She was not meant for such an important position. Her father, the Duke of York, only became king after the abdication of Edward VIII. George VI, the queen's father, was a retiring man, an introvert with a bad stutter, who did not relish his position but served his country well, although the stress caused him to become a heavy smoker, and he died of lung cancer at the age of only 56, on February 6 1952. The day of ascension to the throne is rarely a happy one for the new sovereign.
After the abdication of Edward VIII, Princess Elizabeth began to lead a much more public life. Her father had Elizabeth at the dinner table when he dined with prime ministers and other heads of state, as a preparation for her future role. In early 1952 she embarked on a tour of Commonwealth countries, and was in Africa when the news came of her father's death. She flew home immediately.
The Queen was 25 years old when she ascended to the throne. The formal coronation took place over a year later, and was a much more joyous occasion. It was the first, and so far the only, British coronation to be televised. On June 2nd 1953 Elizabeth was crowned Queen, and for fifty years has performed her civil duties admirably.
And those duties consist of a great deal more than opening flower shows and hosting garden parties. It is a pity that many people, especially those of leftward leanings, do not understand the vital importance of a constitutional monarchy in the protection of liberty. All legislation must receive a Royal Assent. This can be dismissed as merely a 'rubber stamp', but I think it would make it very difficult for a government to present to the sovereign a really outrageous piece of legislation, which would be a divisive attack on British liberty.
Moreover, the prime minister must present himself at Buckingham Palace for an audience with the sovereign every week. This in itself provides an essential check on the destruction of freedom by elected governments. One of the eternal problems in constructing a free society is that the sort of person who is fatally attracted to government is the sort of person who would like to control, often in minute detail, all aspects of human existence. Freedom can only exist when the government is stringently limited in its powers.
Oliver Cromwell denied England a sovereign, and a parliament, and put in their place the only totalitarian dictatorship England has ever had to endure. All human action was to be decided by the moral authority of Oliver Cromwell, and the people found themselves far more constrained, and much worse off, than they were under the merrily hedonistic Stuart kings, who were more interested in the racing on Newmarket Heath than in pushing the poor around and telling them how they should lead their lives. More recently, interference with the delicately balanced structures of British political power has moved this country in the direction of centralised dictatorial rule over the past few years. The Queen represents at least some barrier to the presidential ambitions of our current prime minister and his cohorts.
Democracy helps in limiting those powers. The main point of voting is to get rid of governments that the people can no longer tolerate, rather than to elect governments that the people believe will do a good job. Of course politicians don't understand this, I realise that. The newly elected government always cries that it has a 'mandate' for its more destructive legislation, whereas mere election does not give them a mandate at all. The election result is just the people's way of withdrawing the power to legislate from the defeated party.
Thus, constitutional limitations and elections are the
chief ways of ensuring that the government's powers are beneficially constrained,
but the sovereign plays a vital role too. Let us heed the words of Lord
Owen, the former Labour foreign secretary:
"For any prime minister, making weekly visits to the
palace is a tremendous deterrent against shabbiness and sordid actions.
Politicians are prone to cut corners, do deals, behave badly. In some ways,
they seem to become better people when they are prime minister, and I firmly
believe that the Queen's relationship with them is a factor. If you have
someone senior to you, whom you respect and who may know more than you
realise, it has its effect. It may be hard to tabulate the Queen's influence
but, in my view, it is a very important safeguard, a fail-safe mechanism".
"She makes it impossible for people to get too far out
of line," agreed a prime ministerial private secretary. "If Blair said:
'Let's have elections only every ten years', try telling that to the Queen
on a Tuesday night! Can you imagine what would happen to the royal eyebrows?
In the final analysis, a prime minister has to explain to the Queen what
he is doing and, in a case like that he'd feel like a rat, because she
represents moral rectitude in terms of public behaviour and the sanctity
of the constitution. In Washington, it is kiss and tell; in London, bow
and hold your tongue".
These quotes are from a 'Daily Telegraph' article published
in early January. From the same article:
"Those who have been guests of the Queen, who are contemplating
a bit of a fiddle on their taxes, or some other piece of dubious behaviour,
might easily think: 'She's been very nice to me - what would she think
of this? And would I ever be invited again?' In that and other ways, she's
a civilising and ameliorating influence on society".
In Albert Speer's book, 'Inside the Third Reich', Speer recalls a remark of Hitler's that the German government after the Great War, a government which Hitler despised, had nevertheless done one good thing: by expelling the Kaiser, and destroying the German aristocracy, they had cleared the path for the Nazis to come to power. Similarly in Russia, which was moving towards a liberal democracy with a constitutional monarchy under Kerensky, and which might have flowered in the twentieth century as one of the most prosperous, most cultured, and freest countries in the world, but for the Bolsheviks, who, like Oliver Cromwell, overthrew the elected parliament and the Tsar, and who subsequently brought with them such long-lasting misery and death.
Rather than reproduce a formal oil painting of the queen, with varnished surface, glittering tiara, and the royal blue sash of the Order of the Garter, I have chosen a picture of the queen from a cheap tin tea tray. And she has been reproduced on plenty of similar articles: shaving mugs, sweets tins, and children's money boxes. I remember receiving one of the latter myself, in 1953, the year of the coronation. It is these items that best represent the easy-going affection which the majority of the British people feel for their monarch.
So let us celebrate the Queen's Golden Jubilee with more than just weekly-magazine flag waving, and stirring renditions of 'Pomp and Circumstance' ; let us remember too that the Queen plays a very real and important role in protecting us all from the ambitions of those who seek to limit and enslave us by their allegedly well-meant 'planning' and 'guidance'. I will finish with a very well-known and intensely patriotic quote, from Shakespeare's 'Richard the Second'. May it remain true for centuries to come:
The staff wish you both Many Happy Returns of the Day.
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