Reign of a matriarch: Queen Elizabeth presided over grudging decolonisation
A painting of Queen Elizabeth visiting Enniskillen by Hector McDonnell.
The passing of Queen Elizabeth II even at the advanced age of 96 comes as a shock. She was the personification of constitutional monarchy — working right up to two days before her death when she received Liz Truss as her 15th prime minister.
Her devotion to duty as a public servant in this regard during her 70-year reign was nothing less than incredible. Reading the state papers in the famous red box relating not only to the United Kingdom but also to the 14 other countries of which she was head of state must have been a painstaking and often lonely job. Sifting advice from various politicians, officials and flunkies must have been trying at times as well.
Equally stalwart must have been the endurance of countless state openings and unveilings, the endless ceremonial and ritual, the small talk required for formal and informal occasions, the strains of making many foreign tours and of hosting other heads of state, some of them not the most pleasant of people.
She achieved this all with great equanimity and dignity and in her last years in some remarkably colourful outfits. She was a working woman who was an example to other women in an age of liberation and besides as an older woman who, together with her husband Philip, exemplified continuing service well past ordinary retirement age in a world of increasingly elderly populations.
Elizabeth II defined modern Britain in so many ways; clearly her reign represents a distinct era in the long history of England and the United Kingdom. Whether the second Elizabethan age matched the first only time will tell.
How can we compare Bobby Moore, George Best, Richard Branson, James Dyson, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Elton John, Shirley Bassey, Vivienne Westwood, Tracey Emin, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Billy Connolly with the likes of Drake, Raleigh, Kemp, Byrd, Spenser, Marlowe and Shakespeare?
She became queen when Britain was bankrupt after the Second World War and when it still had rationing. The National Health Service was being established and a more equal society built with the development of comprehensive and higher education.
In 1963, Harold Wilson invoked the ‘white heat of technology’ but Britain’s economic decline continued, characterised by strikes and endless industrial disputes. Whether the deregulated market-oriented society inaugurated by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s has reversed Britain’s industrial decline is a moot point — it certainly has drastically redistributed its wealth.
And although the royals were dragged kicking and squealing to pay income tax in the 1990s, in the new corporate Britain the crown is one of the biggest and richest corporations and uses its prerogative to examine and amend any legislation than might damage its private property interests. Whereas other surviving European monarchies have democratised and downsized, not so the House of Windsor.
The monarch as the fount of honours has, at the behest of successive governments’ doling out of patronage, remained the epicentre of deference in a country that ironically espouses equal opportunity. And far from setting public opinion, the monarchy especially since the death of Princess Diana has clearly been pulled along behind it, the queen included. She emoted only after the nation emoted.
The queen was head of the Church of England but now the majority of her subjects are no longer practising Christians, let alone members of the established church. The UK is now a multi-faith country and Charles her successor is already angling to be ‘Defender of the Faiths’. This religious mix represents the fact that Britain is now a multi-racial society, a fact attested by Liz Truss’s new cabinet team.
Indeed, while Elizabeth presided over the end of empire, the motherland itself ceased to be a homogenous country. A global Britain has instead developed through waves of immigration from the former colonies — from Ireland, the Caribbean, South Asia, West Africa, Hong Kong and from many other former territories.
Whereas the first Queen Elizabeth is credited with embarking on building an empire, this queen’s reign has seen the Union Jack taken down from government buildings across the world. Although the Commonwealth of Nations and its friendly games (most recently held in Birmingham) put a nice shine on it today, the whole process was grudging and reluctant and fraught with violence, especially in Malaya, Cyprus, Kenya and the breakaway state of Rhodesia.
Decolonisation took place against the backdrop of American super power and the so-called special relationship. This saw the disastrous Suez invasion, the eviction of the Chagos Islanders to facilitate the US base of Diego Garcia, Reagan’s invasion of the commonwealth country of Grenada and Clinton grant Gerry Adams a visa and eventually cajole a peace agreement into being in Northern Ireland.
The queen has put a lot of her time into keeping the commonwealth together — its members are now mainly republics, the most recent being Barbados. Its purpose in the world is rather nebulous and these days it includes countries such as Rwanda and Mozambique that were never ruled by Britain.
The queen’s political influence was supposedly negated by the principle that she reigned but did not rule. In other words, she signed into law the policies of the government of day of whatever hue. However, when it came to the integrity of her realms, it was quite another matter.
She saw her eldest son invested as Prince of Wales at Caernarfon castle in 1969 amid efforts to stave off Welsh nationalism; she was perturbed by devolution for Scotland when it was first planned and more recently made her feelings known on the Scottish Independence referendum on her way to church; in Canadian affairs she was concerned about Québec’s quest for freedom and in Northern Ireland she went so far as to meet Martin McGuinness, who had been the IRA’s chief of staff at time of the assassination of her cousin Lord Louis Mountbatten.
The queen’s actions in aid of reconciliation in Northern Ireland were carefully choreographed, including when she famously crossed the road in Enniskillen from the Church of Ireland Cathedral to shake hands with Mgr Peter O’Reilly, the Catholic parish priest.
Part of the same process was the 2011 state visit to the Republic and the normalisation of relations between Britain and Ireland. The queen had long-standing relations with Ireland, especially through horses and their trainers and jockeys. President Mary McAleese worked hard to bring the visit about, beginning by joining hands with the queen at the opening of the Messines Peace Park in 2004.
Few will forget the wreath laying at the Garden of Remembrance, Prince Philip and the pint of Guinness, the state dinner at Dublin Castle and her cúpla focail, the visit to the National Stud and the reception in Cork and its English Market where the city’s earlier royalist sentiments suddenly reappeared in full view.
This was topped off by the return state visit of President Michael D Higgins in 2014.
Sadly, political relations have frayed since because of the 2016 referendum, Britain’s subsequent departure from the European Union and the dispute over the Northern Ireland protocol.
The queen’s death has been a shock because she reigned so long. There was similar disorientation when Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria died. Their matriarchal roles doubtless compounded such feelings. A source of stability might be lost but new reigns also bring fresh starts in lots of different ways.
A Scottish king and a playboy prince ascended the throne on the earlier occasions; this time it is the turn of an environmentalist king.
- Hiram Morgan is a senior lecturer in history at UCC
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