June 1977, I’m six years old and Elizabeth Windsor has her Silver Jubilee, marking 25 years on the throne. My family and I are sat on the pebble-coated banks of Cowbridge Road East along with thousands of our fellow Cardiffians, watching as the royal entourage troupes past in a paraded public display of her wealth and power.
My memory has her in an enclosed golden carriage pulled by white horses, drawing on the iconography of fairy tales, but a Google Image search of the day has her and Phillip in an open topped carriage — albeit still pulled by those white horses. Johnny Rotten’s banned ‘God Save The Queen’ single (‘…she ain’t no human being…’) that hit №1 in the pop charts that summer had years to go before it would come onto my radar.
I recall the street party held around the corner from my house, where trestle tables were laid out along the length of the street, draped in table cloths and laid out with tasteless processed party food. For some reason, perhaps triggered by today’s concerns about single use plastics, I particularly recall the thin brittle texture of the plastic Union Jack flags scattered across those tables and the harder but equally brittle plastics of the Union Jack hats provided for us kids to strap onto our heads.
The Jubilee was undoubtedly a collective moment that transcended the day-to-day, although I don’t recall any particularly strong feelings for the monarchy at the time. Not much later, however, probably a year or three, I tagged along with one of the friends I’d sat with on those trestle tables in my neighbourhood as he invited me to my first tryout of the Cub Scouts.
I was happy enough with whatever activities we were asked to do in that Cardiff scout hut, but when it came to the end of the session, we were expected to form a circle and recite the Scout’s Pledge. This pledge committed us to doing our duty by God and The Queen. To this day, I remember my determination not to pledge to do either, as I didn’t believe in God or that the monarchy was worth celebrating, never mind being duty bound by. I never went back to Cubs after that.
Fast forward to the mid 80s, 1986 to be precise. Manchester band The Smiths released their third studio album, ‘The Queen Is Dead’. The title seemed shocking to many at the time, as very few cultural figures tended to express anti-monarchy views, even then. This was probably the first big mainstream pop music statement since the Sex Pistols to be openly critical of The Queen.
Today, ‘The Queen Is Dead’ is a statement of fact. Nothing shocking.
Philosopher Timothy Morton uses the term ‘hyperobject’ to explain objects so massively distributed in time and space that they transcend localisation, such as climate change, capitalism, or the Internet. The death of Elizabeth II is seemingly an example of a ‘hyperevent’ (my coining, I think), an event too vast for many of us to wrap our heads around that causes history’s tectonic plates to shift and collide.
While death is hardly surprising for a 96 year old, Elizabeth’s passing nevertheless punctures our time as the Moon Landing or the fall of the Berlin Wall punctured theirs. It brings the curtain down on an era, an era where one woman — probably one of the most famous people in the world — symbolised a country that was and a country that wasn’t to the people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and those that looked to it.
With hyperevents, where we were when they happened tends to stay imprinted in our minds. For the record, after morning warnings in the news of concern for her failing health and hints in my ear that ‘London Bridge may have already fallen’, I spent the afternoon of the day she died trying to figure out whether I had any responsibilities as a broadcaster to cancel the evening’s radio schedule I had planned and replace it with sombre music. Despite having retained the same views of the monarchy that I had espoused as a potential Cub Scout, I was still struck by the magnitude of the moment (as well as concern for whether there were licensing conditions attached to the radio station I co-manage that required us to respond to the moment).
In the end, I decided that the show must go on whether Elizabeth would last the day or not, and I advised the rest of the DJs that we would continue as planned. Seconds after I had just happened to play a track by George Formby live on air (an artist I have never played before and am rarely likely to ever again), my news notifications popped up on my iPad screen to inform me that The Queen had indeed died. I was into the waning 30 seconds of handover to the next DJ, so left the choice of announcements to them.
Lenin once reportedly opined that ‘There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen’, in reference to the Russian Revolution. 2022’s felt like it’s had more than its fair share of those weeks, where we know that suddenly everything that was once solid and unyielding melts into uncertainty and change.
What Britain comes next, after the Second Elizabethan Era? A new ‘Carolean Era’, for starters, with the accession of King Charles III to the throne. A reign that, given his ascension at the age of 73, inherently cannot last for anywhere near as long as that of his mother’s.
But will the facade of the monarchy now lose its shine, with the passing of Elizabeth? Will her symbolic bonds that supposedly kept the nation together now begin to accelerate their fraying, with us finding that the UK can no longer hold as it once did in the post-war end-of-empire period?
The end of the British Empire has already had a long tail, with Britain’s fourth withdrawal from Afghanistan only happening last year, the same year that Barbados finally removed Elizabeth as Head of State and declared itself a republic. Signals of further change are everywhere, from the potential of Scottish independence to end the Act of Union with England that dates from 1707, further stirrings of the logical conclusions of the independence from Britain of many more Caribbean nations, even the possibility of Australia’s republican movement having its time come.
Charles has previously talked of ‘slimming down’ the monarchy, of reducing the size of the royal estate, and has been more vocal than his mother’s silence was on the occasional politics of the day.
After 12 years of Tory government, the country’s social fabric is fraying to the point of potential destruction, and a return of war to the European continent has contributed to millions in this country now struggling to even pay their bills, just as another winter appears on the horizon. We gained a new Prime Minister and a new monarch in the same week, and the new PM looks likely to be just as divisive and destructive as the last one.
From modern Britain’s origin myth period of the Second World War right through to our exit from the European Union and the devastations of the Covid period a fifth of the way into the 21st Century, Elizabeth II had been the one symbolic constant throughout.
Now, no more. As Morrissey once sang in 1986, presciently predating Brexit by 30 years, ‘the Queen is dead, boys, and it’s so lonely on a limb’.
I must admit, though, I still feel Bowie’s absence more than I expect I’ll feel hers.
