Queen’s withdrawal a time to reflect
Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, stood in for Queen Elizabeth at the annual Remembrance Sunday observances at the Cenotaph in London. The 91-year-old Queen and her 96-year-old husband, Philip, watched the ceremonial honouring of Britain’s war dead from the balcony of the nearby Foreign Office building.
The Queen and Prince Philip have been scaling back their public appearances all year, sending younger members of the Royal Family in their place - as you would expect nonagenarians to do. The family has always taken an intense interest in the armed forces and especially in the Remembrance Sunday observances. By standing to one side on Sunday, the royal couple underlined, in a very public way, their gradual transfer of duties to the next generation.
The Queen is gently preparing her family and her realm, which includes Canada, for her own disappearance and the succession of Charles. Canadians should take the hint and give some thought to the monarchy, the service it has provided for the last 65 years under Elizabeth and the service we might hope for in the next reign.
The Queen and the family have provided enormous support to a vast array of charitable organizations in the U.K. and elsewhere in the Commonwealth by lending their names and their occasional presence to fundraising efforts and volunteer service. This is a way of strengthening the best instincts and the most praiseworthy efforts of individuals and their non-profit service organizations.
She has also provided continuity through 66 years of political upheavals, social changes, technical innovations and rapidly shifting values. She has rolled with the changes, whether she personally liked them or not.
In her time, Britain surrendered an Empire and assembled a Commonwealth; joined Europe and is now trying to leave it; waged war against Irish nationalists and then made peace with them; persecuted gay citizens and now leaves them in peace; and bounced socialists and conservatives in and out of power. She has not obstructed change nor railed against it, but she has shown Britons an intellectual and spiritual anchor in their own best traditions.
She has a knack of speaking for the whole country, offering remarks that are pointed and interesting, but never offensive.
In that way, the Queen has been a unifier in a country that is constantly being torn apart, like all countries, by internal quarrels. People who compare the quality of public debate and the level of social cohesion in the U.K. with those in the United States can’t help noticing how much more courteous and accommodating British people are. The unfailingly polite Royal Family may have something to do with that.
Canadians sometimes talk of ditching the monarchy, as Australia thought of doing in 1999. If we want to start down that path, we should think of some substitute that will provide equally good service.