Queen Elizabeth II, an address by Dr Beesley

The following address was given by Dr Beesley, Head of History at St Paul’s School, at a whole school assembly to mark the death and celebrate the life of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

“Queen Elizabeth II was born at 2.40am upon the 21st April 1926. The year of her birth was a turbulent one; a general strike broke out before she was two weeks old. As Europe came under the shadow of totalitarian rule in the 1930s, the Queen’s destiny would alter. In 1936, Edward VIII abdicated which brought Princess Elizabeth within a heartbeat of being Queen. On her twenty-first birthday in 1947, she pronounced that, “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short- shall be devoted to your service.” This is, perhaps, the most quoted remark in recent days. Few public figures have kept to such a pledge.  On the 6th February 1952 she received the news that her father George VI had died, and it must have felt that the weight of the world had crashed upon her young shoulders. I have regularly thought what it must be like to been mourning for the loss of a father, whilst simultaneously being plunged into public view. We should always remember the private tribulations that national figures endure. It is, perhaps, a lazy argument, to focus too much on perceptions of material privilege that make us forget that suffering is one of the great levellers. It was, of course, the Queen, in a message to the people of America after 9/11, who said that grief is the price we pay for love.

There are very few people who remember a life without the Queen. I think I read that there are only 150,000 people alive in this country over the age of ninety-five. What she witnessed in her life is quite remarkable: the destruction of the Second World War was still being felt when she was coronated. She lived through the swinging 1960s, the economic woes of the 1970s along with counter-cultural movements that questioned the principles upon which Monarchy were founded, the social discontent of the 1980s, various scandals of the 1990s, through to the financial crash this century and the trials of our referendum over Brexit. In more recent times, the Queen escaped to Windsor to be protected from the Coronavirus pandemic. In 1940, she had done the same at that time to be shielded from Nazi bombs. During her reign, there were thirty Italian prime ministers, fifteen Australian prime ministers and fourteen American presidents, and she met every one with the exception of Lyndon Baines Johnson. She also encountered seven Popes and three Japanese Emperors.

Elizabeth I reigned for forty-five years, George III for almost sixty years and Victoria for nearly sixty-four years. Although some rather famous colonies were lost in George’s reign, these monarchs presided over periods of national and imperial expansion. For Elizabeth II it was different. Dean Acheson famously remarked in 1962 that Britain lost an Empire and never found a role. It would, of course, be wrong to place too much emphasis on the Queen for navigating this archipelago and, indeed, the post-imperial Commonwealth through troubled waters of the last seventy years. It is true that, behind the trappings and spectacle of regal power, the Queen has little constitutional authority. For some republicans, the principles of hereditary Monarchy run counter to reason but the Republican tradition in Britain has to concede that the institution of Monarchy has retained broad public support. The British people have only once dispensed with the institution in 1649 and, although I am walking into a historiographical minefield, that was essentially a military coup which went counter to the wishes of the vast majority of the population. But to be a successful Monarch, flexibility is essential. Elizabeth was also a reforming Monarch: on the issue of the paying tax; primogeniture was altered to have parity in the succession between females and males; and on two occasions, for Sir Winston Churchill and Lady Margaret Thatcher, the Queen broke with tradition and attended their funerals. And there were two occasions where she would respond directly to public criticism: first, when she visited Aberfan in Wales in 1966 after one hundred and sixteen children and twenty-eight adults had been killed; second in 1997, she returned from Scotland to deliver an address to the nation after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. That is serious, but she responded to modernity in a flippant fashion. Do you think she really wanted to be with James Bond before the Olympics, or more recently to take tea with Paddington Bear?

Constitutional propriety was at the heart of her role, but the Queen could intervene. In the 1980s, she used a Christmas broadcast to warn about the dangers of a polarised society, a subtle rebuke to Margaret Thatcher. In the same premiership, she communicated with Desmond Tutu in South Africa, against the wishes of the foreign office. It is understandable that Nelson Mandela revered Elizabeth II more than any other leader. The Troubles in Ireland were especially close to the Queen; Lord Mountbatten, her husband’s uncle, was killed by the IRA in 1979, just five years after an IRA bomb had seen twenty-0ne people perish in Birmingham. On the 12th October 1984, a bomb in a Brighton Hotel came perilously close to wiping out the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. As the troubles began to subside, the Queen publicly shook the hand of Martin McGuiness, a man that had been a senior member of the IRA at the time of Lord Mountbatten’s death. The Queen’s belief in forgiveness and reconciliation was firmly located in her own faith- a faith that will be explored by the Bible reading and the prayers that follow. As for Ireland, she broke with precedent and telephoned Tony Blair to congratulate him for achieving the Good Friday agreement. And on a flippant note, it was rumoured in America in 1982 that President Reagan only lent his support to Britain’s Falklands campaign because a failure to do so would have jeopardised a state visit and would have prevented him riding with the Queen in Windsor Great Park. Moreover, she has perhaps helped our politicians keep a sense of perspective. She always provoked a sense of unease in her Prime Ministers. In one of her first audiences with the Queen, Margaret Thatcher was so nervous, she arrived forty-five minutes early. John Major remarked that the Queen was never early or late. He remembered waiting for five agonising minutes to see her, in a room with only two of the Queen’s corgis for company. And in 1997, after a landslide election victory with Tony Blair promising a new young, vibrant and cool Britannia, he had his first audience: the Queen set the agenda with her first words:

“You are my tenth prime minister. The first was Winston. That was before you were born.”

As all our living former Prime Ministers have suggested, this old-fashioned deference, along with the creation of a certain uneasiness, has not done them any harm.

There are many explanations that may explain her enduring popularity. Many of you may regard Monarchy as an anachronistic irrelevance in the 21st Century. That is a justifiable position to adopt, but it is difficult not to admire Elizabeth II for her steadfast devotion to duty. Moreover, we respect and admire her for reasons that are not fashionable in the twenty first century. It is not that the Queen was a great orator who popped up consistently to motivate us with an inspirational speeches or simple soundbites. I cannot imagine her study littered with rousing quotations. I suspect she did not go on a coaching course. Her power resided in her restraint. There is something rather special about a public figure that that did not feel the need to join arguments. She was the figure of stability in a world that changes at an alarming speed. Rather than losing its relevance, the Monarchy has become more useful in an age of globalisation. The nature of democracy means that over half the population usually feel aggrieved with an election result, but the Queen could be seen as a constant, somebody that we can admire yet never really know. This was point was neatly made by a commentator in 2012:

“None of us has a clue what the Queen thinks, and this, when you think about it, is what makes her remarkable, and best explains her success. After 60 years as sovereign, her people have barely the vaguest idea of what goes on in her head. Being the planet’s most relentlessly public figure and among its most impenetrably private, at once uniquely familiar and entirely unknowable, is a paradox that never loses its power to intrigue.”

In 1940 the young Princess Elizabeth delivered an address to the nation from Windsor Castle encouraging the nation to remain steadfast, to demonstrate courage and fortitude, predicting that future generations would look upon them with pride. She was right then, and she was right again on the 5th April 2020 when she encouraged tenacity in the face of the Covid pandemic. In only her fourth special broadcast of her monarchy outside her scheduled TV appearances, the Queen said,

“I hope in the years to come everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge. And those that come after us will say that the Britons of this generation were as strong as any.” She added that “better days will return. We will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again, we will meet again,” the last line a direct reference to a wartime song by Vera Lynn. From the privations of war, to the hardships of Covid, Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II never failed us.”

[Image shows: Her Majesty the Queen with ANG Richards (English Department and Walker Librarian 1927-68) during the Queen’s visit to St Paul’s School in 1959 to mark the school’s 450th anniversary.]