Still, she rises
THE village’s bunting committee has been working at full pelt: a team of amateur seamstresses working to the magisterial direction of a volunteer professional to produce threequarters of a mile of flags to decorate the length of the High Street.
The Ukrainian flag currently flies from the church tower, but the Union Flag will be proudly raised for the Platinum Jubilee. We won’t forget Ukraine and the beleagured country’s flag will go up again after the parties, but, for those four days, we will be celebrating Britain and basking in the warmth of The Queen’s 70 years on the throne.
The village is agog with preparations. Almost every family has booked a place at the two rows of tables that will run down the main street, closed to traffic for the day. With morning service over in the village church, the party will begin. We’ve begged, borrowed and appropriated every available trestle table and the revellers are bringing their own chairs and eating irons. The village butcher’s hog roast will be lit early and the pub’s refrigeration trailers parked within easy reach. Celebration reusable mugs have been ordered and enough local beer and cider to cheer the crowd, however large.
We’ve never seen the like before. It reminds some of the old codgers of the street parties of their childhood that celebrated the end of the Second World War. Happily, 77 years later, we won’t be relying on spam and orange squash, which we are told went down a treat at the time.
Yet the link with those victory celebrations is an apt one. It was the Royal Family that was at the centre of the wartime battle to keep up the nation’s morale: the King with the same exiguous amount of bath water as his subjects, the Queen walking among the ruins of bombed London, the young Princess in her uniform. It was royal leadership at every turn in defeat, as well as in victory, their example of understatement and duty done contrasting so completely with the bombastic flaunting of the dictators.
And that Princess is, amazingly, still with us after 70 years of dutiful majesty. She made a promise at her Coronation and her Anointing —a promise she has kept every day of her life. She allows others to take rather more of the burden, but she is still The Queen. That promise was lifelong. When they sang Vivat Regina all those years ago, they were cheering a monarch until death do us part. For her there is no retirement from the duty to which she committed herself before God.
Therefore, behind the jollifications, the barbecues, the street parties and the raucous celebrations, there is a deep significance in this jubilee. Above and beyond party politics, Brexit, Covid, Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis is our Head of State. Her lack of power makes her the more powerful, her independence the more reliable, her continuance the more comforting.
Monarchy may no longer be seen as the natural way to govern nations, but here we know it is the natural way to preside over Britain. Elizabeth II delighting in the Royal Windsor Horse Show; with her Oyster card opening the Elizabeth Line; and delicately paving the way for her succession without in any way diminishing her central role—she is an example to us all.
In a world where so many have lost their moral compass, she has clearly been guided by hers. Where others have taken shortcuts in their duty, she has gone the second mile. Where her nearest have stumbled, she has stood firm. Long may she reign over us. God save The Queen.
In a world where many have lost their moral compass, she has been guided by hers