The Diamond Jubilee by National Post & Father Raymond J. De Souza & Barbara Kay & Joe O'Connor

Author:National Post & Father Raymond J. De Souza & Barbara Kay & Joe O'Connor [Blatchford, Christie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781927402115
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2012-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

60 Years on the Throne:

Father Raymond J. DeSouza on her noble reign

Feb. 6, 2012

In the life of dynasties, it was not that long ago when, in 1897, Queen Victoria celebrated her diamond jubilee. Yet Britain then was a rather different place. Her Imperial Majesty presided over a vast empire and peace and prosperity prevailed as the norm. Queen Elizabeth II marks 60 years since her own accession today, with the official celebrations scheduled for June. Lord Salisbury, chairman of the Diamond Jubilee committee, announced a grand pageant for June 3, complete with one thousand boats upon the Thames. It will cost some £10-million, to be raised through private donations and corporate sponsorship.

It matters little who pays for the party, but it is a sign of changing times, and an indication that Elizabeth II’s most remarkable achievement may well be that she is still here, an enduring figure in a time of tumultuous change. On her diamond jubilee in 1897, Victoria ruled over Britain to a large degree in continuity with the realm she inherited in 1837. Elizabeth II became queen in 1952 while at the Treetops Hotel in the Aberdare National Park in Kenya, her father George VI having died while she and Prince Philip were on a colonial tour. The newly-famous Treetops was burned down a few years later during the Mau Mau Rebellion, and within 10 years of the accession in her African colony, Kenya would be on the threshold of independence. The winds of change were blowing hard. Elizabeth’s coronation in June 1953 was one of the first great television spectacles; in the United Kingdom the number of television licenses doubled in anticipation of the event, to some three million.

Britain today is a very different place than it was in 1952. Given the shambles into which so many great institutions have fallen, that Elizabeth marks her Diamond Jubilee with the crown strong and held in high esteem is a testament to her extraordinary service.

The institution has its own power, but the incumbent these last six decades has been essential. Imagine, horribile dictu, if the Queen died prematurely after a respectable 30 years on the throne, in 1982. It is quite likely the whole thing would also be a shambles by now, a smoking wreck under the unsteady hand of Charles, the hapless heir.

The failure of Charles is a subset of her greatest challenge. How to preserve the role of the monarchy in promoting unity, stability, piety and tradition in time of great social upheaval? Elizabeth proved an innovator in the 1960s when she permitted the new media technology to make the Royal Family a more prominent part of British life. In 1981, when Charles wed Diana, it all seemed a magnificent triumph, the modern monarchy as master of a television age. The Queen could not have known that it would all come to ruin. The Charles and Diana disaster was an inversion of all that the monarchy is supposed to be; rivalry rather than unity, glamour dislodging piety and innovation trumping tradition.

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