She calls me Nelson... so I call her Elizabeth
Mandela’s close bond with the Queen showed how she enchanted and influenced Commonwealth leaders. Tonight a BBC documentary celebrates her success
IT IS difficult to imagine now but in 1953 when the newly crowned Queen embarked on the longest Commonwealth tour ever undertaken by a monarch there were concerns about the ability of the 27-year-old mother-of-two to maintain the House of Windsor, the Commonwealth and even the monarchy itself.
During six gruelling months, from November 24 to May 10, 1954, she was separated from her two young children as she and Prince Philip toured 12 territories including Bermuda, Jamaica, Fiji, Tonga, Australia and Uganda. Rather than fly she sailed the Pacific to see Queen Salote of Tonga, calling the arduous journey “extraordinary.”
At the heart of all the pomp and planning was a young woman finding her feet beneath the metaphorical weight of the most famous crown in the world as she took on the challenge of heading a colourful but disparate family of nations.
Tonight a BBC film, presented by newsreader George Alagiah, will explore the success she has made of this enormous challenge during the past 60 years.
“What we see in the film is the transformation of a young, diffident woman into a confident figure able to command the respect of leaders around the world,” he says of a monarch who ended up on firstname terms with Nelson Mandela.
“She calls me Nelson so I call her Elizabeth,” the legendary South African president, who died in 2013, said of their relationship.
During her seven-week tour of Australia in 1954 the Queen also demonstrated her respect for ordinary working people. Travelling by train around the country she thought she should get up during night journeys because people had gathered to see her at stations – and would sit up in her nightie.
“She was our cover girl for weeks on end,” says Australian journalist Juliet Ryden, describing the young Queen as “pretty shy”. The film reveals that the Queen Mother wrote her a lot of letters about the children back home, saying “keep your chipper up, keep smiling”. However Her Majesty’s determination to learn the ropes ensured the tour – the first of many – was a triumph.
To highlight how deftly the Queen has played her role Mr Alagiah travelled in Her Majesty’s footsteps from Tonga to Australia and Ghana and on to India and South Africa, discovering the ability she has had as head of the Commonwealth “to influence world events in a way she cannot at home”.
WHICH is not to say that the Queen’s tours have always been plain sailing. In 1961 she refused to cancel a trip to newly independent Ghana despite safety fears and political unrest because there was anxiety that President Kwame Nkrumah was about to pull Ghana out of the Commonwealth.
Rather than “be seen like a film star flouncing off” the Queen stuck to her travel plans aware that she had just 11 days to charm the 51-year-old head of state.
Local historian Nat Nunoo Amarteifio describes her decision as “gallant”. “The Commonwealth could have dissolved into a white-only club so it was vital that Nkrumah stayed in. For him to move out at that time would have been catastrophic for British political prestige in the world.”
The Queen’s solution to this thorny issue was controversial, touching and ground-breaking in equal measure. The young monarch decided to dance with the mature African statesman at a reception.
“A man could not have done it,” says Amarteifio. “Here is our president being respected enough by the Queen to put her arm around him. She was fairly graceful, she danced like a white woman but a good white woman.”
And her fresh new approach continued with the development of the royal walkabout when the Royal Family visited Australia and New Zealand in March 1970. “It really was ground-breaking territory,” recalls her former private secretary Sir William Heseltine. “It made an entirely new relationship between the Queen and the public.”
But the first-ever walkabout at the Sydney Showground didn’t go off altogether smoothly after it was alleged that Prince Philip, on being greeted in Greek by someone in the crowd, had replied with a rude word in the same language.
Sir William recalls having “to try to sort out this idiotic drama at the same time as Princess Anne was quoted as referring to ‘this bloody wind’, shocking many old-fashioned Australians who could not believe that any member of the Royal Family would use such language”, let alone a 19-year-old Princess.
For her part Princess Anne is unapologetic. “How many people enjoy walking into a room full of people they’ve never met before? Then try a street. I don’t think many young people would volunteer to do that,” she says in the new documentary in which she also talks about the Queen’s pioneering role in a male-dominated world. “Her length of time in that position and her ability to talk to those leaders is virtually unique,” she says of the Queen. “She’s been in that position of being an honorary man for a long time. People get used to the fact you can have a conversation about things you wouldn’t normally talk to women about.”
The Queen: Her Commonwealth Story is on BBC One at 9pm.