These were the views expressed by John Curtin around the time of the 1927 visit to Australia by the Duke and Duchess of York to open the new Parliament House building in Canberra. Written as the lead editorial in the Westralian Worker, they give voice to a powerful stream in Labor's brand of Britishness – a deep-seated disdain for the trappings and trimmings of imperial loyalty and the privileges of an imperial aristocracy. Here the urge of some in the country to genuflect towards their royal guests or to fuss over the order and opulence of officialdom is derided as deeply offensive to Australia's egalitarian, democratic ethos. By throwing themselves so completely at the regal feet, these Anglophiles were denying the distinctiveness of Australian social ideals and mores and perpetuating the inequalities of the old world in a new land. Curtin clearly found such symbols of class pretension repugnant to his idea of an Australia that stood on its own two feet.