Her Majesty the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I can only think of Her Majesty as a young Queen. I wrote to her at her 80th birthday to tell her. That must seem very strange when she was 80 years old and even stranger now she is 96 years old. Let me explain. To do so, I shall take your Lordships, if I may, back to 6 February 1952. I was then a schoolboy aged 13 years. It was a normal start to a normal school day, but by mid-morning a rumour was passing round the school that the King had died. This was a great shock; he was only 56 years old. We knew that things were not well when the BBC shut down all its radio programmes—the Home Service, the Light Programme and the Third Programme, for those who can remember those days.

It was a particular shock because we did not know the King was ill. As young schoolboys, we did not notice, in so far as we looked at newspapers, that the King looked awfully unwell a few days earlier when bidding farewell to his daughter Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh when they were starting a world tour on his behalf. We learned on that very day that he was being succeeded by the young Princess Elizabeth, only 25 years old. This was not much older than most of us schoolchildren; it was only 12 years older than me. That evening, we had a broadcast from the Prime Minister. He mainly directed his broadcast to a tribute to the late King. He made little mention of the new monarch until the end, when, with great Churchillian style, he said, “I must end this broadcast with an anthem and prayer of my youth—God save the Queen.”

Shortly afterwards, we heard at my school that the young Queen was paying a visit to Portsmouth. It so happened that my school was quite close to the A3, which was—still is—the road from London to Portsmouth. A group of us went to the roadside. The royal car, on Her Majesty’s directions, I am sure, slowed down to almost walking pace and we were able to have a wonderful view of the new Queen. This was my first opportunity to see Her Majesty.

Next came the Coronation in June 1953. The Queen was then only 27 years old. I was the only person in my family who was not in the abbey at the Coronation—I had some jealousy over this—but I was allowed to go to the dress rehearsal, where the Duchess of Norfolk, the wife of the Earl Marshal, took the role of the Queen. Of course the Queen was not there, and that made her faultless performance at the Coronation a particular credit to her.

The next time I saw the Queen was four years later. She was then 31 years of age. I was doing my national service in the Royal Navy, and I took part in a royal review off the coast of Invergordon in the north-east of Scotland. The review started with all the Navy’s vessels, or as many as could be gathered together, steaming past the royal yacht, which was then in very new use with a wonderful, gleaming hull. As we passed the royal yacht, we doffed our hats. The next day, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh gave a whole day to be aboard HMS “Ark Royal”, then a leading carrier in the Royal Navy on which I had the honour to serve. Her Majesty spent most of the day in the control of the ship—the bridge, which controls the movement of the ship itself, and Flyco, which was in charge of the movement of aircraft when taking off and landing. It was obviously an exciting day for Her Majesty and it was all rather exciting to us. The aeroplanes were catapulted off the front of the carrier and there was always a danger that the catapult would not function strongly enough, or that the engines of the aircraft taking off were not sufficiently revved up. These were occasions when the aircraft would dip and almost skim over the water before it got sufficient power to fly.

The landing was also an exciting event. The method then was for the aircraft to have a hook at its stern and to catch one of the hawsers as it came in to land on the carrier. There were occasions when it failed to catch the hawser, and then a frantic signal was given to the pilot to roar off the deck and, we hoped, not dip into the water. Her Majesty thoroughly enjoyed that and watched all the detail of the day. I was in the chart room as a very young navigating officer. It was very close to the bridge and Flyco and I was therefore able to witness Her Majesty deal with a problem. She was in high heels and they were catching on the decking of the ship. She asked the captain if she could remove her shoes and, for the rest of the day, she padded around in her stockinged feet, still enjoying and participating so much. Although I have had the honour on several occasions to meet Her Majesty in person, in Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and other places, these memories are indelible for me.

The greatest tribute I think I can give to Her Majesty is on her success in avoiding any expression of view on political matters. It is true that she has very occasionally dropped a few hints, but for the most part this has been most rare. Her views on Scottish independence were unfortunately leaked by Prime Minister Cameron. I always thought Her Majesty was anti-Brexit because it was going to badly disturb our status quo—as indeed I believe it has. But, like everybody else, I simply did not know Her Majesty’s view on Brexit.

I feel I must end this short tribute to her as I began, with Churchill’s words of his youth, which have been the anthem and prayer of my last 70 years and Her Majesty’s last 70 years: “God save the Queen.”