For the second time this year, ordinary life in Britain has been suspended by events concerning the monarchy. The Platinum Jubilee in June lasted for four days; now we are observing ten days of mourning following the passing of Queen Elizabeth II and installation of King Charles III. Television has been dominated by rolling 24-7 news coverage, while many sporting engagements and other activities have been cancelled ‘out of respect’ for the late Queen, often leaving people further out of pocket in already lean times. Companies and political figures have been falling over each other lest they be seen to be too slow off the mark in paying their respects or accused of lèse-majesté.

This moment, with the death of the Queen at 96 after a reign spanning eight decades, was always going to be difficult for many, whatever your view of the monarchy. But genuine sadness at the passing of an elderly woman who occupied the throne for such a significant period of our history is one thing; the uses to which it is being put, and the role of the commemorations in what happens next in the country, quite another.

As someone fundamentally opposed to the British class system, born privilege, and vast private wealth in a world in which such poverty and inequality are rife, I cannot and will not be a hypocrite during this period of official mourning. But I also appreciate that the system we have all grown up in, the identity that has been created around ‘Britishness’, and the personal family histories that people will hold means that many will feel very differently.

We have never as a nation (or rather, group of nations) been allowed the space to learn about and conduct a healthy debate around our history in the way we should. And so, when criticism is expressed towards a system that embraces a divine ruler, it is understandable that it is met with defensiveness and sometimes anger. People can see it as an attack on their identity, similar to what happened during the Brexit debate, with many conflating their love of ‘Europe’ with the institution of the European Union, or of being in support of Brexit with patriotism.

But we need to be able to have the space for healthy debate and disagreement, for others to hold alternate views if we are going to address some of the huge challenges that we face as a country. Just possibly, we might learn something and change opinions. Shutting down people’s right to communicate is unhealthy and hazardous to public debate and, crucially, to democracy—a threat embodied most clearly by the arrests of republican protestors reported in the last twenty-four hours, under the draconian anti-protest laws passed by the government in the last couple of years.

While I have friends who have served Queen and country, and have deep loyalty to the Royals, I also have loved ones whose families have a different, traumatic experience of this history, due to colonialism and empire. They also have a right to feel very differently at this time. We must break out of the dangerous trap we are being moved into by the state, with the media very much operating alongside the government to prescribe what we are to think and feel. While I understand and respect the rights of others to mourn, I would also like them to respect my right not to join in. This is a basic matter of freedom of thought and expression, and of freedom of political conscience.

My journey to where I am as someone who thinks there is no place for a monarchy in the modern world hasn’t been passed down through family—many of whom have been working-class Royalists—but comes of my own personal experience of a system so broken and biased against those trying to escape poverty. I have concluded that until the British class system is truly abolished, we will never be able to tackle inequality and achieve true social justice. The monarchy, the pinnacle of the British establishment and class system, directly conflicts with my wish to end privatisation, concentrated land ownership, and intolerably unequal wealth distribution. For me, the two simply don’t fit.

The unfairness and corruption of our capitalist system are becoming clear to more and more people as shareholders reap vast profits and CEOs of huge companies pull down ever higher compensation while ordinary people face wage stagnation, the erosion of public services, and growing misery as the result of a cost of living crisis that isn’t going away because the Queen has died. As the news came in, new Prime Minister Liz Truss had just made her announcement that she would cap energy bills at £2,500—more than £500 above current rates, and double those of just a year ago—for the next two years. This proves that intervention by government in the current crisis is possible—although clearly the government are continuing to prioritise profit for oil and gas giants over ordinary families.

But the Queen’s passing has seen conversation on all this largely closed down, and the urgent business of addressing the crisis put on hold. The only news to be discussed is that of the Royal Family, mourning, and the pomp and circumstance of the accession of Charles to the throne. Many organisations have panicked over what might be deemed offensive, disrespectful, or insensitive, with an almost blanket ban on dissenting viewpoints (although the occasional ‘vox pop’ interview slips through with an ordinary person on the street who doesn’t respond quite as they are supposed to); social media is in a state of high alert, with some accounts seeming to scour for what can be deemed unacceptable, stoking outrage, and instigating pile-ons, threatening to report people to their places of work and generally policing the air waves for correct speech. But is all this anger toward those who break conformity actually real?

My day on Friday after hearing the news was a standard one of appointments and meetings: a visit to the hygienist, the hairdressers, and two meetings for work, followed by a school-run pick-up and a football practice. This meant that I interacted with quite a number of people outside the political social media bubble.

I am not a monster, and was ready not to offend anyone with my opinions and be sensitive to the general mood. And guess what? Their lives too were going on as ever, with the same ups and downs as before, just with the additional pressure now of a vague worry about how they should act. The real world of work and family and social life in a fairly typical part of England isn’t quite the place the state and press would have us believe.

The whole media confection of so-called ‘public opinion’ in this country, whether about the monarchy or moral panics around ‘wokeness’ or whatever, is about nothing more than the enforcement of social control and the silencing of anything that threatens the inequality the establishment seeks to keep in place. Of course, anything that challenges that must be shut down.

Here we find the political education and institution-building challenge that lies ahead for the Left and the labour movement. We have to figure out ways to build the strength collectively to enable us to hold alternative and progressive views without fear of risking our livelihoods. This of course raises the difficult question of how we can build our own, non-plutocratic media. But to begin with, it means we must hold and not lose the recent ground we have been gaining through political and industrial struggles.

As more no-expenses-spared royal pageants loom, it is totally normal to feel discomfort at the huge sums of money that will be spent at a time when more pensioners and children will go hungry and suffer fuel poverty this winter. Working people will still be expected to go to work, and will face pay cuts and attacks on their pensions and terms and conditions, just as before. We cannot allow this moment to be used to distract from and stop the fight for a fairer and more just country.

The death of the Queen, however sad for many, must not be allowed to become another excuse for attacking those striking to demand better pay or campaigning for immediate action against unaffordable energy bills. Our urgent tasks still lie ahead, from tackling climate change to transforming our economy to one that works for us all. We need to resume the once-in-a-generation struggle that was getting underway, and which will determine for some time to come who will be expected to bear the costs of this crisis—the people, or the powerful. In this context, this period will be used by the establishment to attempt to deflect and distract and manage and control, to tell ordinary people our place and try to keep us there.

There is a note of desperation in it all, of a scramble to keep the lid on, to create the image of a British public still content to preserve the status quo. The truth, I believe, couldn’t be more different—as the coming weeks and months will surely tell.