The Queen Mother

by William Shawcross

  The country was becoming richer – and the number of families owning refrigerators, washing machines and cars was increasing all the time. The sociologist Ferdinand Zweig saw such a domestic revolution as leading to ‘a deep transformation of values’, the development of other ways of thinking and feeling, a new ethos, new aspirations and cravings. It was the beginning of the era of what The Economist called ‘the deproletarianised consumer’. What this would mean was not clear – and The Economist agreed that ‘deproletarianised societies’ would not necessarily become ‘more discriminate, more moral and more self-reliant’.2

  In schools and universities students became more assertive. Everywhere authority was questioned. Even hospital matrons and station masters were no longer allowed to run their own empires. A new orthodoxy began to emerge in Britain, at least among the urban intellectual elite, which later came to be known as the chattering classes. Deference began to die and was replaced by indifference, scepticism and satire. Established institutions – the state, the Church, the education system and the monarchy – were suddenly questioned and satirized, if not challenged.

  The most powerful harbinger of change was probably television. In 1955 the BBC had lost its monopoly of television broadcasting, after anguished Parliamentary debate, and new commercial companies flourished and competed thereafter. In 1960 there were ten million combined radio and TV licences in the country; within four years the number had doubled and the coming of colour in 1968 led to another surge in the sale of television sets and the numbers of viewers. In the 1960s, the BBC’s mission changed: it had begun as a temple to arts, science, the glory of God and the propagation of knowledge.* Now its Director General, Hugh Greene, began to push the BBC away from its traditional culture of decorous reserve ‘right into the centre of the swirling forces that were changing life in Britain’.3

  Such television shows as That Was The Week That Was poked fun at the establishment. This popular programme’s first satirical sketch about the Royal Family was broadcast in March 1963. The producer, Ned Sherrin, claimed that it had in fact been suggested by Princess Margaret. ‘I think she’d been watching the programme,’ said Sherrin. ‘Anyway she said, “Why don’t you do something about the ridiculous way that they report us?” ’4 The sketch, called ‘The Queen’s Departure’, described the Queen setting out from the Pool of London in a barge which started to sink. As it went down, the commentary became more and more reverential until it finally ended, ‘The Queen is swimming for her life’ and the band struck up the National Anthem.

  The explosion of pop music was also a powerful harbinger of change. So was the public’s attitude to sex, and it was sex that claimed the political career of John Profumo, Minister for War in the Conservative government; he admitted lying to the House of Commons about his relationship with a call girl, Christine Keeler. His resignation weakened Harold Macmillan’s government, and shortly afterwards Macmillan himself, believing (wrongly) that he was gravely ill, resigned and recommended that the Queen send for Lord Home, the Foreign Secretary, in his stead. She did so. Home, a Scottish friend of Queen Elizabeth, led the Conservatives into an election in 1964. After thirteen years in power, they narrowly lost to the Labour Party, under the leadership of Harold Wilson, who promised, rather oddly, that ‘the white heat of the technological revolution’ would transform Britain.

  In social terms, the Wilson government, re-elected with a larger majority in 1966, did embark on more radical legislation than any before it. The age of voting was lowered to eighteen, the Sexual Offences Act permitted homosexual acts between consenting adults over the age of twenty-one, and abortion was legalized. Capital punishment was abolished. The Lord Chamberlain’s powers of theatrical censorship were removed in 1968. The Divorce Reform Act of 1969 made it easier to end a marriage. Sexuality was discussed and explored more openly than ever before. Along with access to the birth-control pill, these liberalizing measures would have a huge impact on society in the decades ahead.

  In these ‘Swinging Sixties’ the Royal Family was judged remote by the vanguard of the London-led cultural revolution. But others, less enamoured of the new standards with which society was experimenting, saw the monarchy and particularly Queen Elizabeth as symbols of the tried and traditional values of Britain.

  *

  ‘THE VERY important thing is to be busy,’ Queen Elizabeth believed.5 It was advice she herself had followed after the death of the King and ever since. Although nothing could replace her loss, in the end she had found a new role and renewed zest for life in her public responsibilities.

  As she grew older, she continued to bear a workload under which many much younger people would have faltered. Above all she displayed unceasing enthusiasm and diligence on behalf of the charities, regiments and other bodies of which she was patron, president, colonel-in-chief, honorary colonel or a dozen other titles. Her list of patronages grew to over 300, and she continued to accept new ones until the last year of her life. Her interest in people and curiosity about them kept her enjoyment of this work alive; and she would not have been human if she had not been gratified by the public acclaim it brought her. But in any event ‘retirement’ was not a concept she entertained for herself; the sense of duty with which she had been brought up remained with her. Having become aware of the contribution she could still make, she played her part conscientiously.

  Royal patronage of charitable organizations has a long history: successive monarchs not only considered it their duty to their people to support good works, but also recognized that it helped maintain the position of the monarchy. Indeed Frank Prochaska argued in Royal Bounty that it was of paramount importance to the monarchy: it brought the Royal Family into contact with a wide spectrum of the population, and it underpinned the monarch’s role at the head of civic society.

  Prochaska used the term ‘welfare monarchy’ to describe this role. But, as he pointed out, the growth of the welfare state in the twentieth century represented a potential conflict. The first twenty years of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign were the heyday of state-directed health and social services in Britain. It was then almost universally accepted that the government should provide health, welfare and much else on a centralized basis. Voluntarism of the sort epitomized by charities supported by the Royal Family seemed almost to be quaint and outdated. Do-gooders or volunteers were not always made to feel welcome, let alone important. And yet, remarkably, they did not go away. To take just one example: in 1962 – fourteen years after the National Health Service was founded – there were 800,000 volunteers in one organization of which Queen Elizabeth was patron, the National League of Hospital Friends. The Labour government of the mid-1960s was in many circumstances ideologically opposed to the voluntary sector, and so, in general, was the civil service. But when Richard Crossman became Secretary of State for Health and Social Security in 1968 he was ‘staggered’ by the extent of voluntary help in the now twenty-year-old Health Service and he saw its value.6 Indeed, he realized that the Labour Party’s obsession with centralized planning and welfare provision had done ‘grievous harm’ to philanthropy.

  The monarchy’s links with the voluntary sector increased. In the mid-1960s, a Mass Observation survey showed that the public identified the Royal Family with their welfare role much more than any other. The survey also showed some correspondents feeling that the Crown was ‘a bulwark’ against the danger of government taking away too many democratic freedoms.

  Merely to note a few of the organizations to which Queen Elizabeth gave her patronage and the work she did for them over many years – some since she had become duchess of York – is to realize the extent to which the monarchy had been woven into the fabric of British life. There was hardly any aspect of it she did not touch. In her choice of societies and institutions, and in her speeches and messages to them, one can glimpse the nature of her priorities and her vision of the world. Clearly only a few of her patronages can be mentioned here, but a chronological sample can at least show the growth
of her interests.* At the same time, it must be admitted that any selection goes against her own firm rule that all should be treated equally. ‘Favourite’ was a word she always avoided as invidious, whether it was a colour, a flower, food or drink, but most especially if it was a patronage or a regiment.

  There is no question, however, that the University of London, of which she became chancellor in 1955, was in a league of its own for her and became one of her principal interests in the second half of her life. King George VI’s uncle, the Earl of Athlone, had been chancellor of the University since 1932. Queen Elizabeth had no wish to anticipate the retirement of ‘Uncle Alge’, but after he had indicated in early 1954 that he did want to step down at the age of seventy-nine, she happily allowed herself to be elected as his successor.7 In her acceptance speech she said, ‘It is my hope that I may be able to forge a personal link between myself and this great University.’8 And indeed she did. ‘It was the spark’, Sir Martin Gilliat said later of her appointment, ‘which set off this tumultuously varied way of life.’9

  It helped her to remain in touch with young people, which was something she always sought to do. She was chancellor for twenty-five years, handing over to the Princess Royal in 1980. During this time she carried out 208 engagements for the University and made 132 speeches. Diligently every spring she went to the Albert Hall for the annual graduation ceremonies (Presentation Day), and every winter to Senate House for Foundation Day, when honorary degrees were conferred. Each year she and Gilliat would pore over the long list of the University’s colleges and schools, acdemic institutes, halls of residence, libraries and clubs, planning her visits so as to ensure that every aspect of the life of the University was included at some point, from the Institute of Archaeology and Classical Studies to the Sailing Club, from the CDC 6600 Computer Centre to the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies. The University’s activities, and thus her visits, were not restricted to London: she went, for instance, to the Marine Biology Station on the Isle of Cumbrae, the British School in Tehran and the British Cultural Centre in Paris, all of which came under ‘the marvellous umbrella of the University’, as she put it.10

  Her efforts helped the University’s fundraising. In the 1970s, for instance, she strongly supported an appeal which garnered £1,800,000 for a new library for the London School of Economics. She opened the library in July 1979 and after congratulating all who had been assiduous in raising the money she invoked the name of John Ruskin, the distinguished Victorian educationalist: ‘Ruskin, in a lecture, once made the somewhat stern observation: “What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?” ’ This brought the house down.11 Lord Annan, the Vice-Chancellor of London University for many years, recalled that whenever she visited any part of the University ‘the whole morale of the place shot up. She had that gift of encouraging people simply by being there and taking an interest in what they did.’12

  One of the features of the University which she particularly liked was its association with the Commonwealth through the universities with which it was linked. One of these was the University of Rhodesia: in 1957 she had opened the University College of Rhodesia at Salisbury and she was its president until it became a university in its own right in 1971. In 1963 she agreed to be president of the Golden Jubilee Congress of the Association of Universities of the Commonwealth, a great gathering of distinguished academics. She attended the Congress’s ceremonies for three days in July.

  As chancellor she was able to put forward names for honorary degrees each year until 1975; her nominees included her childhood friend Professor Lord David Cecil, as well as Field Marshal the Earl Alexander of Tunis, Sir John Barbirolli, Benjamin Britten, Yehudi Menuhin, Sir Frederick Ashton, Sir Isaiah Berlin and Lord Goodman, the prominent solicitor. She was pleased when Princess Margaret was awarded an honorary doctorate of music in 1957; this she conferred on her daughter at a special ceremony at the Senate House.

  Lord Annan recorded that, although she would never interfere in matters of policy, Queen Elizabeth might well express regret at changes. She did not like it when colleges had to be amalgamated and she was unhappy when the University sold the Athlone Press, named after her predecessor. Annan knew when she wanted something done. ‘She would just lift her eyebrows slightly and give you a quizzical look as if to say: “I wonder if you could do that.” And you knew you ought to do it!’ It was equally clear when she did not like something. ‘She simply had a way of slightly indicating if things could be done this way rather than that way.’ He recalled one occasion in which a member of the House of Commons became rather ‘tired and over-emotional’ and ‘to see the Queen Mother disentangle herself from his advances was really a lesson in courtly and firm behaviour’.13

  She maintained her interest in the University to the end of her life. She was admitted to honorary fellowships of several colleges, and in September 1999 she approved the proposal that a chair of British History at the Institute of Historical Research should bear her name. David Cannadine was the first to be appointed Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Professor of British History, and the subject he chose for his inaugural lecture in 2003 was, appropriately, the historiography of the modern British monarchy. In it he touched upon the themes of this chapter: welfare and warfare, as he put it – royal links with charitable organizations and with the armed services.14

  In fact, thanks to her popularity and longevity, Queen Elizabeth provided the historian with a striking and unprecedented case study in successful royal patronage, in the form of her ninetieth- and hundredth-birthday parades, which brought together on public display the evidence of her involvement with an extraordinary variety of charitable organizations, educational, medical and learned institutions and elements of the armed services.

  In her long life the first patronage Queen Elizabeth had accepted, and retained for almost eighty years, was, appropriately, of Scottish origin. She agreed to become patron of the Girls’ Guildry, a Church of Scotland Sunday School organization, just before her marriage in April 1923. She went to her first engagement with the Guildry in Glasgow in September 1924, noting in her diary, ‘B. went off to do industrial things & I went to a rally of the Girls’ Guildry – about 4000 girls. Very good thing.’15 In the 1930s she gave them the ‘Duchess of York trophy’ for an annual needlework competition. Two weeks after the war began in 1939 one of her ladies in waiting wrote to the General Secretary to say that the Queen now felt it was more important ‘that quantities of knitted and other garments’ should be made by the girls, rather than that they should compete with each other.16 When the Guildry amalgamated with its English and Irish counterparts in 1965 to become the Girls’ Brigade, she became joint patron with the Duchess of Gloucester, who had been patron of the English organization (the Girls’ Life Brigade).

  Another natural leitmotif of her early patronages was the First World War. She became president of the Royal British Legion Women’s Section in 1924. The Legion, formed in 1921 by bringing together the four previous ex-servicemen’s organizations, was intended both to perpetuate the memory of those who died in the service of their country and to educate public opinion to the view that support for disabled ex-servicemen and their dependants was a public duty. The emblem of the Legion became the poppy, which had grown so abundantly in the fields of Flanders. Within just a few years of the First World War, the Legion had become one of the most important organizations in British society. Poppy Day was fixed for the Saturday before Remembrance Sunday, which is always the second Sunday in November, close to Armistice Day, 11 November. Every year the Royal British Legion organizes a Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall, in the presence of senior members of the Royal Family; the ex-servicemen march to the Cenotaph in Whitehall the following day. Each year the Legion also lays out a Field of Remembrance of poppies on wooden crosses in the churchyard of St Margaret
’s, Westminster. From its beginning the Duchess and then Queen felt a special affinity with the organization.

  In April 1934 she attended the annual conference of the Women’s Section. Her handwritten speech commended the work of the section in providing country and seaside holidays for children in ‘distressed areas’, and praised a new scheme to provide special training for widows and dependants of ex-servicemen who were in a poor state of health but were obliged, ‘through their dire need’, to seek employment. ‘Schemes such as these, which show permanent results in securing the health & happiness of our children, & a means of livelihood & a future free from care, for the women, are worthy of our very best efforts.’17

  She continued to support them for the next six decades. In May 1991 she attended the national conference in Bournemouth, and in 1999, to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of her presidency, there was a parade of standards through the garden at Clarence House. Three hundred and forty standards from branches all over the country and 120 marchers led by the Band of the Irish Guards marched past Queen Elizabeth, who took the salute from the steps of the Garden Room. It was an astonishing spectacle which lasted some fifteen minutes, with a sea of blue and gold standards carried by women of all ages and sizes. Queen Elizabeth loved it, as she did the Legion.18

  It seems to have been her mother’s involvement with the Church of England Children’s Society which led the Duchess of York to accept its patronage in 1924. In 1947, she sent a message on the Society’s Diamond Jubilee in which she said, ‘The care of children is near to my heart, and is all the more dear to me because my Mother for so many years took such a deep interest in the Society.’19 Over the years she attended Founders’ Day Festivals at the Royal Albert Hall and in 1986 she opened the Society’s new headquarters in Margery Street, in the Finsbury district of London. She supported many appeals to raise funds to help the children, dispatching another member of the Royal Family if she was unable to go.