Queen of the World: Elizabeth II: Sovereign and Stateswoman

by Robert Hardman

  Listening back in Britain, the young Prince Charles and Princess Anne also heard their mother issue a gentle rebuke to some of her more over-excited subjects at the end of this unrepeatable Coronation year. ‘Some people have expressed the hope that my reign may mark a new Elizabethan age,’ said the Queen. ‘Frankly I do not myself feel at all like my great Tudor forebear, who was blessed with neither husband nor children, who ruled as a despot and was never able to leave her native shores.’ And there was plenty of that extravagant praise for the Commonwealth which would begin to fade as the years went by. She was ‘so proud’ to be the head of ‘the most effective and progressive association of peoples which history has yet seen’. A few days later, she would open the democratically elected parliament of one of the most egalitarian nations on Earth. Yet even here in modern New Zealand there were still glaring inequalities. And this non-despotic Queen Elizabeth was not averse to the odd moment of autocracy, when it came to meeting her less privileged subjects.

  New Zealand’s Maori community had wanted to give the Queen the grandest welcome. Waitangi is New Zealand’s answer to Runnymede, the sacred spot on which the Crown and the indigenous Maori had signed their treaty in 1840. Yet the government had permitted only a brief, watered-down welcome. Another Maori welcome, amid the boiling mud springs of Rotorua, was grudgingly extended to 3,000 (it had originally been limited to 200). The government officials in charge of the royal programme had decided that there was no time at all for a visit to the ‘marae’ or meeting ground of the Maori King at Tūrangawaewae. More important, non-Maori civic worthies were waiting elsewhere, they argued. However, the Queen wanted to pay her respects nonetheless. On 30th December, the authorities finally agreed that she should pause outside the Maori royal compound for three minutes on her way to Hamilton. Once at the King’s gates, however, enormous crowds swallowed up the royal party, who were escorted inside the King’s hut for a chat. Maori warriors and maidens danced in tribute outside. ‘It was the real thing, it really was,’ the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, the former Lady Pamela Mountbatten, recalled years later. The government minders were becoming increasingly restless and were looking at their watches. ‘We were told that the official programme was awaiting, that there was no way we could stay, that we had to get back,’ said Lady Pamela. Eventually the Queen had to yield to her advisers, but not before stretching her visit from three minutes to seventeen. ‘We were so disappointed,’ Lady Pamela added. ‘Finally, as we drove away over the bridge, two enormous war canoes came down the river, each 100 ft long with 100 warriors. And we went off to the next boring official ceremony!’

  All along the royal route, towns competed to erect the most impressive welcome-arch. Some went for a Scottish theme, reflecting the origins of many New Zealanders. The town of Papakura was decorated with depictions of Mount Everest, in case someone forgot to inform the Queen that she was in the home town of Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Everest. Unsurprisingly, sheep were an everpresent feature of the itinerary. Some farmers decorated their flocks in red, white and blue. Only in New Zealand, perhaps, could the Queen and Duke meet celebrity sheep-shearers. In Waikato, the royal couple were introduced to the famous Bowen brothers, Ivan and Ken, as they demonstrated their prowess with the shears. Might the Duke like a go, they wondered? ‘No thank you,’ he laughed. ‘I might nick it and we’ve had enough mutton on this tour!’ Years later, newspapers would regularly include the remark in the list of supposed ‘gaffes’ by the Duke. The Kiwi public thought it was very funny indeed.

  If the crowds were big in New Zealand, they were at times overwhelming in Australia, where the royal couple arrived on 3rd February 1954. First-aid stations were busy throughout the tour. In Cairns, 500 people needed medical treatment after a grandstand collapsed. The problem for the tour planners, as ever, was accommodating all the competing priorities. Every mayor wanted to resurrect the civic welcome that had been prepared for 1949, rearranged for 1952 and then cancelled on both occasions; every town had its extremely well-rehearsed cultural display. The Melbourne Herald awarded the premier of Queensland, Vince Gair, the Australian record for speed-introductions as he took the Queen through a greeting line of 260 people in forty-one minutes. As with the Maori elders in New Zealand, so Australia’s Aboriginal community would play a peripheral role, though they were as keen as any to see the Queen. There were reports of groups of Aboriginal children making bus trips of many hundreds of miles for a glimpse of the royal party. The Queen would make a very specific point of referring to ‘my peoples’ in one speech after another but she incurred the wrath of one group of civic worthies in Queensland. It was felt she had spent much too long talking to a group of Torres Straits Islanders at the expense of the usual VIP herd.

  Dr Jane Connors has unearthed many examples of eye-popping snobbery by officialdom. In the Tasmanian town of Devonport, a teacher called Gwen Dixon had spent months of her own time travelling all over her region teaching 2,000 children to sing ‘Merrie England’ to the royal couple at the local sports ground. Informed that she would be introduced to the Queen for her troubles, Gwen had even bought a special dress and gloves for the occasion. She was then told, at the very last minute, that other local dignitaries had pulled rank, insisting that they should take precedence over a mere teacher and housewife. Gwen was no longer in the greeting line. However, after a bravura performance by her choir, she would have her reward. As the royal Land Rover was driving round the sports ground for one last time, it suddenly stopped. The Duke of Edinburgh climbed out, walked up to Gwen, shook her hand and said: ‘Her Majesty has wished me to express, on our behalf, our thanks for the children’s beautiful singing. It was much appreciated.’ Clearly the royal intelligence network had picked up word of Gwen’s unsung efforts. Why else would she subsequently receive an invitation to a garden party at Buckingham Palace?

  The crowds continued to defy modern comprehension. One million people lined the streets in Sydney, where the police were ordered to travel by train as the roads had become impassable. Another 120,000 children packed the Sydney cricket ground and 250,000 people simply waited to watch the royal car come back to Government House at the end of the evening. One million were seen lining the road from the aerodrome in Melbourne. Time and again, public-address systems failed when overhead wires snapped under the weight of people clinging on to them for a better view.

  In one state after the next, the monarch was heralded as a fairytale come true, most famously when her adoring Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, presented her with what would amount to an Australian Crown Jewel. Made of yellow and white diamonds on platinum, the ‘Wattle’ brooch is not merely a stunning representation of the national flower, but of the national character, too. Here is an exquisite piece that exudes energy and colour, one that would be immortalised in that 1954 portrait by Sir William Dargie. The Duke, by contrast, was fondly portrayed as a bloke who, all things being equal, would rather be having a beer with his mates. While he seemed at his happiest inspecting new technology or military facilities, he was content to play along with the popular narrative. When the Queen went racing at Randwick, the Duke sneaked off to watch a match at Sydney Cricket Ground, where he spurned a royal box in favour of the pavilion. The media were thrilled.

  As he explained years later, it was important to remember that this manic level of interest was never going to last. ‘It could have been corroding,’ he told Gyles Brandreth. ‘It would have been very easy to play to the gallery but I took a conscious decision not to do that. Safer not to be too popular. You can’t fall too far.’

  It was a sensible approach. There was always going to be a next time. And it was never going to be quite the same. The explosion of evangelical royalist fervour in 1954 would sit a little uneasily with Australia’s sense of itself as an unstuffy, can-do egalitarian sporting powerhouse. Many would look back with faint embarrassment to the fact that the greatest spectator event in Australian history was a royal and not a sporting one (the Australian government estimates t
hat 75 per cent of the entire population saw the Queen in the flesh). Those epic scenes of 1954 have been well documented, in many books and films. Dargie’s ‘wattle’ portrait has become a national treasure. So what happened next? The story behind the subsequent royal tour of Australia and New Zealand is less well known, but perhaps more instructive. For if 1954 was a relatively straightforward exercise in introducing the monarch to the people, then what was Round Two?

  It would certainly be more challenging. By 1963 the novelty had worn off, television had come of age and the royal couple were nine years older. The royal gloss was fading in Britain, too. In the wake of the Suez fiasco, the monarchy had been attacked for being out of touch, not least in Lord Altrincham’s famous broadside,† and the monarchy would be a rich seam for the satirists of the Sixties.

  There was another issue of profound concern, particularly in New Zealand. Britain’s new-found determination to join the EEC threatened economic collapse. New Zealand has often been regarded as the most royalist of all the Queen’s realms. So the fact that ministers in Wellington were not very enthusiastic about welcoming the monarch at this particular time reflects the depth of feeling. The European issue was also a source of concern in Australia, though not to quite the same extent. Around 18 per cent of Australian trade in the early Sixties was with Britain. A full decade before Britain’s eventual entry into the Common Market, Europe was already colouring relations with historical allies whom most in Britain would regard as siblings.

  The Queen’s tour of 1963 was dreamed up by Australia’s longest-serving Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, an ardent royalist. He had been keen for the Queen to make a return visit, ostensibly to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Canberra as the national capital. He had discussed it with her in person and she had agreed. At Buckingham Palace, officials started making plans in the summer of 1962. Surely, if the Queen was going all that way, should she not visit New Zealand, too? So strong were those concerns about Britain’s flirtation with Europe that the Kiwis had yet to issue an invitation. As her Private Secretary, Sir Michael Adeane, wrote to a colleague: ‘It is hoped that Mr Holyoake,‡ to whom a hint has been dropped, might suggest the Queen going to New Zealand beforehand.’

  Holyoake finally took the hint and, once again, the Queen began a grand tour on the other side of the world, travelling, via Fiji, to New Zealand. On this occasion, however, her Maori subjects would enjoy much greater prominence than before. The Queen’s visit coincided with the annual ceremonies to mark the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi between the Crown and the Maori. By the 1960s a Maori protest movement was gathering political momentum, with its claims that the treaty had not been fairly observed. The New Zealand government wanted to present the Queen as the guarantor of fair play. ‘It was on this hallowed ground that pledges were given on behalf of Queen Victoria to the Maori chiefs when they ceded sovereignty to the Crown,’ she told the Waitangi crowds. ‘Today I want to renew those pledges and to assure my Maori people that the obligations entered into at Waitangi go far deeper than any legal provision.’ It was her duty, she said, to ensure ‘the trust of the Maori people is never betrayed’. These were uncompromising words for a sovereign to deliver. The reference to ‘my’ Maori people did not go unnoticed. The Queen was also determined to make it clear that if there was any betrayal, it would not be her doing. ‘I will do my part,’ she continued. ‘But remember that these pledges are given on behalf of the self-governing people of New Zealand and her democratically elected Government.’ And in a final flourish that might almost have been scripted by Lord Altrincham, she concluded: ‘He iwi Kotahi tatou; we are all one people’.

  It was a rare highlight during an eleven-day tour, which, by common consent, was not a patch on her five-week triumph in 1953–4. While large, excited crowds still greeted the Queen in Auckland and Christchurch, the turnout in Wellington was deeply disappointing. The British High Commissioner, Francis Cumming-Bruce, informed London that what passed for a crowd in the capital was ‘mainly silent and there was little waving’. The mood was obviously rubbing off on the royal couple. ‘It was on several occasions thought that the Queen looked drawn and very tired and this induced a sober mood amongst spectators, many of whom expressed disappointment,’ Cumming-Bruce confided to Duncan Sandys, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, in a confidential memo.

  In Australia, there would be further mixed reviews and similar observations: the crowds were smaller, the displays less spectacular and the civic worthies as keen as ever on hogging the royal presence. The thirty-eight-day itinerary was considerably shorter than the two-month epic of 1954 and, on this occasion, the Royal Yacht would provide the odd breather at sea. It was still a punishing schedule, not least because every state had decided on its own programme, without paying much attention to the actual wishes of the visitor. For example, the Queen wanted to visit a migrant hostel. The request had been passed from the Palace to the immigration minister, Alick Downer, who had identified a suitable location during the Queensland leg of the tour. And yet nothing happened. As the British High Commissioner, Sir William Oliver, reported to his bosses: ‘The Queensland government were approached but rejected the suggestion on the grounds that they could not waste any of Her Majesty’s precious time in this state by asking her to visit a federal hostel. And so this project, despite Her Majesty’s expressed interest, found no place in her programme.’ Downer had also asked the states to make an effort to include ‘new Australians’ – non-British migrants who had only recently become royal subjects – in their civic functions. Once again, his requests fell on deaf ears.

  The Australian press was largely upbeat in its coverage. By common consent, the jolliest part of the tour was in Darwin – the one part of Australia omitted from the great 1954 odyssey – where the Queen enjoyed a rodeo and the Duke of Edinburgh took part in a cattle round-up. The couple also made a point of visiting an Aboriginal family, Philip and Hannah Roberts and their six daughters, at their home, though it was an atypical one. A self-educated medical orderly, Mr Roberts had recently moved his family into a white suburb. As the royal visitors arrived, the neighbours serenaded them with the national anthem.

  Back in London, however, the Commonwealth Office was becoming increasingly alarmed about the negative tone of the British press coverage. On 18th March, a telegram marked ‘urgent’ reached the British High Commissions in Canberra and Wellington. ‘There have been reports suggesting that the Royal Tour has not been an outstanding success,’ it said. ‘Send urgently by bag a confidential report.’

  In New Zealand, Cumming-Bruce did not hold back about the ‘deflated mood’ and placed much of the blame on British foreign policy. ‘Eighteen months of negotiations of British membership of the EEC shook New Zealand opinion profoundly,’ he warned. ‘The suggestions in public discussion that Britain’s relationship with the Commonwealth was likely to be progressively subordinated . . . constituted a severe shock to that part of the New Zealand people that attach the highest value to retaining the closest possible links.’ He pointed out that it was widely believed that the Queen had been sent to New Zealand by the British government as a sop to its old Kiwi allies. ‘This story was much repeated and has been accepted by many who should know better,’ said Cumming-Bruce. He was also scathing about the New Zealand government’s ‘air of casualness’ and ‘sloppiness’, singling out the Prime Minister in particular. ‘Holyoake appeared rather sloppy in some of his appearances. His addresses to the Queen singularly failed to do justice to the occasion; they lacked vital spark, the tone sounded rather patronising and he tended to address himself to the public rather than to the Queen.’

  Cumming-Bruce tempered some of these remarks in his official despatch to London three weeks later, insisting that the tour had shown New Zealanders that ‘their Queen can move about them without pomp and circumstance’. However, he repeated his point that ‘the timing of the visit, coming as it did so shortly after the great debate on Britain joining the EEC, significantly affected it
s psychological impact.’

  Over in Canberra, British diplomats were a little less downcast. Sir William Oliver insisted that the visit had been anything but a failure, and that a lot of British reporting was ‘far-fetched and quite off the mark’. He attributed this to the fact that some British reporters were not ‘the courtier type’ but, rather, were ‘looking for trouble’. He attributed the smaller crowds to the fact that most Australians had televisions. Those on the street were ‘only a tithe of those who watched her progress with no less warmth on television screens at home’.

  The main problem, he concluded, was striking the correct balance between ‘informality’ and ‘royal spectacle.’

  Touching on an eternal royal paradox, he added: ‘It is not only children who want and expect a Queen to wear a crown.’ The Economist put it another way: ‘It is only against a background of regal magnificence that [Australians] love to read of the postman who entered a cottage in the Snowy Mountains and found the Queen eating an egg. But people do not want the Queen to be human all the time.’

  Most people agreed that Australians had changed their attitude towards the monarch, and that this was no bad thing. ‘They are beginning to think of her as the Queen of Australia,’ said Sir William, adding that they had also ‘grown out of the “Faerie Queen” attitude which is not in my opinion natural to Australians’. It was still natural to at least one very eminent Australian, however. Newly dubbed a Knight of the Thistle, Sir Robert Menzies perhaps marked the high point of Australian prime-ministerial chivalry with his oft-quoted line to his Queen at the state banquet in her honour: ‘All I ask you to remember in this country of yours is that every man, woman and child who even sees you . . . will remember it with joy – in the words of the old 17th century poet . . . “I did but see her passing by and yet I love her till I die”.’ One senior Australian diplomat still looks back on this as ‘peak cringe’.