An African dawn, an eagle and a queen

THE LONG CONTINUOUS history of the British monarchy, broken only by Cromwell in the seventeenth century, might make the institution seem impregnable to outside eyes. Yet the question whether it can continue has been voiced, by friends, by enemies, and even privately within the royal family itself, at several recent historical junctures, most notably at the time of the Abdication crisis in 1936 and again following the death of Princess Diana in 1997.
The Golden Jubilee year of Queen Elizabeth II has been marked by the double sorrow of the deaths of her sister, Princess Margaret, in February, and of her mother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, in March. Was this to be another annus horribilis, the famous phrase the Queen used to describe the year when her family’s reverses included the catastrophic fire at Windsor Castle and a growing sense of alienation from the people?
The paradoxical but emphatic answer to this question is no. It sometimes appears that the British government has a sense of itself which, despite surface appearance and civility, feels challenged and rivalled by the monarchy. Mr Blair was omni-present, presidential even, at the time of Princess Diana’s death, sure-footed while the royals faltered and even, curiously when one thinks about it now, read the lesson at her Westminster Abbey funeral. But at the Queen Mother’s funeral in the same sacred space, he simply sat with the other mourners, and, with the rest of his ministers, was reportedly not excluded from a request to switch off mobiles and pagers. A government blessedly off message for two hours, commented the editor of The Daily Telegraph.

A modern dilemma

There had been a quiet sadness when Princess Margaret died, focused on the Queen and the Princess’s family but the passing of the Queen Mother, hardly tragic at 101 years of age, but just weeks later, stirred a real feeling of compassion for the Queen and, more significantly, was at once grasped by ordinary people as the end of an era. It was as clear a knell as the death of Queen Victoria a century before. The B.B.C. misread the mood and stumbled behind the public feeling much as the Queen, full marks for honesty, had been slow in 1997 to grasp how much Diana had been loved, despite her failings and her being carved away from the royal family.
There was an altogether amazing public wish to pause and participate in the ceremonies marking the Queen Mother’s death. We did not see the acres of flowers strewn for Diana but huge numbers of people, of every age and class and background, were determined to file past the catafalque of well-loved centurion in Westminster Hall and to line the routes of her last London journeys. A million people were in the sreets, not just as onlookers but as participants, liturgically present. This was a stunning riposte to the republican scribblers and cynics who had been forecasting derisory levels of public interest in the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations.
It is now likely that on the national Jubilee holiday in June there will an enthusiastic participation in everything from the Thanksgiving Ceremony in St Paul’s Cathedral to the humble street parties in towns, suburbs and villages. My own city of Chichester will stage a Freedom Parade in the morning, a Pageant in the afternoon and Family Fun in its college grounds until sunset. We shall all be torn between the television and actually enjoying ourselves by participating, that odd modern dilemma.

The accession

My own memories of the Queen’s accession are as sharp in my mind as the lovely Annigoni painting, that icon of her early reign. There was a poignancy heightened by a communication failure at the hour of her accession. She was in Kenya with her husband the Duke of Edinburgh, spending the night in a tree-house, miles from anywhere, in order to get a view of the African dawn and wildlife. Coded messages from London to the embassy could not be read because the code book was locked in a safe. In the end an officer at the tree-house heard the news on a crackling B.B.C. broadcast. He had to tell the Duke who then told his wife. It was many hours after the death of the King. That officer, Commander Parker, later related a curious thing. Hours earlier he had persuaded the 25-year-old Princess to climb to a look-out point to see the sun rise over the jungle. Alarmingly an eagle hovered over their heads. Parker feared it might swoop at them. It didn’t but he calculated that that was about the moment when she became Queen.
I was called up for my national service by the King but arrived to serve the Queen. All officers wore black armbands for months. A humble rear-gunner on B29s, I watched her coronation the following year, 1953, in the sergeants’ mess at R.A.F. Marham. It was one of the wettest June days anyone remembers.

A royal heritage

I have my own high view of coronation and of heredity, greatly strengthened by the precipitate and ill-conceived ‘reform’ of the House of Lords which the government is engaged upon. They have ‘performed the first half of the trick’ and abolished hereditary peerages, proposing to pack the upper house with placemen. The ermine have been driven out, bloodless and squeakless; in will scuttle the weasels. They will be worse. Noblesse oblige but these people will be obliged to no one but the Government. Heredity stands up very well in comparison with the other ways in which men and women come to power, authority, office, duty and responsibility. And I have no axe to grind here. I never came near land, blood, power or money in my life… or wanted to.
The ready acceptance by most of my fellow-countrymen of the end of hereditary peerages, even by the Duke of Norfolk, the leading Catholic peer, is to me sad and disappointing. It has the natural and inevitable effect of undermining the monarchy which depends on the inheritance principle. In this Golden Jubilee year I want to stand up and defend that principle. It was the bitterest vice of Communism that it took away the rights of parents over their children. The right of inheritance is co-axial with the right of property. Our Government curbs generation to generation retention of excessive resources by due taxation – this blocks the emergence of a few powerful and dominating families or interests that prevent some states from functioning justly at all – but we should preserve both principles. They are part of the Judaeo-Christian culture that binds society together.

The eight Sacrament

Coronation, with its solemn vows and anointing is, for me, an eighth Sacrament. The conduct of Elizabeth II in the faithful discharge of her vows and selfless service of her nation, the Commonwealth and her people surpasses in moral quality and steadfastness that of any of her ministers. Her life has surely been an outward sign of inward grace. Pilate asked Jesus if he were a king. The Lord’s answer rings down the centuries. I was born on the Feast of Christ the King and have a sense of the everlasting, indelible and spiritual character of kingship. We should remember this and rejoice that we live in a free country where a Christian monarch blessedly marks the Golden Jubilee of her accession to the throne.
The Bishops of England and Wales have sent a Jubilee greeting to the Queen expressing the loyalty and gratitude of the Catholic community for her unstinting and selfless service to our nation as you celebrate the fiftieth year of your reign… We commend particularly your unwavering and steadfast commitment to our shared Christian faith, to the unity of the Church and to the values of truth, justice and tolerance. They concluded by quoting from the greeting the Pope extended to the Queen when she was in Rome in 2000. …you have reigned with a dignity and sense of duty which have edified millions around the world.
The late Cardinal Basil Hume was greatly admired and trusted by the Queen and she awarded him the Order of Merit shortly before his death. On 7 May she will unveil a statue of him in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, his home town. The late Cardinal brought Catholicism into the mainstream of English life and it was perfectly natural that his successor at Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, should have been among the readers in the Abbey at the funeral of the Queen Mother.