It seemed that the whole world came to a stop on Friday as that wedding took over the airwaves. As the coverage reached epic proportions, you could be forgiven for thinking that everyone in Britain was ecstatic about the royal nuptials but Dateline’s Evan Williams spent the week with a very colourful cast who certainly were not in the mood to party for their Prince.
REPORTER: Evan Williams
The battle cries of anarchist rebellion, muffled by the soundproofed walls of a garden shed. The famous Peter and the Test Tube Babies – Dave, Del and Pete to their mates - rehearsed for a royal wedding party that you did not see on the nightly news. While much of the world may be obsessed with frocks and princely kisses, Britain's ageing punks see the ceremony as another excuse for poking fun at the monarchy.
PETE: Who would like to get paid for wearing stuffy and boring clothes and waving and the window with a pretend smile? What a rubbish job. I’d rather be poor. That is why I'm in this band. Oh lucky days!
DAVE: Well done mate. Well done, you made the correct career choice. There is a time of austerity, so they say, tighten your belts, we are in it with you, no they are not – this monarchy - we have to spend a load of money on this farce.
DEL: They never chipped in for my two marriages, so why should my tax money go towards theirs, when they are loaded?
With a potential audience of 2 billion people, the world's big broadcasters are paying a fortune for the rights to make money from the wedding. Opposite Buckingham Palace is this specially built stadium for live camera positions to cover the couple's return to the Palace. Tony Bradford-Smith is the site manager.
TONY BRADFORD-SMITH, SITE MANAGER: It has generated approximately three times the media response that' Charles and Diana's wedding generated and the compound is about three times the size with three times the number of broadcasters here.
It is from here that the world's media broadcast the kiss on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. So how much is that worth?
TONY BRADFORD-SMITH: There is no typical average and I could not divulge the figures anyhow, I’m sorry.
REPORTER: You can’t give me a per square metre?
TONY BRADFORD-SMITH: No.
REPORTER: I guess the broadcasters make the money back from advertising, that’s how it works. This is basically an event that has its own business dynamic.
TONY BRADFORD-SMITH: True. It is the first time that I suppose that one of these events has had a commercial dynamic to it, because previously, the cost of the facilities have always been met by the British government.
Like any royal wedding, this one has all the usual and rather tacky souvenirs, but dig deep enough and there are some crazily creative ideas. Royal Wedding Sick Bags were dreamt up by budding artist Lydia Leith. It all started here, in the front room of her parents' house.
LYDIA LEITH, ARTIST: My mini production line of Royal Wedding Sick Bags. Well the response has been – well, nothing I could have ever expected.
Demand was so strong that they are being commercially printed but she still signs and stamps each one as a little piece of ironic art. But what would the royal couple think?
LYDIA LEITH: Well, I have not heard anything from them yet and I do not know if they have ordered one or not, unless they have ordered one under a secret name.
REPORTER: Do you think they might be a bit upset by this?
LYDIA LEITH: Well, I think that they have got a sense of humour and they would understand that it is a bit of fun.
My own mother was not happy I was doing a story that was less than gushing about the wedding, so I wondered what Lydia’s mother, Tina thought of the sick bags.
REPORTER: This has been quite a success, isn’t it?
TINA LEITH: I think that it is fantastic. I just could not stop laughing when she first produced it and came up with the idea, so I think it is really tongue-in-cheek. Not offensive.
Not so very long ago, Lydia would have ended up here. The Tower of London has played host to many traitors in its thousand year history and today, just across the river, treason plots are again afoot to bring down the monarchy.
GRAHAM SMITH, BRITAIN REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT: I do not think that in a modern democracy, in a country that claims to be a democracy, that we should be allowing one family to be inheriting the highest office in the land.
From his south London flat, Graham Smith runs Britain's Republic Movement.
GRAHAM SMITH: We have one aim, which is to abolish the British monarchy and to have a new constitution forBritain and an elected and effective head of state - someone who can actually play a constitutional role and represent Britain.
Graham says that the wedding has doubled the group’s membership as many Britons look with some concern to the future and the throne occupied by King Charles.
GRAHAM SMITH: He has made it very clear that he wants to be an active king and he has already been an active prince. He gets involved in political issues and he lobbies ministers and he does so in complete secrecy - they have changed the law so that we have no access to finding out what lobbying he is doing - so we have no idea whether ministers are making decisions that they think are the right decision or because they are under pressure from Prince Charles who would as King, have weekly secret meetings as monarch – secret in the sense that they are unmonitored and there is no one else in the room.
REPORTER: With government ministers?
GRAHAM SMITH: With the Prime Minister, and on occasion with other ministers.
Across the road from the houses of parliament, alongside Westminster Abbey, anti-war protesters have maintained a permanent peace camp for 10 years. But the sheer size of this event has meant they and other causes have had to take a back seat. Barbara Tucker has lived here for five years and believes that freedom of speech is under attack here, right at the heart of the wedding.
BARBARA TUCKER, PROTESTER: With the greatest of respect, it has nothing to do with the Royal Wedding.
Just that morning, Barbara had been in court, where she was told to move off Parliament Square. This was her response.
BARBARA TUCKER: I christen this ‘a public place’.
Until the run-up to the wedding, there had been little pressure of this sort for the camp to move on.
BARBARA TUCKER: I am breaching an injunction now.
It does not take long for the law to arrive.
POLICEMAN: That is not your fence though, is it?
BARBARA TUCKER: No, because this is for the public.
POLICEMAN: We have transport coming, okay, so your not going to play up or do anything silly are you?
BARBARA TUCKER: No, can I have a cigarette before I go?
POLICEMAN: You can have a smoke I have no problem with that.
BARBARA TUCKER: Can I take down a couple more fences while I’m at it?
POLICEMAN: I think you have done enough.
It seems futile at this stage, the establishment's desire for pretty pictures around WestminsterAbbey are conspiring against her and what she sees as her right to protest. With Barbara out of the way for now, the status quo is sadly reinstalled.
In his leafy south London garden, builder Dave Morse and his friend Chris are busy building a special present for the Royal Wedding.
DAVE MORSE: Historically, the best way to get rid of a monarchy is through the use of a guillotine, so we are building one for them for the wedding.
A full on assault against the National Health Service and all because they cannot afford these things – they can’t afford ten pounds for a lolly pop lady - meanwhile, no-expense-spared for this couple's wedding.
REPORTER: Which of the royals are you going to be executing?
DAVE MORSE: Top of the list, because we have done some straw polls on this, and top of the list is the odious Andrew, the Queen's favourite son.
Across town in the business district of Canary Wharf, I heard other free-speech defenders were having a special meeting. The George Orwell Society was announcing its shortlist of this year’s best political writers and to mark the event, they held a debate. Is it time that the monarchy ended?Lydia's sick bags helped set the tone.
Writer Peter Hitchens spoke for the monarchy.... on the opposite team, writer and academic Joan Smith.
JOAN SMITH, WRITER AND ACADEMIC: Who we have as head of state says something about a country's identity and its aspiration is.
Over glasses of a revolutionary's favourite tipple, I cornered both to find out more.
PETER HITCHENS, WRITER: Countries which have constitutional monarchies don't tend to have tortured Chambers and that is not a coincidence. It is because of the nature of the arrangement, where we actually had a mixture of democracy and tradition and the law in our constitution which is a great restraint on certain forms of politics and keeps them out of the centre of things. Those countries which have dispensed with the traditional constitutional monarchy and often found that what has moved in there instead has in fact threatened many of the things which they value most of.
JOAN SMITH: We have had the same family in for several hundred years and the idea that one family can satisfy all requirements at a head of state for several centuries is a complete nonsense. So I think it is an opportunity to raise that question which does not usually get addressed in this country and if you to question it, you are portrayed as a freak and a weirdo and somehow a curmudgeon. And that is a way of trivialising a really serious and important political point.
In this tiny Welsh village of Mold, Adam Phillips was packing up his car for the big day but he was not going to the wedding.
ADAM PHILLIPS: I am going to go to mid Wales - to an escape camp.
Adam is a Welsh nationalist and at the camp, they will have no radio, no television and will not be watching or even discussing the wedding. Adam, with his band of fellow rebels, planned their own big day.
ADAM PHILLIPS: Basically it will be a social gathering, a get together, a time to have fun and chill-out really and get away from it all.
REPORTER: To get away from what?
ADAM PHILLIPS: To get away from the big wedding. It has been over-hyped, over publicised and over the top right from the start.
They think that Wales should be a republic, working as an equal partner with England, not ruled as a smaller brother.
REPORTER: What is your position on the Prince of Wales, the position of the Prince of Wales?
ADAM PHILLIPS: It does not exist.
FRIEND: There has not been one for 68 years that was the last one, the last Prince of Wales.
ADAM PHILLIPS: We have nothing against the people. I'm sure that Charles is a lovely guy, anytime he wants to met us I'll meet him for a cup of tea. But they are not our royals. It does not matter what they do, they will never be out royals.
Finally, the big day arrived - adoring fans, many from overseas, gathered at major landmarks to watch the processions. Security was tight. I had been told that there was an alternative celebration in another part of London. But on the way, we found police cracking down on any potential protest.
POLICE OFFICER: They have a flag pole, it is underneath his jacket. We're asking them what they are doing and they will be on their way shortly.
This is part of the police's ring of steel - the backstreets in Soho behind the main squares. 50 or so known protesters have been barred from entering London and police are jumping on the small groups of protesters who have been seen to be getting ready for an action and they say they have found a red and black flag - a symbol being used by the anarchists in their protests.
REPORTER: Obviously the red-and-black flag could be seen as a symbol of protest.
PROTESTER: Yeah!
REPORTER: So it is a protest?
PROTESTER: In a way.
REPORTER: What do you guys think of the wedding? a nice day, a romantic couple in love?
PROTESTER: One thing I will say about that – they are better dead than wed.
These guys are anarchists and were picked up by the police because they had the anarchist flag, they said they were going to the Soho Square, street theatre protest against capitalism and against the wedding. But the night before, police had swooped both on Chris and the guillotine team.
MAN: Leave him alone, this man is a pensioner, for goodness sake.
In response to the sterile ring of steel around the wedding, Chris's satirical street theatre was billed as a royal orgy of rumpy-pumpy and guillotines. But the police said that he was detained on quote - suspicion of conspiracy to cause public nuisance and breach of the peace.
With the guillotine and its makers held at Her Majesty's pleasure, a few hardy supporters of satire did make it through the ring of steel. Mike Reddy was there the night before, when Chris was arrested.
MIKE REDDY: The police swooped in, they obviously had good intelligence in terms of who these people were, they obviously know Chris, they know Camilla, Patrick, who was our executioner - he was dressed as the executioner so he was easily recognisable.
This was meant to be a joke and the zombies were a parody of the thousands entranced by the royal pageantry. But even with a crowd this small, the police were taking no chances of any effective anti- monarchist actions.
So it is now about 1130 and the wedding is well under way in Westminster Abbey but what is happening here in Soho Square, is groups of police are starting to gather around this very small protest. We are not quite sure what is about to happen but I'm told that police are moving in from all directions.
Suddenly, a group of young men came out of nowhere and confronted the protesters. A group of what looks like thugs confronted the protesters, the police had all moved in and basically locked this area down and they are stopping anybody leaving who is not media.
Just a few blocks away, police were also keeping a close eye on another party. Several hundred Republicans, as quite a few curious onlookers, turned up for the event. Republic Leader Graham Smith welcomed the crowd.
GRAHAM SMITH: We're going to get rid of the monarchy and we want to do that within 10 or 15 years.
It was a small gathering, but the royal wedding does seem to have boosted media interest in the Republican cause.
REPORTER: How do you rate today?
GRAHAM SMITH: Good, I'm really pleased with it, I don’t know how many people there are - about 300 people, maybe 500. I am really pleased. A lot of press a lot of media are here.
Clearly, on these numbers, the Republic is some way off, but more may rally to the cause, if protecting the image of a perfect wedding has indeed come at the cost of Britain's beloved freedom of speech or its right to lampoon its leaders.
Reporter
EVAN WILLIAMS
Research/Camera
EVE LUCAS
Producers
ASHLEY SMITH
Editor
WAYNE LOVE
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN
1st May 2011