IT’S sad when you see a place dying, but that’s what it used to feel like in New Cumnock. The mining village sits in a glorious Ayrshire glen – Robert Burns wrote of the hill that overlooks it: “How dear I love thee” – but this small community in the big valley has suffered from two trends in recent decades: first, the decline of the coal mines, and secondly, the death of the high street. It’s meant that over the years, the shops, the buzz, and a lot of the life has disappeared from the village’s lanes, roads and streets. The blood has seeped away, leaving only the arteries.
But then something extraordinary happened – something that I hope will make even some republicans question what they think they know about the Royals: Prince Charles led a bid to buy Dumfries House, the stately home near New Cumnock. You might remember what happened: the house went up for sale in 2007 and it looked like the estate would be broken up. The Chippendale furniture would be sold and the house emptied, and weather, vandals and entropy would be left to do the rest.
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However, that’s not what happened, thank God: the consortium led by the prince was successful in buying the house and, in the years since, it has spent many millions in renovating the buildings and the estate. But it’s the effects in the wider community that are particularly striking – effects I’ve seen for myself as someone who lives nearby.
Our local swimming pool was on the point of being closed for example. The Prince’s foundation renovated it and saved it. The same with our once decrepit town hall. I was there on the day it reopened and I listened to Prince Charles talk about why he got involved. Dumfries House had a special place in his affections, he told us, but he also wanted to do what he could for the people of Ayrshire.
And he has. Partly, it’s been through some of the softer benefits Dumfries House has brought, such as a new book festival and classes for local children on food and farming. But there have been hard benefits too, such as new jobs. In fact, you may have read the testimony of some of the people who’ve benefited in this way when The Herald featured their stories the other day.
People like Graeme Bone, who took a course in one of the training centres at Dumfries House and now works on upcycling factory offcuts to make bags. “It’s hard not to be inspired here,” he said. Or Kris Muir, who used to be unemployed but is now a gardener on the estate. “This place has lifted New Cumnock,” he said.
There are lots of other people like Mr Bone and Mr Muir in the villages around Dumfries House – in fact, the estate is now the second biggest employer in the county – and I think their stories matter because they undermine one of the traditional arguments of republicans, which is that the Royal Family costs too much. It sometimes seems like British citizens who take this view (I’m tempted to call them subjects rather than citizens just to annoy them) would apply a kind of reverse austerity to the country, stripping it of everything that glitters and leaving only the useful and the utilitarian; they would reduce it all to figures that can be balanced on a spread sheet. Perhaps they could print it out and take it down the Mall in a horse and carriage and see what kind of reaction it gets.
However, the truth is the Royal Family is more complicated, and wonderful, than that. I know that some royalists talk about the benefits to tourism but I’ve never been entirely convinced by that argument – who can say how many visitors come because we have princesses and dukes? I would point out, instead, that the monarchy costs less than a pound per person per year, but more importantly I would point to the bag-maker Graeme Bone and the gardener Kris Muir and the thousands of others like them who live near me. Their lives have been improved by the influence of the Prince of Wales and the investment and attention he attracts.
And anyway, money is never what really matters in the end is it, even with the royals? The other day, Prince William did the most extraordinary thing: he told young members of an LGBTQ group that he would be fine with any of his children being gay. It reminded me of the moment his mother put aside the prejudice of the 1980s and shook the hand of an Aids patient without her gloves. It demonstrates, then and now, that an institution that is accused of being behind the times is often ahead of them.
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Think about this too: the Royal Family does cost a lot of money – in 2019/20, £82 million – but so would the paraphernalia and pomp of its replacement: a president or head of state. And we need to think carefully about what we want to spend that kind of money on: a monarch who, in the age of populism, has an approval rating of some 90 per cent, or some of the alternatives?
Sadly, you know what they are: the Scottish nationalist in Bute House or the British nationalist who’s about to be in Number 10. Some people think those two would be value for money. I would rather spend my pound per year on something better.
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