Jeremy's Blog 12th May 2023: A Coronation for a Challenging Future
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 11th May 2023
1,050 years ago on 11th May 973 but without Handel or a gospel choir, Edgar was crowned king of all England in Bath Abbey. Edgar made commitments with essentially the same oaths as Charles III amid the ceremonial on Saturday: to uphold our laws and customs and govern with law, justice and in mercy, doubtless echoing earlier coronations. They frame the later, more specific commitments of Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and other threads in the fabric of our history.
All societies and organisations need their rituals, customs and symbols. Humans do not work just by calculus and reason but as social beings with histories, current pressures and future hopes and fears; difficult times make these more important. As our society becomes more diverse, perhaps more atomised in an age of social media, so our ability to call on common ritual and symbols and their ability to adapt is no less important.
Each coronation is of its age and its monarch. The extravagance of George IV was followed by the modest ceremonies of William IV’s “half crown-ation” and Victoria before the imperial pomp of Edward VII. The reanimation on Saturday of an event not seen for 70 years strove to reflect the country, with its deep past (even to the presence of the sixth century Augustine’s Gospels), its nature today and its possible future. Among the many traditions recognised, the weaving in of Eastern Orthodox chant not only recalled personal and family interests but a cause recently strengthened by new Ukrainian parishes in the UK, noting (perhaps by chance) also the yellow and blue carpet colours carried forward from 1953.
That reanimation matters since we shall need all the social resources we can command as we confront a new age of global risk and turbulence, bringing cost and calling for resilience. Challenges now and for coming decades include:
- whether we make the changes needed for the growth to pay for what we expect or continue with our passive choices in planning and other policies not to have economic growth
- if we do not have growth, the consequences and trade-offs for an aging demography, manageable public finances and expectations of services
- the balance between mitigating climate change and adapting to what will come.
The monarchy has long been close to the countryside, farming and the environment which face many of these issues. For the essential business of food production, we have to work our way through the expectations for nature and carbon, the volatile power of coming climate change and pressures on land use. Coming out from the cushioning of CAP regimes, we need to use flexibility and new technologies in building the vigorous businesses that will make the future while taking care in managing the pent-up pressures for change.
That a Green candidate can win a council by-election by campaigning against a solar farm suggests that easy talk of climate emergency and energy crisis does not mean recognition of the necessary scale of the answers, which are more than solar panels on roofs. The dangers of the easy denial of such issues by people who would rather be protected undisturbed are not only that it does not make the issues less inevitable but answering them becomes harder and more disruptive with greater risk of failure and unnecessary cost.
The deeper challenge is the 233 year old one observed by Edmund Burke:
“A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.” Reflections on the Revolution in France.
The monarchy with its renewed oaths, commitments and service is one of our greatest social resources, drawing on continuity to enable essential adaptation as we tackle the astonishing scale of the pressures building for change and the social adjustments accompanying them. Nonetheless, while the King’s more precise roles are to be consulted, to encourage and to warn, it is for government to make and follow through active policy decisions.