Julius Norwich (the 2nd Viscount), was seated between the Queen and Princess Anne. He heard the monarch begin to sigh only a few minutes into the more than two-hour film. “I heard her sigh again,” recalled Norwich. “It was a long sigh. I was in agony as the sighs continued throughout the film and I wondered what to say when the lights came up.” But as the movie ended, she simply turned, flashed a bright smile, and said, “Well, that was a bit gloomy, wasn’t it?” “She was trying to put me at ease,” Norwich explained. “She could sense my discomfort.”
IN HER 1976 Christmas message, the Queen spoke for the first time about her coming Silver Jubilee marking twenty-five years on the throne. “Next year is a rather special one for me,” she said. “The gift I would most value … is that reconciliation should be found wherever it is needed.” The Callaghan government initially opposed a Silver Jubilee celebration because of Britain’s economic woes, but Charteris and his Palace colleagues successfully argued that it would provide a morale boost, and that the Queen should not only tour the country, but all her Commonwealth realms. She emphasized, however, her “express wish” that there should be “no undue expenditure.” The press was predictably skeptical, with the pro-republican
Although the Queen reached her landmark that Accession Day, she did not want to celebrate the moment her father died, so she spent the weekend quietly at Windsor Castle with her family. Four days later she embarked on the first of her two overseas jubilee tours, spending seven weeks traveling on
The festivities began in earnest on May 4, 1977, with the Queen’s appearance in Westminster Hall for “Loyal Addresses” from the Houses of Commons and Lords, followed by her reply. Like the Christmas broadcast, her message was personal and therefore noteworthy. As would be expected, she spoke glowingly of the Commonwealth, but she also said that Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community was “one of the most significant decisions during my reign.” Even more surprisingly, she frankly responded to the growing pressure to devolve power to Scotland and Wales. “I can readily understand these aspirations,” she said, “but I cannot forget that I was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Perhaps this Jubilee is a time to remind ourselves of the benefits which union has conferred, at home and in our international dealings, on the inhabitants of all parts of this United Kingdom.”
“That was significant, because it was the only political thing she has said, and all the more powerful because it was unique,” said Simon Walker, who served as the Queen’s communication and press secretary from 2000 to 2002. Nationalists in Scotland recognized the primacy of the union as her bedrock principle, and duly protested. But the Queen had been determined to speak her mind.
On Monday, June 6, Elizabeth II stood atop Snow Hill in Windsor Great Park, her hair shielded from the elements by her signature head scarf, poised to ignite a bonfire that would signal others around the country to light their own in celebration of their Queen. Unfortunately, a skittish soldier beat her to it, a glitch that amused rather than annoyed her. “Your Majesty, I’m afraid everything that could possibly go wrong is going wrong,” said Major Sir Michael Parker, an impresario for royal events with an expertise in pyrotechnics. “Oh good, what fun!” she replied with a smile.
The apex of the festivities came the following day, when the Queen and Prince Philip rode in the Gold State Coach, accompanied by Household Cavalry, Yeomen of the Guard, and Prince Charles on horseback in a bearskin and the red uniform of Colonel-in-Chief of the Welsh Guards. It was the first time since the coronation that she had ridden in the freshly gilded and dizzyingly ornate carriage. “I had forgotten how uncomfortable that ride could be,” the Queen later confided to a friend.
The carriage procession—which also featured the Irish State Coach, Queen Alexandra’s State Coach, and the Glass Coach carrying other members of the royal family—wended its way from Buckingham Palace to St. Paul’s Cathedral, passing more than a million people, many of whom had camped out overnight in the rain. At the cathedral, a congregation of 2,700 guests included all of her six living prime ministers and an array of world leaders. Donald Coggan, the 101st Archbishop of Canterbury, praised the Queen as “an example of service untiringly done, of duty faithfully fulfilled, and of a home life stable and wonderfully happy,” as the television camera panned across a row of her relatives. Princess Margaret, separated from Tony Snowdon for more than a year and still grabbing headlines for her escapades with Roddy Llewellyn, sat with her two children.
The Queen, wearing a bright pink shift dress, matching coat, and cloche hat trimmed with twenty-five small fabric bells, walked with her husband through the streets near the cathedral, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries along the crowded barriers. At a luncheon in the Guildhall, she restated the pledge of lifelong service that she had made on her twenty-first birthday “in my salad days when I was green in judgment,” adding, “I do not regret or retract a word of it.”
As the Queen and Philip rode in an open carriage to Buckingham Palace, the roar of the vast crowd was so loud that her coachman couldn’t even hear the horses’ hooves hitting the pavement. The royal family fanned out on the famous Palace balcony, the men in uniform, the women like a pastel rainbow: the Queen in pink, the Queen Mother in daffodil, Margaret in slightly darker pink, and Anne visibly pregnant in aquamarine. Elizabeth II looked jubilant—laughing, talking, and waving, taking in a mass of humanity she had seen on numerous occasions stretching back to her father’s coronation in 1937. But this time, more than any other, the crowds were genuinely cheering for
Two days later the celebration topped itself with a barge procession down the Thames from Greenwich to Lambeth that was meant to evoke the majestic convoys of Tudor times. After dark, fireworks exploded across the sky, and another enormous crowd gathered in front of Buckingham Palace and along the Mall to catch the parade of illuminated carriages carrying the Queen and her family back to Buckingham Palace. Roy Strong, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, was among the multitude—“basically middle class British. Educated voices could be heard,” he recalled. “Men in suits passed by with Union Jacks tied to the end of their umbrellas.” Clusters of onlookers spontaneously burst into “God Save the Queen” and “Rule Britannia.” When the coaches clattered by, Strong felt a communal “surge of emotion.” Elizabeth II and her family appeared on the Palace balcony, then reappeared after midnight, when Princess Margaret “more or less had to push them out as they failed to grasp the fervor of the crowd.”
There were four thousand Silver Jubilee street parties in London alone, and an estimated twelve thousand in cities, towns, and villages around the country. The punk rock group Sex Pistols sounded one blatantly harsh note with their nihilistic take on “God Save the Queen,” calling her the fascist leader of a country with no future. Although the BBC loyally refused to play the song, it nevertheless raced to number two in the charts.
Still, that dubious success didn’t dim jubilee enthusiasm. Over the next several months, the Queen toured thirty-six counties in the United Kingdom. As the celebratory momentum grew, the crowds swelled to the point that over a million people came out on a single day in Lancashire. The Queen’s last stop on her domestic itinerary was Northern Ireland, which she visited for the first time in eleven years.
Palace officials and government ministers had debated whether she should risk the trip. The conflict in Ulster since the beginning of the Troubles had been a continuing source of concern for the Queen. Following their deployment to Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, the British troops originally intended to protect the Catholic minority had become the targets of IRA bombs and snipers amid escalating tensions. In August 1971, the authorities began imprisoning Catholic militants without trial in an effort to control the violence.
“The Queen received me at one of my regular audiences after she had been watching the coverage of riots in Belfast on the television, and was obviously shaken by the ferocity of the events in a part of her Kingdom,” Edward Heath recalled. “In particular, she was horrified by the film of women’s faces contorted with hate as they clung to the high wired fences protecting British troops. Whenever the Queen is accused of remoteness or indifference towards the tribulations of her subjects, I think back to that moment.”
