God save the King!

Reflections on the Coronation

Below is a speech Andrew delivered at the Basildon Side By Side Coronation Big Lunch at Wat Tyler County Park on Sunday

 

Madam Deputy Mayor, Deputy Lieutenant, Dr. Ukpaka, members of Basildon Side By Side, ladies & gentlemen,

Thank you all very much for allowing me and my family to join you this afternoon and for allowing me to say a little bit about the momentous event in our nation’s history, to which we all bore witness yesterday.

"The Crown is the fixed focal point in our national life. It links us in a very visceral way with our history and traditions and, often counterintuitively, rather than anchoring us unhelpfully to our past, provides a sense of continuity and stability that enables us to move forward and embrace great change with courage and confidence."

I have acquired – indeed, cultivated – a reputation among my colleagues as a devout monarchist and, I have to say, it is a reputation that I wear proudly and as a badge of honour. Aside from a brief flirtation with republicanism in my misspent youth, I have been an entirely convinced supporter of the monarchy almost all my adult life.

I am often asked, ‘What is the monarchy for? Why do we need it?” I think we saw the function of the monarchy in spectacular effect in the ceremony that took place at Westminster Abbey yesterday. Not just the glorious and magnificent state ceremonial, at which this country is a world-beater. The monarchy does provide us that in spades! But the primary function of the monarchy, above all, is stability. The Crown is the fixed focal point in our national life. It links us in a very visceral way with our history and traditions and, often counterintuitively, rather than anchoring us unhelpfully to our past, provides a sense of continuity and stability that enables us to move forward and embrace great change with courage and confidence.

For 70 years, that symbol of continuity amid the changing times was Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Great. You would have to be well into your 80s or even 90s today to remember a time before Elizabeth II sat upon the throne. She had already been Queen for 30 years when I was born. She was the longest-reigning and longest-lived monarch in our history and the longest-serving female Head of State in the world. Her reign saw 15 British prime ministers, 14 U.S. presidents and 7 popes. Her first Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, was born in 1874 and Her last, Liz Truss, was born in 1975 – 101 years later!

"Yesterday, those lining the streets of London or watching on television at home or out in their communities, were spectators to an event unseen in this country in seven decades."

She must have been the most widely travelled and universally respected world leaders ever to have lived. She visited more than 100 countries. She presided over the transition of the British Empire into the modern Commonwealth and, over the course of Her reign, made over 150 visits to countries across the Commonwealth, to which She was completely devoted. During Her reign, She carried out tens of thousands of public engagements, assented to around 4,000 pieces of legislation, hosted hundreds of state visits and garden parties and met every world leader you can imagine. She was stability personified. With superlative canniness, She provided us with a fixed point in our national life. Amid all the tumult of the past 70 years, Her late Majesty remained reassuringly unchanged. That did not mean that She was static – She was the first monarch to send an email, the first to have a website and the first to ‘tweet’. She was on Instagram. She could still surprise us. Who could ever have predicted we would see Her Majesty leap from a helicopter with James Bond or co-star in a comedy skit with Paddington Bear? She did keep the same hairstyle for about 60 years, so She was always very recognisably and unmistakably Her. 

And then She left us. Our beloved Queen, who had been a beacon of stability to all of us, was gone. But the Crown was not. The Queen is dead. Long live the King!

Yesterday, those lining the streets of London or watching on television at home or out in their communities, were spectators to an event unseen in this country in seven decades. I am sure many of you felt that you had been transported back in time. Indeed, contrary to popular myth, the coronation’s essential elements were not invented by the late-Victorians. Its roots are biblical and existed in this country long before even the Norman Conquest. The inspiration for the ceremony was the anointing of Solomon by Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet.

"Contrary to popular myth, the coronation’s essential elements were not invented by the late-Victorians. Its roots are biblical and existed in this country long before even the Norman Conquest."

When William the Conqueror defeated King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, he used the coronation ceremony to establish his legitimacy, using the abbey church that had been built at Westminster by King Edward the Confessor. For almost a thousand years, English and later British monarchs have continued to be crowned there. The Normans themselves drew inspiration from the coronation of the Emperor Charlemagne in the 9th-Century and the ceremony includes a series of ancient rituals and items of regalia that are steeped in history and course with symbolism and meaning. The Spurs and Armills, the Orb, the Sceptre, the Sword, the Ring and, of course, the Crown.

All these things are pre-modern era and therefore pre-democracy but, importantly, they imply the consent of the people and exemplify the need for the Crown to stand before them. But this was a new coronation for a new monarch in a new age. As we all saw, the Coronation is a beautiful ceremony. It has a deep and fascinating history and yet, this was a very different coronation to the one held in 1953. As I remarked at a recent Council meeting, at the time of the last coronation, Basildon itself was but 4 years old! A lot has changed.

"All these things are pre-modern era and therefore pre-democracy but, importantly, they imply the consent of the people and exemplify the need for the Crown to stand before them."

Much has been said about the Lord President of the Council, Penny Mordaunt, who looked resplendent as she bore the Sword before the King. In 1953, hardly any women were involved in the ceremony but this time there were many, and not just women but other faiths and races. The Armills were presented by Lord Kamall, a Muslim of Indo-Guyanese descent. The Orb was carried by Dame Elizabeth Anionwu, whose father was Nigerian. The Ring was presented by Lord Patel, a Hindu who was born in Tanganyika, and the Glove by Lord Singh of Wimbledon, a Sikh born in the Punjab.

A coronation is an ancient ceremony that necessarily echoes our past but it also speaks to our future. It affords us an opportunity to commence a new reign with a ceremony that underscores how we have changed and grown as a nation and I think yesterday’s coronation certainly did that. This curious marriage of stability and change is, in my view, made possible by the essentially human nature of the institution of monarchy.

Whereas some countries have strictly codified, written constitutions, scrawled on crumbling bits of parchment, unchanging and set in stone, our Constitution is a living breathing institution, incarnated in a human being. The Crown cannot be separated from the man who now wears it. What yesterday’s ceremony drew attention to repeatedly – from the touching moment His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales paid homage to his father to the shots of little Prince Louis yawning (because he’s a 5-year-old boy and bored out of his mind) – is that the King is more than just a Head of State. He is a son, a brother, a husband, a father, and a grandfather at the head of a Royal Family. It is this, I believe, that makes ‘The Crown’ more than just an overdecorated piece of millinery but an institution that forms the lynchpin and lodestar of our national life and gives our ancient constitutional settlement a human face.

"A coronation is an ancient ceremony that necessarily echoes our past but it also speaks to our future. It affords us an opportunity to commence a new reign with a ceremony that underscores how we have changed and grown as a nation..."

We all know the King. We have known Him for three quarters of a century! We could not hope for a more eminently qualified Head of State because He did a 75-year apprenticeship under the tutelage of the most gracious lady God ever placed on this earth. It is that ‘passing of the baton’, that continuity, that makes the person of the King, rather than the institution of the Crown, something tangible; a person we can trust as the guarantor of our laws and liberties, the head of our Armed Forces, whose face, like His mother’s before Him, will adorn our money, our stamps and whose signature will be borne on every law passed and every international treaty ratified and to whom every soldier, statesman, jurist, policeman, clergyman and various other public servants will swear their allegiance. (Personally, I think that should include councillors!)

I will conclude, ladies & gentlemen, with the words of Queen Elizabeth the Great following Her own coronation, “The ceremonies you have seen today are ancient, and some of their origins veiled in the mists of the past. But their spirit and their meaning shine through the ages never, perhaps, more brightly than now”. That was true in 1953 and I think it is just as true in 2023.

"We could not hope for a more eminently qualified Head of State because He did a 75-year apprenticeship..."

Thank you all very much for listening and nothing now remains but for me to end my remarks, as I always enjoy doing where possible, by saying God save the King!