Queen Elizabeth- the one constant in a changing world
During a history class in my first year at a state grammar school, the imposing headmaster, Colonel Thomas, swept in wearing his gown and mortar board. He announced to the class, “I think you should know that at six o’clock this morning, His Majesty King George VI passed away. I think we should all rise for a minute’s silence.” We duly did so, and Colonel Thomas left us. As we sat down, one boy asked the teacher, “Please Sir, who’s dead?”
For the next 70 turbulent and changing years, his successor, Queen Elizabeth II, was the one constant that kept the nation united when it faced different challenges and new opportunities. It was under her first prime minister, Winston Churchill, that many of the wartime restrictions were abolished, including rationing and identity cards. I remember the glee with which I threw away my hated rationing books, though I kept my ID card for years as a souvenir.
After the Suez crisis of 1956, the country realised that it was no longer powerful enough to exercise sway in the world without allies. We used to tune in to half-hourly news bulletins and the BBC, then the monopoly radio broadcaster, introduced them for the first time to cover the crisis.
The Queen then presided over a remarkable shift away from a British Empire and into a diverse Commonwealth of Nations which cooperated together to achieve joint objectives. It said much for the nation and its monarch that this was one of the few empires in history which achieved its dissolution largely peacefully. Queen Elizabeth was very much the cement that held the Commonwealth together. She valued her role as its head and exercised her influence to have it as far as possible share common values. I kept my school geography book that showed large parts of the world coloured pink, memories of a bygone age.
The monarchy was one of the few bright spots in Britain’s long slow decline into the economic chaos of the 1960s and 70s. The country sought to halt this decline by joining the European Economic Community, which it saw as a free trade area. The Queen visited many of the European capitals and leaders, and became a very popular figure on the European continent.
Queen Elizabeth had an easy relationship with most of her 15 Prime Ministers, including Margaret Thatcher, the one who overturned the postwar consensus, and turned Britain around from being the sick man of Europe into being one its powerful and leading members. The retaking of the Falklands after the Argentinian seizure gave the nation a new feeling of self-confidence. I was in Covent Garden when I saw on a TV screen in a shop window that the Union Jack was now flying over Port Stanley. The Queen was now at the head of a nation that felt it had a new role defending freedom and democracy, and which was prepared to commit resources to that end.
The Queen presided over the dismal years of the 1970s when trade union leaders seemed to exercise more power than the monarch, or, indeed, Parliament. That ceased when Mrs Thatcher brought the unions within the law, so they were now subject to the rule of the Queen in Parliament. I still have the portable gas cooker and gas lamp that I used during the power cuts to which we were subjected by the union bosses.
Throughout her reign, the Queen took a delicate apolitical stance, wishing to be seen to not be interfering in politics. This was a major factor in having the whole country unite behind her, regardless of any individual views they might hold. Twice she gave a discrete but delicate nudge that may have indicated her own position. Just before the Scottish referendum on independence, she said that she hoped the people “would think carefully” before they voted.
Just before the Brexit referendum, the Sun newspaper ran a story provided by someone at a private dinner party attended by the Queen that she had allegedly expressed support for Britain regaining its independence. The Palace, as usual, declined to comment on such matters. Having seen the United Kingdom enter into the European Economic Community some 40 years earlier, she now presided over its departure from the European Union.
She intervened personally during the Covid pandemic with a speech to the nation, reminding her subjects that normality would return, and that in the wartime words of Vera Lynn, ‘We will meet again.’ I took the vaccines at the first possible opportunity, and welcomed and agreed with her reassurances.
I saw the Queen many times, but only met her once to shake hands and talk briefly. It was when I was an Edinburgh councillor and we held a civic reception for her, Prince Philip, the now King Charles and Princess Anne. She admired my Edinburgh graduate tie, and we all talked briefly about university life since Charles had also just graduated.
The nation must now move into an unknown and uncertain future, without the bedrock of stability that she offered during her reign of 70 years in which the modern world took shape. I was present throughout those years and the changes they brought. She was the one constant factor throughout them, bringing an aura of calm and stability to sometimes chaotic times. She will be sadly missed, but remembered with much affection and appreciation.