By Yaa Addae

Friday, May 5th 2023 - Coronation Eve: The Haunting

Walking down Pall Mall the day before the coronation, I remember that I live in London - not just London as in the capital city of some gray island where a single room now averages £1000 from about £700 but the London that throngs of tourists flock to for a chance to experience the charm of 'history.' The London where foreign protagonists come to find themselves and fall in love in the movies and the London that was built on centuries of slave labour and colonial exploitation. 

Sometimes I forget where I am until I spot a remnant of this colonial hangover, like a 'Silk Road' signpost or aggressively visible references to the king splattered all over bank holiday adverts.

Outside the Charing Cross station, a street cleaner blasts water on the pavements, washing away any traces of dirt to prepare for the big ceremony. "I've never seen this before," I note to my friend who is visiting town, both of us in shock at how much this means to some people. 

She, an artist with a background in architectural history, begins to point out the numerous war memorials and tributes to Roman design that surrounds us. Suddenly, I feel as though I have stepped into a memory, a past of British 'greatness' that these structures and ceremonies, such as the coronation, keep alive. We continue our day, two Black African women in a sea of monuments to a history that tried to ensure we would not still be here today.

Saturday, May 6th - Coronation Day: The Spectacle

Half-awake, I make myself a cup of coffee and turn on the television to see masses of people drenched in rain as they line the streets to get a glimpse of their king-to-be. The red, white, and blue of the British flag adorn umbrellas, bags, and smiling faces - these all littered the city despite the predictably British weather that greets them. It is a shame they could not turn the sun machine on for the big day, at least for some of us at home who want to make the most of this long weekend even though we do not care for its origins. 

The camera cuts to a shot of Charles and Camilla pulling up to Westminster Abbey in a ride that looks fit for a sickening fairytale. This golden carriage, called The Gold State Coach has been used in every coronation since 1831 and is made of giltwood, a thin layer of gold leaf over wood. The crown, however, is solid gold, weighing nearly five pounds, and decorated with rubies, amethyst, and sapphires, all not from here. 

My mind immediately goes to 1896, the outbreak of the Anglo-Asante war on the pretext of the failure of the Asantehene to pay the British 50,000 ounces of gold that ultimately saw the Asante kingdom annexed and absorbed into the British empire. This fine continued to be paid until the mid-1900s, but ironically, in the audience is the current Otumfuo Nana Osei Tutu II and his wife, standing amongst the congregation in traditional kente. It is just as confusing as the fact that this whole extravagant affair has cost British taxpayers approximately 250 million pounds, at the same time that demand for food banks has steadily increased over the last 12 years and funding cuts were made in favour of this ceremony instead of taking it out of the monarchy's net worth of $28 billion sourced from the slave trade, opium wars, and looting. 

Spectacle, from the Latin root spectaculum meaning 'a public show, spectacle, a place from which shows are seen', suggests that these displays of tradition are real because by bearing witnessing, we make them so. Nationalist demonstrations have long been a tool of British imperialism to distract and placate the masses when times are hard, going back to The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, held in Hyde Park in the summer of 1851 where installations of various colonies were recreated for the British public, a 1/3rd of whom attended to take in other cultures as though they were trophies and contributed to the profits that were used to found the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum. In Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality In The Colonial Contest, historian Anne Mclinctock describes this landmark phenomenon as a place where "white British workers could feel included in the imperial nation, the voyeuristic spectacle of racial "superiority" compensating them." So what does it mean for us to look away instead? Refuse to participate, refuse to make a note of how many Black people they include or add to the lineup of their concert and instead bring the roots of this ritual to the front of the frame?

"God Save The King!" the all-Black choir sings: a rally, an oath, a reminder that the monarchy demands that we believe in it, even as the violence that props up this archaic institution becomes painstakingly clear.