'Not my King' protests on Coronation Day: The Brits who want to dump the monarchy

History is being made today as Britain’s King Charles III is coronated along with his wife Queen Camilla. It’s meant to be a day of celebration and cheer. However, not all of Britain thinks this is a joyous occasion and they are carrying out protests across London.

Amid hurrahs and cheers, placards of ‘Not My King’ can be seen around Westminster Abbey where King Charles will be coronated. And just hours before the king could be crowned, the Metropolitan Police arrested the head of the UK’s leading republican movement and five other organisers of an anti-monarchist protest.

The Guardian reported that the Graham Smith, the chief of Republic, and five others were detained as they were collecting drinks and placards for demonstrators at the main site of the protest on Trafalgar Square. These arrests came after the British government fast-tracked anti-protests laws recently, involving tougher sentences for anyone participating in disruptive action at major events

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The anti-monarchy group tweeting after the arrest said, “So much for the right to peaceful protest,” adding the officers would not give the reasons for their arrest and confirmed their CEO was among them.

So much for the right to peaceful protest #NotMyKing #AbolishTheMonarchy pic.twitter.com/mA81kmnNtD

— Republic (@RepublicStaff) May 6, 2023

But who exactly is Graham Smith? What is the anti-monarchy group Republic all about? What do they want? We answer all your questions.

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Graham Smith and Republic

Graham Smith is the current campaign manager and Executive Officer of anti-monarchy group Republic. He has been associated with the organisation since mid-2005 and has a background in party political campaigning and the corporate sector. Graham lived in Australia for several years and has dual UK/Australian nationality.

For the unaware, Republic is an umbrella group of anti-monarchists and was founded in 1983. Their main calling is the end to UK’s system of constitutional monarchy and to replace the monarch with an elected head of state.

The membership of Republic has grown over the years. According to a report, between the announcement of the engagement of Prince William to Catherine ‘Kate’ Middleton in 2010 and the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II in 2012, the group’s support base has increased from 9,000 to 30,000. By 2015, this number increased to 35,000 online supporters.

On its website, Republic states that the British monarchy stands firmly against the country’s principles of democracy and a fair society. It states that the Royal Family represents “exclusion, elitism and hereditary power and privilege at the expense of everyone else”.

The group adds, “There are no good reasons for keeping the monarchy. It is a corrupt institution. The royals spend public money – your money – on their own travel, palatial homes and luxurious lifestyles every day of the year. The institution costs us at least £345 million (Rs 3,563 crore) a year, money that should be spent on public services.”

Furthermore, Republic says that the monarchy is secretive and receives hundreds of exemptions, including environmental protection regulations and race discrimination laws. It also says that the monarchy stops Britain from having an effective, independent head of state.

Catch our full coverage of King Charles’ coronation

Charles’ coronation and protests

Ahead of King Charles’ coronation, Republic has stepped up their protests against King Charles and the Royal Family. In fact, ‘Not My King’ placards and similar chants have followed Charles in his previous outings. For today, around 1,700 members of the group congregated outside London’s oldest statue of Charles I, who lost his head to republicans nearly 400 years ago, and yelled slogans against Charles and the monarchy.

When asked why they are protesting, the group said on their website, “It’s because we want to use the coronation to change the debate about the monarchy and show that we’re not a nation of royalists.”

They are absolutely against the coronation and the fact that the event with an estimated price tag of £1 million (Rs 10 crore) has to be burdened by the British taxpayer. Speaking to TIME magazine earlier, Smith had said, “Instead of a coronation, we want an election. Instead of Charles, we want choice. The coronation is a pointless vanity parade that’s costing a quarter of a billion pounds for Charles to parade along and have a hat put on his head when we’re in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis – so it really isn’t acceptable.”

Smith added in the same interview that the time to abolish monarchy was now as people held a more positive image of the Family owing to Queen Elizabeth II. However, with her demise last year, there are big changes in attitude. He said, “Harry and Andrew have done a lot of damage to the monarchy, and so the spell is broken. People don’t see them as anything different or special.”

Anti-monarchy sentiment grows

And it’s not just members of Republic that demand the abolition of the monarchy.

Recent surveys show that the Royal Family no longer enjoys the popularity it once had. A month before the coronation, a survey had revealed that 52 per cent of the people in Britain were not interested in the event. The survey showed that 15 per cent of the participants responded as being “very interested" in the coronation ceremony, while 29 per cent said they were “fairly interested." Around 24 per cent of the respondents claimed to be “not very interested," while the rest 28 per cent were “not interested at all.”

The survey also asked respondents about the funding of the coronation event and 37 per cent of the people believed that the Royal Family should pay for the entire coronation ceremony, while 36 per cent wanted the UK government and the Royal Family to fund it together. Around 15 per cent of the respondents said the UK government should pay for the ceremony while 12 per cent said they “don’t know.”

Another survey conducted by the National Centre for Social Research showed that support for the monarchy is at an all-time low. This survey revealed that only three in 10 Britons think their monarchy is “very important” – the lowest proportion on record. Forty-five per cent of respondents said either monarchy should be abolished, was not very important, or not at all important. That figure was 35 per cent among respondents to a similar poll in 2022, the year of the late Queen Elizabeth’s platinum jubilee.

The survey also found that the number of people who say the monarchy is “very important” had fallen to 29 per cent from 38 per cent just last year. In fact, the number of those answering “very important” was at the lowest level since data collection began in 1983, reflecting a significant trend of declining support for the British monarchy.

This doesn’t bode well for the Royal Family, who has also been seeing a dip in its popularity among the Commonwealth realms. Many nations where King Charles will be the head of state are now attempting to jettison the monarchy. Among them are the Bahamas, Jamaica and Belize.

However, Britain becoming a republic in the near future seems unlikely.

With inputs from agencies

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