Ninetieth Birthday of His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh

Paul Flynn Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

The supreme achievement of the Duke of Edinburgh is that he is working at the age of 90. This is a magnificent example and one that has been followed by a constituent of mine, Mr Harry Polloway, who is working as a toastmaster at the age of 97. I last saw him in the Jewish cemetery in my constituency, where we were commemorating the death of May Mendleson, who died last year at the age of 108. Continuing work into that period of life is a wonderful example to set, and one that we can look at with some embarrassment and shame in the House, where I believe the oldest Member—a distinguished Member—is just 80 years of age, and we have only five Members over the age of 76.

This group of people are disgracefully under-represented in the House. If we are to have a proper reflection of senior citizens, we must look to have all-80-year-old shortlists at the next general election. In the light of the heroic examples set by Prince Philip, Harry Polloway and May Mendleson, that fault needs to be corrected.

However, my purpose in speaking today is to make another point. As someone who is not a royalist and is happy to say that I am a republican and always have been, I want to ask why on earth, in this age, the address is to be “humble”. Are members of the royal family superior beings to the rest of us? Are we inferior beings to them? Is Prince Philip superior to Harry Polloway and May Mendleson? That was the feeling of the House seven centuries ago, when we accepted the rules under which we speak now.

We live in an egalitarian time when we recognise the universality of the human condition, in which royals and commoners share the same strengths and frailty. In the House, when we speak of the royals—not just the monarch, but all the family, without any limit—we are denied the chance of making any derogatory comment. That might extend to first cousins who are a long way distant from the monarch. There is no question but that the monarch—the Head of State—should remain above the political fray. We have been well served by this, particularly recently.

However, if these occasions are to be greatly valued, it should be possible for Members to utter the odd syllable that might be critical. I do not have anything to say in this case, but the sycophancy described by the Prime Minister when he referred to someone asking Prince Philip a fairly obvious question when he came off a plane must sicken the royal family. When they have an excess of praise of this kind, it is devalued.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

No one would accuse me of being an ardent royalist, but will my hon. Friend bear in mind the fact that the most terrifying dictatorships—terrorist dictatorships—of the last century, including Germany, Russia and China, have been republics?

[Paul Flynn]

I was coming to the final sentence of my speech, but I would be happy to discuss that at some length. If my hon. Friend is asking whether the Queen has been a monarch of whom we should be proud, a monarch who has served this country in a way that is probably unparalleled, and whether she has maintained political neutrality throughout those years, I would say yes. We particularly appreciated her work in Ireland recently, where she has done much to restore the link. That is not the point of what I am saying today.

I am saying that the House has allowed itself to be infantilised by our own history into a position in which we are not allowed to make any criticism—not just of the person whom we are talking about today, but of other members of the royal family as well. It stretches to all of them. By accepting today that the address is a humble one, we demean the honour of our elected office. We were elected by the first-past-the-post system, but those with hereditary offices are in their place as a result of what Tony Benn once called the first-past-the-bedpost system. We should be free in this House to tell the whole truth as citizens, not gagged as subservient subjects.