Like many people who do not share his views, I have felt intermittent admiration for Peter Tatchell over the past 40 years. He has often been brave, and when I have met him, I found him open and friendly, as is often the way with cranks (e.g. Tony Benn). As the Platinum Jubilee approaches, however, I have gone off him. Last month, the Peter Tatchell Foundation (there’s posh) issued a press release headed: ‘Queen’s Platinum Jubilee invite declined by Peter Tatchell: Monarchy is not compatible with democracy. The Queen has snubbed the LGBT+ community for 70 years.’ He was turning down a role in the finale of Sunday’s Jubilee pageant which will celebrate him as one of our ‘national treasures’. In his rather cross letter of refusal, Mr Tatchell cannot explain how his inclusion in this place of honour is a snub. Besides, I don’t think the expression ‘LGBT+’ was current for the first 50 years of the Queen’s reign. How could she have snubbed a ‘community’ which, in that self-defined form, did not exist? Is he not being a touch pompous? As someone attending the finale of the pageant as a national non-treasure, I am sad Peter will not be parading in front of Buckingham Palace so that we can all clap him; but he has only himself to blame.
Is Mr Tatchell right, however, about monarchy? In his RSVP, he says: ‘A hereditary head of state is, in my view, incompatible with democracy, where positions of state should be decided by, and accountable to, the public. Royalty is a relic of feudalism. I see it as a symbol of privilege and inequality.’ If you look at the Freedom House rankings for the freedoms of all 210 modern nations, very few score 95 or over. (Putin’s temporary ‘nation’ of Eastern Donbas scores only.)
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