Elizabeth II

Elizabeth II (b. 1926), queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (1952– ). When Princess Elizabeth was born to the duke and duchess of York in 1926 there was little reason to expect that she would succeed to the throne. Her uncle, the prince of Wales, was only 31 and was being urged to marry: it was also quite possible that her parents would have a son who would take precedence. But the birth of her younger sister Margaret Rose in 1930 closed the family account and the abdication of her uncle in 1936 brought her father to the throne as George VI.

The Yorks were a close-knit and affectionate family and the princess had a secure and uncomplicated childhood. Since she was not sent to school, nurses and governesses bulked large— Clara Knight (‘Alla’), Margaret MacDonald (‘Bobo’), and Marion Crawford (‘Crawfie’). The first two spent the rest of their lives in royal service: the third eventually resigned to marry, broke the convention of confidentiality by writing a book about the two princesses, and was cast into outer darkness. Princess Elizabeth grew up pretty, cheerful, and obedient, though less vivacious than her younger sister. Her strong sense of duty called to mind her grandfather George V and Queen Victoria. As she grew up, Crawfie's instruction was strengthened by teachers brought in for constitutional history and languages and by visits to museums and art galleries. Her education remained unstructured and was further disrupted by the war.

Most of the war was spent at Windsor castle, where the princesses learned the art of rolling out of bed and into air raid shelters when the sirens sounded. At the age of 18, and with the war coming to a close, Elizabeth was allowed to join the ATS as a subaltern and went each day to Aldershot to take a driving and vehicle maintenance course. She was already devoted to her cousin Philip Mountbatten, a naval officer and five years her senior. They regarded themselves as engaged from the summer of 1946 and were married in November 1947. Their first child, Prince Charles, was born a year later. In 1952 she succeeded her father on the throne at the age of 25.

The coronation of 1953, the first to be seen on television, was a great success, a splash of colour and ceremony in a still austere post-war Britain. Excitable journalists wrote fatuously of a New Elizabethan Age to come. In fact criticism developed rather quickly. Though not shy, the queen had reserve and, though nobody could accuse her of taking her duties lightly, she did not seem much to enjoy them, having neither the warmth nor easy manner of her mother. In 1957 when Lord Altrincham complained that she sounded like a ‘priggish schoolgirl’, he was predictably threatened with horsewhipping and the borough of Altrincham hastened to dissociate itself from so subversive an opinion. Political clouds also rolled in quickly. Britain found it extremely hard to shake off recurrent financial and economic crises and the Suez fiasco of 1956 was a reminder that the country had neither its former strength, nor perhaps its confidence.

The two themes which dominated the early years of her reign were the painful process of economic recovery and withdrawal from empire. By 1953 the crippled economies of Europe were beginning to recover and Germany, in particular, proved a formidable competitor, especially in car manufacture. This was followed by the rise of the Far Eastern economies, and Japan, Hong Kong, and Korea, which before the war had been synonymous with cheap toys, demonstrated quality and inventiveness in radios, televisions, refrigerators, computers, and shipbuilding. Many of Britain's basic industries—railways, mines, shipyards, cotton mills—were in dire need of re-equipment and investment, yet at the same time there was an urgent demand for houses, schools, and hospitals. Her third prime minister, Harold Macmillan, wrote rather simply in July 1960, ‘the public want them all, but they do not like the idea of paying for them.’ Several of her governments ran onto the rocks of balance of payments difficulties, inflation, unemployment, and runs on the pound: traditional industries declined and their replacements were slow to emerge.

The Suez crisis was only one of the more dramatic episodes in the retreat from empire. The withdrawal from India had taken place in 1948 before Elizabeth came to the throne. It was followed into independence by Malaya (1957), Ghana (1957), Nigeria (1960), Sierra Leone (1961), Tanganyika (1961), Uganda (1962), Jamaica (1962), Trinidad (1962), Zambia (1964), and Aden (1967). The withdrawals were effected with relatively little rancour, though there was fighting in Malaya (1948–60), in Aden (1963–73), a protracted crisis over Southern Rhodesia (1965–80), and an unpleasant and tedious campaign in Kenya against Mau Mau from 1952 to 1955. The queen and the royal family played an active role in efforts to transform the empire into a commonwealth of equal states. But most of the newly independent countries opted to become republics and although the queen remained head of the Commonwealth, her role was largely social. The strength of Commonwealth bonds was weakened by Britain's increasing involvement with Europe. In addition, two of the most influential Commonwealth states seceded for long periods—South Africa between 1961 and 1994, and Pakistan from 1972 until 1989. Royal visits to the former dominions continued but even there difficulties emerged, with severe federal problems in Canada and moves towards republicanism in Australia.

The later years of her reign have seen considerable economic progress, though still subject to sudden mishaps. Macmillan's remark of 1957—‘most of our people have never had it so good’—was premature, but despite a decline in Britain's comparative trading position, the gross national product continued to grow, albeit slowly, and her subjects acquired television sets, cars, telephones, washing machines, and spin-driers on a scale quite unknown in 1952. This was partly because the sharp rise in world oil prices which followed the Arab–Israeli war of 1973 and which threatened acute balance of payments problems was offset by the exploitation of North Sea oil from 1975 onwards.

As the empire shrank and economic performance faltered, Britain's relationship with Europe emerged as a major issue. It had implications for the monarchy since the more advanced schemes for a federal Europe would affect sovereignty. A British/European coinage which did not include the monarch's head would be a breach with tradition dating back to Offa and Alfred. Britain's first two applications to join the European Economic Community were vetoed by de Gaulle in 1963 and 1967, before Edward Heath's government gained acceptance in 1972. In the 1980s, as what was at first envisaged as a trading community moved towards political integration, the question of ‘Europe’ moved steadily to the front of the political agenda.

Of more immediate concern to the queen was probably the role of the monarchy itself and the vicissitudes of the royal family. The latter were a mixture of bad luck, compounded by the rapidly changing values of society, and the emergence of an intrusive and insistent press, which took pride in its lack of respect. The days when an innocent party in a divorce action could not expect an invitation to royal functions were long past, and the restraint that had kept Edward VIII's infatuation with Mrs Simpson out of the news until the very last minute would have been unthinkable 40 years later. The first indications that the royal road might be bumpy came in 1953 when the queen's sister wished to marry a distinguished airman, Group Captain Peter Townsend, who was in the process of divorcing his wife. The issue came to a head at the very start of the new reign and the princess was persuaded not to marry him. When she did marry Anthony Armstrong Jones in 1960, it ended in divorce. These were no more than the drops of rain that preceded the deluge. The queen's cousin Lord Harewood was divorced for adultery in 1967. The marriages of three of the royal children also ended in divorce. The princess royal's marriage to Captain Mark Phillips was dissolved in 1992; the duke of York divorced Sarah Ferguson in 1995, and the protracted and much-publicized rift between the prince and princess of Wales ended in divorce in 1996. In November 1992 at the Guildhall, the queen referred ruefully to a year which had seen one divorce, two marital breakdowns, and a devastating fire at Windsor castle as ‘not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure … an annus horribilis’. Many people must have wondered whether the victory of the ‘modernizers’ in the palace over the ‘traditionalists’ had been of benefit to the monarchy. The incessant publicity which surrounded the royal family as a result of the activities of the ‘royal rat-pack’ suggests that it is easier to start the process of reform than to control it, and that lifting the curtain to let in a little light might encourage people to burn the curtain itself.

It is too soon for any informed assessment of the queen's constitutional role. Though her prime ministers have enthusiastically published their memoirs, they have been bland in their references to the sovereign. There was some criticism of the procedure in 1957 when Eden was forced by ill-health to resign and was succeeded by Macmillan rather than Butler. But the lord chancellor and the lord president of the council ( Kilmuir and Salisbury) were asked to sound the cabinet, and its strong preference for Macmillan was confirmed by the chief whip, the chairman of the 1922 committee, the chairman of the Conservative Party, and Sir Winston Churchill. The queen certainly did not act against advice. Nor did she in 1963 when the choice of Lord Home to succeed Macmillan caused surprise. She acted on the advice of Macmillan himself, whom she visited in hospital. Changed arrangements in the Conservative Party in 1965 for electing its leader make it unlikely that this royal prerogative will cause awkwardness in future. Nor will many others. At every general election there is earnest discussion of the attitude the queen would take should there be a ‘hung Parliament’ but the contingency is remote, and the mechanics of consultation seem well established.

There is no doubt that, from the 1980s onwards, there has been increased criticism of the royal family, though not of Elizabeth herself. The urge by some of its members to seek publicity and unburden themselves to the press proved short-sighted and merely fed the monster. The decline in respect is a general phenomenon and applies to many other institutions—to the church, the law, Parliament, and, not least, to the press itself. It is often said that the royal family has become a soap opera. But this element has always been present, centuries before the term ‘soap opera’ was coined, since spectacle and pageantry, spiced by gossip and anecdote, have always been part of the monarchy's appeal. Not for nothing is the longest running soap opera called Coronation Street. Yet a policy of openness, inaugurated by the film Royal Family (1966), has evident dangers. Satire, which in the 1960s was refreshing and witty, may become coarse and spiteful. Newspapers are not slow to understand that fervent admiration sells fewer papers than indignation and envy. ‘The Palace’ has often had to ponder the balance between over- and under-exposure. That the latter has its risks is demonstrated by the example of Queen Victoria's unpopularity during her seclusion after Albert's death. But the problems caused by under-exposure are more easily remedied.

J. A. Cannon

Bibliography

Bradford, S. , Elizabeth (1996);
Bogdanor, V. , The Monarchy and the Constitution (Oxford, 1995);
Cannon, J. A., and and Griffiths, R. A. , The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Monarchy (Oxford, 1988);
Longford, E. , Elizabeth R: A Biography (1983);
Pimlott, B. , The Queen (1996).