11.05.2020 VE Day and the once and future king

Arthur Uther Pendragon lives in a caravan just off the A303. He likes a drink, he’s been arrested a lot, he’s our genius loci, spirit of place, and I believe a more rightful king than the ruling monarch of our state.

My first draft opened with a few thoughts about the mess our government has got us into, and the failure of Kier Starmer’s opposition. I didn’t want to whinge and moan, instead to offer a mythology to guide us while the our current one lets us down so badly. There’ll be an enquiry and hopefully manslaughter trail, which will analyse this better than I could. I’m too angry and sad.

I’ll leave it to saint Bill to sum up.

— To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

Friday was VE day, which never sits quite right with me, but this year the contradictions made me quite uncomfortable.

We need myths, it’s who we are, it’s our identity, how we explain ourselves to ourselves, it’s culture that directs us. We should choose our myths carefully. On the one hand I agree, however little of it is actually true, it’s wonderful to celebrate the part of us that defeated fascism, that fought for our brothers and sisters of different nations, that gave up so much, but on the other, I think it is inappropriate to celebrate an internationalist struggle with nationalism. Especially at a time when so many of the people who were actually involved, the golden generation, the embodiment of ‘blitz spirit’ are being left to die in care homes, and the spirit of ’45, which gave us the welfare state and the NHS, is being so undermined by an authoritarian regime. The difference between our government and the Nazis, is that instead of killing thousands through calculating malicious industrial murder, ours kill with a much more British, cheery, bumbling incompetence.

There also comes a point, when not putting a flag out is more of a statement than putting a flag out. This is something I have noticed around pride, which must be infuriating for LGBT+ people, to have their struggle adopted at the point when doing so poses no risk at all, where was all the corporate support in 1986 when section 28 was brought in? In fact, these codified, ritual celebrations almost seem like something the opposing side in the war against fascism and intolerance would demand. Why don’t you have your flag out? Why aren’t you socially distanced conga dancing to honour the war dead? This year seemed worse than normal.

Our version of ancestor worship has boiled over into a strange, dangerous hysteria. I did spare a thought to those people who fought and died, victim to, in my opinion the same thought process that had people out at street parties. I also thought of the people working in hospitals and driving busses and dying for us, and noticed parallels in our situations. That flag waving, we’re British, we’re great, it’s in the name, thinking is actually one of the things that’s driving so many deaths right now.

So it didn’t sit well with me. I wondered if there was a better myth, a better head of state than the one we currently follow.

When I read I follow my nose. One book always leads to another, and I always read non-fiction and fiction at the same time sometimes they’re related, sometimes not. They provide context, the fiction opens up possibilities and the non-fiction proves everything is true. Occasionally you come across startling synchronicities. I heard the wonderful Midnight Train to Georgia by Gladys Knight and The Pips for the first time while reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X, each (along with the pop music biographies in my minds library) gave the other much more meaning.

This time I was rereading The Once and Future King novels, by T H White (Sword in the Stone, Witch in the Wood, Candle in The Wind). I read them years ago, in year 9 I think, but didn’t finish, but there are always bits floating around the back of my mind. Recently something brought it back, I think it was the disappointment of the George MacDonald fantasy novel I read, I wanted something I knew was good, fantastical enough to take my mind off the world but real enough to be true. Also, the ebook was only £2 for all three.

They’re great books. I was really enjoying them, but wanted a change and the book of David Foster Wallace essays was just a little too demanding. That afternoon I got an email newsletter I subscribe to from a writer I really like called John Higgs, something lead me to look his books up, and there was one I had heard about and like the sound of and was only £1 or something for the ebook, so I got it.

It was called Our Pet Queen. I read it in one sitting. The hypothesis is that rather than ruling over us, our queen, much like John’s horrible cat, whom he has grudging, reluctant affection for, is a kind of national pet. He says, being a symbolic head of state is actually not a nice job, but important, and a hereditary system for a constitutional monarchy actually makes sense, if you think of them like a pet. Part of the reason countries like the US for example hold their flag in such high regard, which from a Brit’s point of view, seems very poor taste, is that their head of state is political, it’s their president, the flag is above all that, you don’t have to agree with it’s politics, or think it’s competent. I don’t buy it, I think our monarchy is deeply harmful and a form of psychological repression, an emblem of the class system, that leads to people like Boris Johnson being prime minister. It’s like the greatest trick the devil ever played, making us celebrate it.

Anyway, brilliant book. A few chapters in I came across the prophesised return of the once and future king king of the Britons, Arthur Uther Pendragon, living in his caravan fighting for truth, honour and justice.

I had to know more so a quick search brought me to C J Stone’s biography, The Trials of Arthur, which is free to read on Kindle Unlimited. I took a day off my Ritalin and sunk down to read it cover to cover yesterday.

He’s an intriguing character. He believes, and possibly is, the manifestation of King Arthur, a character who, most likely only exists in fiction. But we’ve got sense, we know how porous the thin membrane between fact and fiction is. Things slip in and out, both ways. And if King Arthur is made up, then what could be more apt? A man who imagines he is him. A magical name taken on by a man who acts in the way Arthur would if he was here, so what’s the difference?

A lot of people think he’s nuts, and he clearly is, he says he’s talking bollocks himself, but it’s no different from the Dalai Lama claiming to have been reincarnated into his role 13 times. We accept that on face value, so I’m prepared to give Arthur the same benefit. The tyranny of our rational, consumerist society is that the only thing we are allowed to believe in is money. I reject that and prefer to open myself to other possibilities.

It’s a strange story, how he came to be Arthur, that probably started when he was bunking school when his dad, who he was with, flipped the rubbish van he drove for a living. They stepped out un hurt, but that brush with death set the young lad off, believing there was more out there. A brush with the law (one of many), caused him to join the army, on discharging, he went through a series of dead end jobs, before ending up the leader of a biker clan. In a squat one night, one of his reprobate mates told him he had a feeling he was King Arthur, a series of coincidences lead him to believe it was true. The next day, he changed his name by deed to Arthur Uther Pendragon.

One of his early quests was of course, finding Excalibur, his legendary magical sword. One of the loons he knocked about with was into magic and suggested Glastonbury was a good place to look because of its Arthurian associations. They went up to the Tor, she read out a spell, and they searched the town, but no luck. A month later, in Farnborough, his home town, he passed a prop shop in his van. He parked up and had a look. There was a sword in the window, he knew it was the one. He went in and asked to buy it, unfortunately it wasn’t for sale. The shop keeper was a prop designer and made it for the film Excalibur, and offered a replica instead, because he said he’d only sell the real one to King Arthur himself. At that moment, Arthur pulled out his passport, and offered all the money he had, £100, much less than the sword was worth, but the shop keeper agreed.

That part of the prophecy was fulfilled, the sword had emerged from the lake of Avalon, held aloft by a hand, even if only in a simulated version for a film, but as we know, in magical, mythical terms, there’s no difference between fact and fiction.

A month later, his lunatic mate re-read the spell, it said by the next full moon (which it was when they went to Glastonbury, exactly a month before Arthur found Excalibur). 

The sword, like all mages and occultists, is important to heads of state. It symbolises power. That’s why monarchs always have an orb and sceptre, as well as a crown, why the queen knights people with a sword, even our House of Commons has a magic mace, you may remember the uproar caused by the MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle when he grabbed the ceremonial mace of parliament in December 2018. So, our own state still adheres to these occult concepts, they’re important because they’re real. Now Arthur had his symbol of authority, purity and power. Now he could knight people, and he often does.

The difference when Arthur knights you, you don’t pledge allegiance to any person, flag or country, instead you make your own private vow, and promise to uphold the values of truth, honour and justice. Three things conspicuously absent from the British state.

Pretty soon he found his quest, Stonehenge. It took him fourteen years of getting arrested every solstice, his citizens arrest of a police constable, broken ribs, several law suits, including one at the European Court of Human Rights, and another incident at the Royal Court of Justice involving him getting naked in the dock, but he succeeded, to an extent, the three-mile exclusion zone that used to exist around the stones every solstice has been removed and people can celebrate the festival right up among them.

In his view, when the monument was given to the nation, it wasn’t so that a government body could cordon them off and charge people to see them. They were given to the people, which wasn’t legitimate anyway, because they always belonged to the people, to our islands, they are our islands, as are we. In fact, we belong to them as much as they belong to us, they are us. At one point he slept in some woods by the stones for ten months and stood vigil outside the perimeter every day, rain or shine.

Other battles include the road protest movement, in which he put his body on the line over and over again for his principles, taken on the Saxons (police and courts), to protect the people as well as these islands themselves. What could be more kingly?

But how can a man who takes on the trappings an identity of medieval royalty be such an anti-authoritarian rebel be the figure head of a movement which takes on what it views as false hierarchies and favours comradely community? Aren’t they contradictions? Arthur resolves this issue by constantly mocking himself and refusing to be treated as a guru or cult leader, he rejects deference, he gets pissed and passes out in fields with his druid order the Loyal Arthurian Warband.

Part of the trouble people may have accepting Arthur as their king is that we have the modern conception of monarchy in mind, a person who inherits a title, who is above and away from the subjects they rule over, insulated by an upper class which causes them to have no understanding of the country they live in. Perhaps a better word for Arthur is chief. He’s a king in the old sense, his claim to the crown is backed up by the authority he commands to the people who follow him. A king is a king if they have a court, a round table, and Arthur definitely does. He has many nights, mystics, druids and bards who follow him.

Arthur is like a father figure, a role model to these islands who embodies many of the best values we see in ourselves, he’s old, wise, mischievous, patient, bold, brave, good humoured, and a lot like my own father, an eccentric rogue, a biker who almost certainly has ADHD and a bit of chequered past. He tries to do what’s best, even if he makes mistakes.

He’s the king of something much older, deeper and more meaningful than our nation and answers to a higher power.

It occurred to me over weekend, a nation or a country is a purely fictional imaginary thing, so who better to lead it than a person who imagines they are someone who mostly exists in our imaginations. Maybe Arthur has managed to invoke the magic of his name, names are magic, words are magic conjured by spells, written in grimoires (ie grammars), the greatest of which is the dictionary.

I respect and identify a lot more with the man who calls himself King Arthur Uther Pendragon than I do Queen Elizabeth the Second. My point is they are both as ridiculous as each other, the queen has her Merlin, the arch bishop of Canterbury (the previous one, Dr Rowan Williams was actually an ordained druid), she has her magic hat, and sceptre, so pick which ever suits you best, pick anyone, make them up, imagine your own queen.

Pick Miriam Margoyles whose honesty and humility over the weekend seemed startling in the unreality forced on us most days. George Orwell told us, “telling the truth in the time of universal deceit is a revolutionary act.” Comrade Margoyles, admitted her fallibility, the had a dark thought and didn’t like herself for it.

She said of Boris Johnson, “I had difficulty not wanting him to die. I wanted Boris Johnson to die. Then I thought that would reflect badly on me and I don’t want to be the sort of person who wants people to die. So I wanted him to get better, which he did do, he did get better but not as a human being.” Who can’t say they’ve had similar emotions? What a brave and honest thing to say. She’s done more for the spirit of our islands with those words than the woman who calls herself queen. Maybe Miriam is a better spiritual figurehead for you.

The legend of King Arthur tells us he will return when he’s needed. He returned to my consciousness over the weekend, during a time I really needed something better to believe in. So for me, he really is the once and future king, regardless if actually is.

I’ve given my Yorkshire terriers the title Lionheart in his honour.

Long live the king!