Decades of devotion in monarch’s milestone
Seventy years on the throne have forged an unbreakable bond with the public, says Simon Heffer
She has a sense of duty, loyalty and probity that were already going out of fashion when she was a teenager
Today Britain is experiencing something that has never happened before: its monarch marks 70 years on the throne. The feat our Queen has just accomplished has happened only three times in the history of monarchy: Prince Johan II of Liechtenstein, who reigned from 1858 to 1929, King Bhumibol the Great of Thailand (1946-2016) and Louis XIV of France (1643-1715), the leader of the pack. During her Platinum Jubilee year Her Majesty will on May 9 overtake Prince Johan, and on June 13 King Bhumibol. To pass Louis XIV (who became king at the age of four) would take until the end of May 2024. Only a fool would rule it out.
Record-breaking is not the point of the Platinum Jubilee. It is, rather, a moment to reflect on what the Queen means to the country and to each of us as individuals. Millions appreciated part of her significance when watching her Christmas message: which is that she has become an unequivocal moral force in a society in which standards in public life are increasingly matters of deep and disturbing scrutiny.
The most unforgettable recent image of the Queen is of her sitting alone in a stall at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, last April for the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh, who had died in the 74th year of their marriage. Her isolation was because of Covid: like everyone else
– or almost everyone – the Queen was obeying the Government’s diktats on social distancing at a funeral attended by just 30 people that would normally have attracted hundreds. With so many Britons outraged at breaches of the rules by politicians who made them, notably the shocking and tasteless decision to hold parties in Downing Street on the eve of the funeral itself, the contrast could not have been more stark.
The Queen is admired for many qualities, but perhaps foremost as she approaches her eighth decade on the throne is her resilience. Watching last year’s Christmas message, it was clear what a blow the Duke’s death had been, something she conveyed by understatement. She drew people in because many of us, too, have suffered grievous losses during the pandemic, and been forced into separations from family and friends. Her Platinum Jubilee year thus started subdued; with luck, it will soon become a year of appreciation, and celebration. Lavish celebrations and an extra bank holiday for the first weekend in June have been announced, with familiar elements such as street parties, and novelties such as a competition to create a Platinum Pudding.
One of the enduring paradoxes about the reign is that while Britain and the world have changed nearly out of recognition since 1952, the Queen has remained, in her public persona, entirely the same. That is what makes her this towering moral force, and a natural leader: she has a sense of duty, loyalty and probity that were already going out of fashion when she was a teenager, but which were inculcated into her in the course of her upbringing and which her titanic sense of responsibility has reinforced with iron.
The Britain she reigns over has become so different that it would be no surprise if she did not feel rather at sea in it. There is perhaps no better example of this than the reason why Winston Churchill, her first prime minister, was reluctant to allow the BBC to broadcast the Coronation on television: he said he was afraid that it would be watched “by men in pubs with their hats on”. The unquestioning reverence for the Crown that Churchill implied should be shown has been replaced by a largely unquestioning respect for the woman who is its incarnation. Few men wear hats these days, in pubs or out of them; few would understand the code of manners that dictated their removal; that is a highly symbolic change of the last 70 years, but far from the most significant.
Britain may have had a Queen Regnant as head of state in 1952, but she was an unusual woman in not having to take second place to a man. The rights and power of her female subjects were nothing like they are today, and illustrate as well as anything the vast social changes of the reign. The cliché of the docile 1950s housewife cooking, cleaning and looking after the children – and often having been married in her late teens or early twenties, without thought of a career – is highly apposite. There was no such thing as equal pay; the Sex Discrimination Act, which among other things forbade employers from refusing to employ a woman because of her gender, would not come into force until 1975. There were no women in the House of Lords until 1958; no women clergy were appointed in the established Church (of which the Queen is Supreme Governor) until 1994; no woman became prime minister until 1979. Hardly any women went to university in 1952 (but then hardly any men did either: the total participation rate was 3.4 per cent of young people); now 56 per cent of young women go to university each year compared with just 44 per cent of men.
Although Britain has lost almost all her colonies, the Queen has had the Commonwealth, which she embraces with unaffected enthusiasm, to give her a sense of continuity with the imperial past of her youth: she and the institution have evolved together. But in her own country, the Queen is so important to millions because she herself is the agent of continuity. The country has changed, but her public persona has not.
This must make it hard for her when troubles come close to home, such as with the Duke of York. He may be the Queen’s favourite son, and innocent until proven guilty in court, but his idiocy will cast a shadow over an otherwise celebratory time. What may well be as hard for Her Majesty to accept, given her own impeccable standards, is the self-regarding and disloyal behaviour of her grandson, the Duke of Sussex, and his wife. The British public will lose patience with them entirely if their complaints about the loss of police protection on visits home rain on the imminent very special parade.
For the Queen, all her jubilees (this is the fourth, after 1977, 2002 and 2012) have been about stimulating an ethic of service among her people, and this will be no different. It is also a chance for us to rejoice in her name, especially over the first weekend in June when the key celebrations are planned. But for many it will first and foremost be a chance to say “thank you” to her. Only 15 per cent of people in Britain are over 70; so getting on for 90 per cent of us cannot remember when the Queen was not our head of state.
She remains uninterested in abdication; she would contemplate a regency of the sort George III had to have only if her health deteriorated badly (George III went mad). But as she enters the second half of her nineties something approaching a semiregency will inevitably develop. She is not superhuman, despite all appearances to the contrary.
The next logical step is for the Prince of Wales, as heir apparent, to assist with some of the duties the constitution appears to (but does not actually) demand that the Sovereign herself does: such as a share of audiences with the Prime Minister, or receiving the credentials of ambassadors, and helping with some of the Queen’s red boxes, and briefing her about what he has read in them.
That remains in the future. With luck, we shall soon see the last of the pandemic, and we can this spring and summer see our Queen among her people. Her astonishing health at the age of 95, and her devotion to her country – to us – give the greatest cause for celebration. We should luxuriate in it, and in our good fortune to have lived in her Britain, and her Elizabethan age.