We paid respect to the late monarch but also projected an idea of Britain
WATCHING THE DRAMA OF THE QUEEN’S funeral unfold, I had a strong sense that future historians will see this moment as the end of the postwar world.
The funeral was an epic piece of theatre. Though its rituals were largely invented in the 20th century, their emotional power came from a still-shared belief in the values and stories dramatised in the ceremony. We commemorated and paid respect to the late monarch
– but we also projected an idea of Britain steeped in empire and military history as well as constitutional monarchy. Queen Elizabeth’s life linked us directly to the wartime generation, and her reign carried us across the astonishing changes we have seen both in our global power and at home in society, class, race and religion.
I was reminded of Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1897 – another moment when a long reign was drawing to a close, with the sense of the end of an age. War was on the horizon, and old certainties were slipping away. It was then that Kipling wrote his prophetic poem Recessional, with its biblical warning about imperial boasting and jingoism: “Our navies melt away;/ On dune and headland sinks the fire:/ Lo, all our pomp of yesterday/ Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!… Lest we forget – lest we forget!”
How amazing to think that Queen Elizabeth’s reign lasted more than half of the intervening period between 1897 and the present day – and to see that Kipling’s poem still speaks to us. Adjusting to our post-imperial place in the world is taking some time!
Only 10 years ago, the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics showed us another vision of Britain. With extraordinary boldness, “Isles of Wonder” told a historical tale of a small nation with a great history: the transition from a “green and pleasant land” through industrial revolution to welfare state, pop culture, the white heat of technology and the digital revolution.
Fired by William Blake’s Jerusalem, Danny Boyle’s visionary love letter to Britain and its peoples set out to be a statement of where we had come from and who we are now: an open society, multiracial and multicultural, optimistic, humorous and youthful. Surely the most surprising and moving cultural event this country has ever seen, it was idealised, to be sure, but it articulated the idea that post-imperial Britain could begin to walk into the future with a new tone, shedding the burden of the past.
The ceremony became a byword for a new approach, not only to British culture but to Britishness itself. Politicians were soon using it as shorthand for a new kind of patriotism – a kind, as one commentator put it, “that does not lament a vanished Britain but loves the country that has changed, that had succeeded not in spite of its Britishness but because of its Britishness, delighting viewers here and around the world by rooting itself in the authentic stories and spirit of these islands”.
But we did not shed the burden of the past. Within five years, nostalgic nationalistic politics swept us to Brexit, driven by a very different view of national history and identity – an ideologically motivated gamble with the wealth and wellbeing of the nation.
And now our Queen of 70 years has gone. The peoples of our divided nations find themselves in a very difficult place, as the gap widens between the promise and the reality of our post-Brexit role in the world.
At root this is about the meaning of our history. Despite the optimism of the 2012 Olympics, for many commentators the Brexit vote showed that we haven’t yet come to terms with our past, who we are, and who we want to be. There are now, for example, fiercely contested debates about the empire and slavery, and their role in the making of modern Britain. For years, many of us have been arguing for the empire to be at the centre of the school history curriculum – it is, after all, the one historical event that shaped us all. But this is still proving a very difficult and contentious conversation, one that will make progress only with greater honesty and openness.
Isn’t this what history is for, after all? The historian’s job in furthering public understanding of the past is to help people understand themselves and their society in a increasingly dangerous and polarised world. We have to tell all the important stories, truthfully and with empathy – hard as that may be.