy. Britain's institutions have evolved over time to help four nations of some seventy-odd million individuals broadly manage to rub along together collectively. Although they have been quite deliberately attacked, challenged and undermined in my lifetime and yours, the Monarchy is part of those systems of checks and balances and compromises. Those system are by no means perfect, but they are as good as some and better than many.

 

The death of a member of the Royal Family in Britain is always accompanied by lots of flag-waving; and soundbites about ‘service’, ‘continuity’, Britain’s ‘glorious history’, ‘coming together’ as a nation and all of that jazz. Remember, Rudyard Kipling, an arch-patriot, said that wrapping oneself in the flag was the last bastion of a scoundrel. He called them 'jelly-bellied flag flappers' who knew nothing of the country or its people and who only waved the flag because they didn't know what it actually stood for. And he was right. Boris Johnson did it, and he was a liar; a cheat; a scrounger; and a bully.

 

Try and remember that the Queen was a person, and a Mum, and a wife, and a Grandma, and a Great-Grandma first. She was a human being who loved and was loved by her family and will be missed by them – in the same way that we loved and miss Uncle David and Great-Grandma Smith; or Berry and Dylan.

 

If you feel sad at her death, feel sad for those reasons.

 

People come and go in Britain but its institutions survive. The Monarchy will continue. Charles will now be King. Time will roll on.

 

But it is actually people who are important. People don’t remember if you were a King or Queen; or if you were rich or poor; or if you won a Gold medal or if you didn’t.

 

People remember if you lived a rich and full life; and if they enjoyed your company; and how you made them feel.

 

That’s what important.

 

Remember that.

I love you both.

 

Dad.'

 

Full crew? Easy Oars.