Her Majesty the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee

Lord Newby Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to speak on behalf of these Benches on the occasion of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. The Queen is the only monarch I have known in my lifetime; I was born less than four months before the Coronation. To mark this event, aged four months, I was given a commemorative coronation half-pint beer mug bearing the royal crest. As a strict Methodist teetotaller, my mother was black-affronted by the gift and for many years it sat unused at the back of her kitchen cupboard. As a teetotaller, she had no use for it; as a royalist, she could not throw it out. This demonstrates how difficult it is for the monarchy to please everybody.

The Queen’s reign is remarkable in many respects—first, for its length and, secondly, for the unchanging pattern of life the Queen has followed: Christmas at Sandringham, August in Balmoral, garden parties, Ascot, state visits and diplomatic receptions. On the surface, many things have hardly changed in 70 years. However, thirdly, the non-royal world has changed beyond recognition, not just in material terms but also in attitudes, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, said, towards women, homosexuals, ethnic minority communities and other minorities, and, in some respects most relevantly, by an almost complete collapse in the deference shown to institutions and the people who represent them.

As a result, what the nation expects of the monarch has also subtly changed. When the Queen came to the Throne, many millions of people treated the institution of the monarchy reverentially and were more than satisfied if the Queen performed her constitutional duties, from the State Opening of Parliament to the appointment of sheriffs, in a dignified and suitably regal manner. Over time, however, the country has looked to the Queen to speak for it in moments of trauma and difficulty, and to do so in a manner which is studiously politically neutral. It has also required the stripping away of the mystique of royalty. People have demanded far more openness in the way the Royal Family presents itself and there has been far more public scrutiny of every aspect of the lives not only of the Queen herself, but of all other members of the Royal Family.

The Queen has been able to navigate these swirling currents of changing times by basing her life on unchanging principles. Three stand out. The first is an overriding commitment to the service of the nation and to her duty to represent its traditions and values. Secondly, her firm Christian faith has permeated her whole approach to life and underpinned her sense of service to others. Thirdly, there is a sense of obligation towards our former colonies and to the Commonwealth, as its relationship to the UK has evolved very substantially over the decades since her accession.

These three strands are most publicly brought together in the Queen’s annual Christmas Day broadcast, when Her Majesty, reflecting on the past year, draws out lessons which she commends to the nation to follow in the succeeding one. Typically, the concepts of community, generosity, kindness and service to others permeate what she has to say. These are timeless virtues, but ones of which we need constant reminding.

As the Queen reaches this jubilee, it is inevitable that she is gradually reducing the scale of her activities and gradually passing on her responsibilities to Prince Charles and Prince William. In them, the country is fortunate in having future monarchs in whom her sense of duty is equally replicated.

Anyone who has had any personal dealings with the Queen will be remembering them over this jubilee period. I was fortunate to serve as a member of the Royal Household for three years from 2012 as Captain of the Queen’s Bodyguard of the Yeoman of the Guard. In that capacity, I met the Queen on a number of occasions. Two stand out today. First, during my term of office, the yeomen had a formal dinner with wives at St James’s Palace. It was the depth of winter. The Queen and Prince Philip, in formal attire, attended a pre-dinner reception and in customary manner spoke to groups of yeomen organised in a horseshoe in one of the grand reception rooms of the palace. My job, in theory, was to guide the Queen around the room. The truth was, she was so accomplished at this sort of thing, that she in effect guided me around the room. She spoke to each group with energy, wit and evident enjoyment. She finished the horseshoe within a minute of the time allocated. Every attendee was made to feel special. It was a bravura performance at a private event the Queen was not required to attend, which she went to out of a sense of duty and at which she played her part to perfection.

The second was in the aftermath of the 2015 general election, when I ceased to be the Captain of the Queen’s Bodyguard. As tradition requires, I had to have an audience with the Queen to hand back my staff of office. As I was waiting to see Her Majesty, I noticed that it said around the rim: “For the use of the Captain of the Yeoman of the Guard, for the time being.” I pointed this out to the Queen and said that my time had now obviously been. She smiled sympathetically, but when my successor the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, followed me into the audience room to receive the staff, the Queen pointed out to him that it was for his use only “for the time being”. It demonstrated a sharp mind and a gentle wit, two extremely endearing qualities. It is memories such as these which certainly endear the Queen to me and similar experiences which endear her to so many people in the country. I have been very fortunate to live under such a monarch and, in the words of the song, “long may she reign”.