Williams - Royal Babylon: the criminal record of the British monarchy: an investigative poem

PRAISE FOR Royal Babylon A phenomenal piece of work.Jeremy HardyI admire a poetry that is no-holds- barred... Heathcote Williams serial poem Royal Babylon is proper political poetry.Niall McDevitt Royal Babylon Other books by Heathcote Williams: The Speakers; The Local Stigmatic; AC/DC; The Immortalist; Hancocks Last Half Hour; Whale Nation; Sacred Elephant; Falling for a Dolphin; Autogeddon; Forbidden Fruit; Shelley at Oxford; Badshah Khan: Islamic Peace Warrior

Heathcote Williams First published 2016 by
Skyscraper Publications
Talton Edge, Newbold on Stour,
Warks CV37 8TR, U.K. www.skyscraperpublications.com Copyright 2016 Heathcote Willliams The authors rights are fully asserted. The right of Heathcote Willliams to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Nor be circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-1-911072-00-3 Cover concept and design by
Buchgut, Berlin Typeset by
Chandler Book Design Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Latitude Press

AN INVESTIGATIVE POEM By
Heathcote Williams The comfort of the rich depends upon an
abundant supply of the poor.
VOLTAIRE In 1840, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon the first self-declared
anarchist, defined anarchy in What is Property?, as the
absence of a master, of a sovereign. In the year of the Queens Silver Jubilee tourists peered as usual Through the railings of Buckingham Palace, But her fairy tale was fading; the fairy queens wings were being clipped By the Sex Pistols putting monarchy in their sights. God save the queen, they sang, its a fascist regime. And the songs hook-line became a new anthem; Disturbing to clutches of flag-wavers lining the streets And horrifying to Middle England and the Daily Mail. The Sex Pistols proclaimed, She aint no human being, And the subversive posters for their record Placed the bands salacious name right across the Queens lips, And they masked her eyes with two spidery swastikas. They sang, I dont believe illusions cos too much is real. They accessorized the Queens nose with safety pins Like a voodoo doll, and covered her face with cutout letters As if presenting the world with a kidnappers note. Oooh no, people would say, you cant have a go at the Queen, Sucking their breath in to indicate caution, Oooh no, not the Queen, the Queens above politics you see.

They cant answer back, can they, so its not fair. Then theyd earnestly claim, Its in the constitution, isnt it? Forgetting that Britains never had such a document For the Brits, despite their inordinate pride in their own history, Often reveal they know less about it than anyone. The country survives despite its own past not because of it. Its infantile wish for a benign parent above politics Persuades it to ignore unpleasant facts, such as the sovereigns endorsing The nastiest political act of all, namely killing. For their sovereigns dominant role is to inspect Row after row of the states armed forces: Broken down in training, reconfigured from scratch Then programmed to kill on command. The sovereigns crucial to the lubrication of Britains wars By its gulling soldiers into dutifully dying; Then, after paying homage to these victims of state carnage, By its encouraging arms-trade profiteering.

The arms makers and their customers are brought together At Windsor Castle to be honoured with fly-pasts Monarchy and military business being intimately connected. The UKs Defence Industrial Base is a royal brand. A landowning cabal with its heraldry denoting privilege Still forms an elite network staking out the countrys land. They retain monarchy as their god to deceive those who live here, Whose common land they once stole and enclosed. The monarchys militarism echoes a time when royalty wasnt flouted When querying royalty was treason and when those threatening The status quo could be seized, and their limbs tied to horses Which took off in every direction as they were whipped. On seeing royal victims torn to shreds while still alive, Royal minions sliced their hearts into sections Then sent them across the whole country for public display And a warning to anyone considering rebellion.

In the past, the brute power of the monarchy was quite unrestrained Whereas it now pretends to behave with more decorum: By dressing in fancy costumes, and awarding itself unearned medals, And laying wreaths to those who die in its name. Its genteel, but its politicized charisma still yields a body-count: Lives are still culled by the Queen and Country spell. Royalty pays off its dead subjects with a march-past and their reward Is to have their remains returned in a box to where they lived. Meanwhile royaltys own patriotism bears scant inspection: It being revealed in 1915, in World War One, That when millions were dying in Flanders for King and Country, The King himself was tobogganing in St Moritz. Hed also set a wartime record for shooting Sandringham pheasants And hed cut his regular swathe through its wildlife; Likewise, in 1939, King George VI would fret that the war Would interrupt the grouse season at Balmoral. The UKs military-monarchy complex is a cynical industry For which the Queen was groomed by a General Browning And, likewise, Prince Williams mentor has been Blairs wartime apparatchik: The UKs former man in Washington, David Manning.

It is Manning who is running the conflict with Iraq, Wrote John Kampfner, the author of Blairs Wars. Thus the heir to the heir is being initiated by an enabler Of Britains centuries-long killing sprees. While all the time royalty profits from arms, due to its Crown Agents Tending to its shares in Lockheed, And nurturing bundles of the royal investments in BAE Systems In BAEs Depleted Uranium shells and landmines. The latest landmines are designed to leap up out of the ground, Triggered by children playing or walking nearby. Theyll detonate in mid-air and theyll sever limbs as bodies fall While the shareholdings of the super-rich rise. The Times has claimed the sovereigns wealth grows yearly by 20m And in 2010 it announced the Queen crowned a successful year For her share portfolio, with a personal fortune totalling 290m Though elsewhere others have assessed it in billions.

Yet confronted by the true cost of UK weapons exported abroad, Namely the Indonesian massacres in East Timor, Her son Charles said, If we dont sell arms to them, someone else will, Blithely exposing the monarchys moral vacuum A voracious vacuum thats unsatisfied by seven palaces Which require over a thousand servants, And security for the states Holy Family, protected 24/7 by SAS patrols, Is charged to the taxpayer without their permission. After Prince Albert demanded tax money, known as the Civil List, To fund himself in the manner befitting a well-to-do gentleman His descendants likewise insist that public funds Fill their vacuums, oblivious to the countrys economic black hole. Thus Charles spends thirty thousand a year on a Highgrove florist, And fifty thousand on train trips to spread his muddled message Though he himself has more than sufficient from the Duchy of Cornwall Estates From its rack rents and its nonexistent social housing. While royal security costs over fifty million a year, Its total cost to the nation escapes scrutiny, This being so that the honour and dignity of the Crown is upheld And the monarchical mysteries lie undisturbed. Tellingly, the state pantomimes from which royalty derives So much of its symbolic impact Requires processional horses drugged with acepromazine So that they may be kept compliant throughout; And the obedience required of royal servants Is as abusive as their treatment of animals With minor royals exercising the

Next page