A RIGHT ROYAL PICNICAT THE PALACE

A few hundred yards from the Royal Mall on Saturday youths with big boots and short hair daubed the walls of the stark tenements in Vincent Street.

In the stone doorways housewives talked about the price meat and old ladies exchanged grim histories of •their consort's illnesses. Small boys hung screaming from wire netting around games courts squeezed between the cavernous blocks. Wastepaper littered the pavements. In other parts of London, in dressing rooms at private semirural mansions the ruling class debated what to wear. Not in general terms. There was never any doubt about that. But in terms of that attention to detail which marks the difference between a knighthood and an earldom. Deep and consequential struggles raged in the breasts, especially of those who were forced to spend Friday at Moss Bros, about whether it would be proper to wear a grey silk or a black tie with one's morning suit.

Although the occasion was the celebration of the Queen's birthday by trooping the colour of one of her höusehold regiments, there was also the question of the Duke's death.

The problem with the code of the ruling class being unwritten (like the constitution of its government) is that one can never be sure what means-especially if one is hanger on or a tradesman. Some decided on a grey topper with a black tie, others on a black topper and a grey tie and some went the whole hog with a black topper and a black tie. None was irreverent enough to go in a grey topper and a grey tie.

The ramifications of propriety are strict and no one was eager to be 'tasteless'.

While housewives in Vincent Street arrived home with their weekend shopping wondering where their money had gone, the ruling class made their leisurely way to Horseguards The complexities of dress made some late.

'Oh dear. Have you got the General's ticket, flapped one. 'Just look where that queue goes,' wailed another ndignantly having marched with brazen confidence to the front only to be sent back by a soldier from Scotland who obviously thought the wait would do them good.

The topper brigade resented queuing for seats in the stands — carefully arranged so that nobility and dignitaries sat behind the Queen, businessmen and traders on either side and tourists and 'others' hard up against the 'public' ' herded without seats behind a barrier fronting St James's Park.

When the Queen appeared on the parade ground some of the 'herd' had the effrontery to cheer.

The heads of the ruling class —well, the petty bourgeoisieturned to a man as if an insufferable smell had suddenly wafted under their noses.

A few workers took the kids to see the soldiers, but the hard core frenzy was lett to the women of the petty bourgeoisie running the length of St James's Park to cheer the Queen and laddering their stockings on fences in their haste to get to the front of the kerbside crush.

In the heat of adulation one woman actually fainted and while a dozen ambulance men carted her well-fed frame away by stretcher, her husband danced around with a camera photographing her agony.

And what a fine bunch of men the Monarch had with •her-apart, that is, from the pot-bellied marshals and generals. A blaze of red from the five regiments of guards, glitter and clatter from the cavalry.

On Saturday the colour being trooped belonged to the Coldstreams — Peninsula, Waterloo, Sebastopol, Somme, Marne, Ypres, Rhineland, Tobruk, Dunkirk to name but a few of the battles the regiment fought for imperialism. And that is the reality. The myth is the popular concept of the Queen's toy soldiers strutting about outside the palace having their pictures taken by tourists.

Many of those in the splendid uniform over which the middle class were cooing, were busy adding another battle to their flags-Ulster. There was a massive security clampdown against the IRA because scores of guardsmen had only a short while previously helped gun down workers in the Six Counties and put hoods over their heads in Long Kesh.

It is members of the Royal cavalry and foot guards who make up the notorious Special Air Services regiment.

Whatever anybody else thinks of the Royal troops, the ruling class knows exactly what they are and what they represent.

They assemble in their uniforms, spring hats and toppers every year for a ritual confirmation of the strength and permanence of the institutions on which their domination of the working class is based.

Press,