Lying in State

Watch the continuous live stream from Westminster Hall without commentary
via Sky News here.

In accordance with royal tradition, on Wednesday afternoon the coffin of Her Majesty the Queen, with the Imperial State Crown glittering on top, was brought from Buckingham Palace on a Royal Navy gun carriage to lie in state at Westminster Hall, erected by order of her ancestor, King William II, nearly a thousand years ago.  

The Queen was accompanied in the procession by a scarlet-coated guard of honor, followed on foot by the King, his brothers, sons, and other male relatives.  The Princess Royal walked next to her brother the King.  The rest of the royal ladies, including the Queen Consort and the Princess of Wales, were brought to the Hall by limousines via a different route.

After a short service of prayers by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Dean of Westminster Abbey (directly across the street from the Hall), and a couple of musical offerings by the Choir of the Chapel Royal, a guard of honor took up positions around the casket, beginning the first of many vigil shifts that will go on continuously until Monday morning, the day of her state funeral.  

The Royal Family having departed, the doors were opened to a miles-long queue of what used to be called Her Majesty's loyal subjects (a taboo word now) and others from the Commonwealth and around the world.  Hundreds of thousands are expected to pay their respects in the next several days. 

The procession:

 

The service:

 

The BBC provides a helpful guide to events during the period of lying in state.

Here follow tributes to Her late Majesty by the former Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom. 

Former Conservative Prime Minister (1990-1997) Sir John Major, a very fine man:

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Former Labour Prime Minister (1997-2007) Sir Tony Blair:

 

Former Conservative Prime Minister (2010-2016) David Cameron:

 

Former Labour Prime Minister (2007-2010) Gordon Brown:

 

Former Conservative Prime Minister (2019-2022) Boris Johnson brilliantly delineates the qualities that made Elizabeth II a great monarch:

 

And former Conservative Prime Minister (2016-2019) Theresa May has the last laugh:

 

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That British Show

Doubtless I am not alone amongst my truckbuddies in having spent the last three weeks breathlessly watching every twist and turn of the plot in this soap-opera-to-end-all-soap-operas, studying every nuance of detail, and gasping as one after another leading character gets killed off in the most unlikely ways.

But now, in what may be the season finale before the summer hiatus, we learn that "Brexit means Brexit" after all, and the new matriarch of the clan has set to work with pail and swab, busily mopping up the blood in the dimly-lit corridors and claiming the head seat in the boardroom, promising a "better Britain" - mais oui, what else could anyone promise at this point?

But every good soap must end the season with a shockeroo, and this one is no exception to the rule: guess who has been resurrected from the political graveyard and propelled straightaway into the third-highest post in the land? Why, good old Boris, that's who! Silly-willy-nilly-all-stuffed-with-fluff Boris.  You know, you can't ever really kill off a popular character like that, no matter how annoying or devious.  Whenever the plot starts to drag a little, they have to be revived in one ingenious way or another to keep the audience hooked.

Yes, Boris to the Foreign Office - ah, those Brits with their inscrutable humor! This plot has more dead bodies and red herrings than any country-house whodunit. I'm sure somewhere Shakespeare is chuckling softly to himself and saying, "'Zounds, why didn't I think of that?"

The Telegraph summarizes today's episode in a nutshell, just in case you forgot to set your TiVo:




Of course as everyone knows, the US of A takes the palm for edge-of-your-seat thrillers. I just hope our own national drama doesn't turn out to be Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue. Oh please God, no.

Gay Weddings Begin in England and Wales

Last July, Parliament passed a law authorizing same-sex couples to wed in England and Wales.  The first weddings occurred just after midnight last night.



In a special column written for Pink News, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron said:

The introduction of same-sex civil marriage says something about the sort of country we are. It says we are a country that will continue to honour its proud traditions of respect, tolerance and equal worth. It also sends a powerful message to young people growing up who are uncertain about their sexuality. It clearly says ‘you are equal’ whether straight or gay. That is so important in trying to create an environment where people are no longer bullied because of their sexuality – and where they can realise their potential, whether as a great mathematician like Alan Turing, a star of stage and screen like Sir Ian McKellen or a wonderful journalist and presenter like Clare Balding. . . .

Together we should be proud to live in a country judged to be the best place to live in Europe if you are lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans. But we should equally be far from complacent about the challenges that remain – and I am just as committed as ever to working with you to challenge attitudes and stamp-out homophobic bullying and hate crimes.

We are a nation that is growing stronger economically because of our long term economic plan. But I hope we can also be a country that is growing stronger socially because we value love and commitment equally. Let us raise a toast to that – and all those getting married this weekend.

What They're Saying About Her

Prime Mininster David Cameron - the youngest and latest of the 12 prime ministers who have served the Queen, beginning with Winston Churchill - praises his Sovereign in words that make me wonder if ol' Dave hasn't been reading the Blue Truck, since I used the very same phrase a couple of days ago:



BTW, FYI: In American terms, the Queen's reign has stretched from the presidency of Harry Truman to that of Barack Obama, 12 presidents in all, most of whom have enjoyed a State Visit with the Queen, either at Buckingham Palace or at the White House.


And here is Sir Cliff Richard - who was never a big star over here, but from what I gather was, at his height, a star of Elvis magnitude in Britain - praising the Queen's enduring dignity:




An excerpt from today's editorial in the Daily Telegraph, "The Queen's Sixty Years of Service, Never to Be Forgotten":

So what do we see in Victoria’s great-great-granddaughter? Something of a family resemblance, yes, but we do not see an Empress. Hardly had it fully grown before the Empire began to fade, and “all our pomp of yesterday”, as Kipling wrote for that Diamond Jubilee, “is one with Nineveh and Tyre”. A Queen, though, is what we still see, and who’d have thought it should seem so right for the 21st century – the Space Age as it was expected to be characterised?

We hear little of republicanism just now. No one, to speak of, wants a president, for the spirit of the age is against politicians, who promise much and soon disappoint. Would a member of the British Armed Forces be stirred to fight so selflessly – to die if need be – for a campaigning politician as for Queen and country? For the Queen, we know, is not in it for what she can get. If there is a glint of steel about her, it is in devotion to duty. There is no compromise there. “I dedicate myself anew to your service,” she said in her message on February 6, the actual anniversary of her accession. She repeated this dedication before both Houses of Parliament. This is her life.

Yet in the pomp and circumstance of the Jubilee is there not, perhaps, too much of Gilbert and Sullivan? No, not if a detail from the Coronation is anything to go by. It was decided in 1953 to invest the Queen with Armills, as tradition required. But what were Armills? In the coronations of 1661 and 1761, they were taken to be stoles, a silly mistake. In truth, they are bracelets. Reviving the arcane ceremonial might sound absurd, but a pair of Armills were newly made (with help from the Commonwealth realms), and the Archbishop of Canterbury put them on the Queen’s wrists as “symbols and pledges of that bond which unites you with your Peoples”. That is real enough, as the years since have shown.

The same sort of thing is meant by people now when they turn out, whether it rains or shines, to see the 1,000 vessels in the Thames pageant, to hold a street party, light a beacon, put up bunting, or just watch the thanksgiving service at St Paul’s on television and perhaps cut up a red, white and blue cake from Marks and Sparks. Naturally, there are jokes, and mishaps, and cross words and drink taken, for we are human beings. It might look a trifle footling and domestic, but no outside observer should mistake what we are at. We are proud to be British, proud of our monarch, and grateful to her, too. Our pride and gratitude are not expressed in aggressive patriotism, yet our monarchy is linked with liberty, and we are ready to defend both together. . . .

It is clear that the Queen doubts her role no more now than she did when, as a princess, she learnt motor mechanics in the Auxiliary Territorial Service in the Second World War, the outcome of which long remained uncertain. Perseverance in an uncertain cause requires courage. Quiet courage, with the Duke of Edinburgh at her side, has been the constant tenor of her 60 years on the throne. The response for us at this Jubilee is easy – easy because sincere – to sing, or shout: God save the Queen.

Excerpt from a tribute by columnist Allison Pearson, also in the Telegraph, "Diamond Jubilee: We Won the Lottery with Elizabeth II":

Above all, the cheering crowds along the Thames tomorrow will be celebrating our luck that Elizabeth’s reign has been long. And, let’s face it, the Queen must never be allowed to die. I’m sorry, but there will have to be a statute against it. With dedication, duty and discipline, those d-words almost extinct at the start of the 21st century, she has carried a burden for us all. I guess we won’t know quite how heavy it was until she is gone. . . .

I was never an ardent royalist. Coming from Welsh mining stock, I lack the vital deference gene. My admiration for her evolved gradually. As an adult dismayed by the shallowness and venality of politicians, I came to see that she alone was incorruptible. What I had once perceived as coldness became a priceless inability to fake emotion. While others debased their standards in pursuit of instant popularity, the Queen held back. She has never stooped to conquer. For this, I love her. . .

The Queen is not a cynic. During her long reign, her country may have moved from instinctive deference to raucous scepticism, from imperial giant to self-loathing satrap, but our Queen still believes in us, or believes in her duty to us. That is why she enables us to give vent to our deepest, dormant patriotic feelings. If there is a single theme running through each of her Christmas messages, it is an insistence that the country has a future and individuals can make a difference.

In April 1947, a lovely English girl, who was celebrating her 21st birthday, had sat behind a microphone in South Africa and made a promise. “It is very simple,” she began. “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service.”

She said it was simple, but it wasn’t, was it? Turning yourself into a living symbol isn’t straightforward. A young woman vowing to repress every selfish impulse, tread down all unruly feelings and dedicate herself to an abstract ideal of nationhood on behalf of 200 million people is not simple. I can never hear Princess Elizabeth’s radio broadcast to the Empire and the Commonwealth, made in a high, girlish voice fluting with nerves, without being reduced to a helpless puddle of gratitude. “It has made me cry,” she admitted after reviewing the final draft of that script. And no wonder. Five years later her beloved father would be dead and they would place that heavy crown on her head in Westminster Abbey. Tears were an indulgence she would rarely permit herself in the years ahead.

And finally, columnist Matthew Norman, a former little-r republican, explains how the Queen's stoic adherence to duty has transformed his view of the monarchy in "Our Uniquely Familiar and Entirely Unknowable Monarch":

When all of this is over – when the armada has finished sailing the Thames, the last ceremonial salute been received, and the dregs of the street party detritus duly binned – what will be the Queen’s defining reflection on her Diamond Jubilee? Certainly you can imagine her kicking off her shoes and savouring a nightcap in relief that the frantic fuss is behind her, and that life may return to what passes in her singular case for normality.

Beyond that, however, the imagination hits a brick wall. 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. . . .

Responsibility without power, the curse of the constitutional monarch down the democratic ages, must be a frustrating burden to bear, but her most savage critic would not accuse her of failing in that duty for a moment. This goes some way, though far from all the way, towards explaining why she has virtually no critics left, even among those of us who once thought of ourselves as republicans.

One can only write about the Queen from a perspective dictated by age because, like any enigmatic paradigm, she must mean different things to different generations. To my parents, a little less than a decade her juniors, she is most potently an emblem of wartime defiance, the little princess who was not evacuated to the safety of Canada, but stuck around and went to work as a mechanic. To my 15-year-old son, born a few months before the death of Diana presented the most lethal menace of her reign, she is a likeable but remote and irrelevant figure.

It is those of us in middle age, born in the dog days of deference not long after Lord Altrincham was ostracised from polite society for sneering at her voice, and adolescents during the punk explosion that propelled the Sex Pistols’ "God Save The Queen" to the top of the Silver Jubilee charts, whose view of her has been transformed. A little like Winston Smith with Big Brother in Nineteen Eighty-Four – although without the application of electrodes, rats or relentless propaganda – we have finally learnt to love our Queen.

This may be largely because we have changed, and that the qualities of permanence, stability and stoicism that seem so dull and restrictive in youth become more attractive with the passing of the years. . . .

Against the odds, she has rendered the British throne more secure than perhaps it has ever been, with the near inevitability that she will leave three generations of successors. The vinegary brand of republicanism which dismisses monarchy as an infantilising force has come, meanwhile, to seem babyishly peevish itself, not merely because the countries we tend to regard as the most grown-up and progressive, Holland and the Scandinavian nations, retain their lower-key versions; but because even those of us who once would have done away with it have come, under her aegis, to relish the eccentricity, charm and precious sense of national belonging it provides.

To which your Head Trucker would add, you can learn a lot about someone simply by observation: actions speak much, much louder than words. And quite often, truer.

Homecoming

A sweet little video made by the Coalition for Marriage Equality in Britain, where the Conservative government is pressing ahead with plans to bring about civil marriage rights for gays this year:



For the record, the United Kingdom has allowed gays to serve openly in its military forces since 2000, as well as civil partnerships since 2005.

Here is Prime Minister David Cameron giving the keynote address at a Conservative Party conference last fall.  Don't you wish our Republicans sounded like this?



Here's a link to the consultation - a request for comments from the public about the proposed law - currently open on the Home Office web site. Which makes me wonder - why doesn't our government do this?

Conservative, Not Fanatical

Andrew Sullivan on David Cameron's drive for marriage equality in the United Kingdom:

In Britain, where the cause of marriage equality is being championed by a Conservative prime minister (rendering him, by US standards, a socialist Satanist), a new poll finds a plurality of 45 - 36 - in favor of turning same-sex civil partnerships into civil marriages. Another new poll finds very similar results: 43 - 32. Among those under 24, the support for full marriage equality is 66 percent. Among those over 60, it is 21 percent - an even more extreme generation gap than in the US. But for even the over-60s, 71 percent favor either civil marriage or civil partnerships with all the legal rights of civil marriage. Britain is light years ahead of the US now on this issue - because conservatism there is not in the grip of religious fundamentalism.

But it's particularly gratifying to see in Britain how the Conservatives are actually leading the way in reforming this institution to include every Brit, gay or straight. That's in the tradition of Burke and Disraeli, who both believed that institutions needed to be reformed in order to remain the same in a constantly changing society. Cameron used this issue - full inclusion of and equality for gays - and an aggressive response to climate change as the key indicators that he was a modern conservative, not a religious reactionary. In the US, these two issues have now become fundamentalist litmus tests. To be a conservative in America means implacable hostility to any recognition of gay relationships and denial of the existence of climate change. Both positions are driven by religious fundamentalism.

In a sane and rational American landscape, the Republican Party ought to look and sound a lot more like this.  But I'm not holding my breath.

Tories Light-Years Ahead of Republicans on Marriage

Prime Minister Cameron with Deputy Prime Minister Clegg, whom Cameron jokingly introduced at as "my own civil partner" at a Gay Pride reception held at 10 Downing Street last year

Gays in the United Kingdom have been able to form civil partnerships since 2005, entitling them to practically all the rights and benefits of marriage without the name. However, the law prohibits religious readings, symbols, music, or prayers, and civil partnership ceremonies cannot take place in houses of worship.

This week, the coalition government headed by Conservative Party leader David Cameron and Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg have announced a definite plan to open civil marriage to gays next year, as in Canada and the nine other countries around the world that have equalized their marriage laws.

Andrew Sullivan, an expatriate Briton who has written and campaigned for equal marriage for more than twenty years, has this to say about developments in his native land, and here:

What a contrast. In the U.S. GOP, gays are the spawn of Satan, and a leading candidate runs a business designed to “cure” them. In Britain, the Conservative-Liberal Coalition government has just announced it is moving ahead with legislation for full marriage equality. . . .

When Virtually Normal came out in 1995, I didn’t dare hope that this day would come — or that it would come from the Conservative party in Britain, which now has more openly gay members of parliament than the more liberal opposition. And it is, of course, a conservative position: promoting family, responsibility, and civil equality in response to an emerging social reality — large numbers of openly gay citizens. In this sense, the GOP is not in any way “conservative.” It is better understood as a religious movement with radically reactionary political objectives, like undoing much of the New Deal.

One day, it may recover, and candidacies like Jon Huntsman’s show the way forward. But not yet. And perhaps not for a very long time. When a party becomes a religion, and when policies become doctrines, change is very hard.