King Charles III's coronation will be met with protests by Britain's leading anti-monarchy group, Newsweek's The Royal Report podcast has heard.
Buckingham Palace has announced that the king's coronation will take place on May 6, 2023, at Westminster Abbey in London following the death of Charles' mother, Queen Elizabeth II.
Britain is the last European nation with a monarchy that still practices a traditional coronation ceremony with others adopting a simpler accession ceremony or enthronement.
Charles' coronation will follow much of the same form that has been used for every monarch since the later Anglo-Saxon kings, though, according to Buckingham Palace, it will "reflect the monarch's role today and look towards the future, while being rooted in longstanding traditions and pageantry."
On the latest episode of Newsweek's The Royal Report podcast, chief royal correspondent Jack Royston and royal commentator Kristen Meinzer discussed the coronation with Republic CEO Graham Smith who explained his organization's plans to protest on the day of the ceremony.
"There is no need for a coronation," he told Royston, "it's obviously going to be a huge expense, but the main reason is that we want to see the monarchy abolished and big royal events are a good opportunity to make that point and particularly at the coronation."
"Since 2011 we've had two weddings, two jubilees, the accession of Charles and the funeral and so on, on all of these occasions our numbers have gone up and on all of these occasions we get a lot more media interest, we also see more engagement with the public," he said of Republic's increasing profile in Britain.
"The thing about the coronation is that this isn't a birthday, it isn't a wedding, it isn't an anniversary it is just raw PR really. It is just a big moment for the palace to say 'here we are. Isn't it all wonderful, don't we all love it and isn't it great that we've got this new king!' There's no purpose for it, we don't need to have it, so it should be facing protest."
Meinzer pointed out that a number of anti-monarchy protesters who demonstrated during the mourning period for Queen Elizabeth after her death on September 8 found themselves being placed under arrest, something Smith said was down to the police and that they had "hugely overstepped the mark" in doing.
"The police have a very questionable relationship with the royals but the police have hugely overstepped the mark, and it's interesting that even monarchists were criticizing them for those arrests and the Metropolitan Police commissioner, who's fairly new to the job, has said that protests should be allowed," he said. "However, we've had various comments from the Metropolitan Police over the years suggesting that they may not be that tolerant of these things.
To make his position, and that of Republic, clear, Smith told Meinzer he intends to write "to all the police chief constables and the Metropolitan Police commissioner in London asking them to clarify their position and to reassure us that they are going to allow protests to go ahead because there is absolutely no legal justification for stopping them, there's certainly no moral justification for stopping them."
When presented with the other side of the argument regarding a large percentage of the British public who support the monarchy, Smith pointed out that the foundation of much of this support was built by the queen who is no longer around.
"The royalists who think that the monarchy is now secure are kidding themselves because the person that kept it secure for so long was the queen and I don't think it's necessarily sunk in, the difference that it makes to have Charles instead of the queen," he said.
"The difference is enormous...we have gone from having this slightly deified figure to just a bloke in a suit who you can say what you like about and who has huge amounts of baggage and a large cupboard full of skeletons and stories that can be raked over ... I think that maybe hasn't sunk in for people who think that the monarchy is safe."
Speaking earlier to Royston about how the nation will view the coronation, Smith made his point clear, saying: "This is a minority interest. Polling we did around the time of the jubilee showed 14 percent were keen to do something on the weekend of the jubilee, the vast majority of people were doing nothing and just getting on with their lives...
"It is a minority interest and it needs to be treated as such. This is not a national event, it is a royal event and it's of interest to royalists and that's it really and it needs to be dealt with in that way."
Recent polling undertaken by YouGov found that 57 percent of Brits said they were either "very" or "fairly" likely to watch the coronation ceremony coverage next year with 47 percent expressing the belief that the day should be made an "extra" national holiday.
Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We'd love to hear from you.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more
