I wasn’t really aware, until last week, that QueenElizabeth was celebrating a Jubilee. Why would I be? I’m an Irish woman, after all, and I have very little interest in the British Royal family.
I don’t understand the fascination with the monarchy, or the need to continue fleecing the taxpayer to keep the lavish show on the road.
As evidenced by the huge crowds across Britain last week, however, millions disagree. They loved the Jubilee Celebrations. Much of that is down to the insatiable media coverage of a family which often acts like a more sedate version of the Kardashians: the endless discussion of their clothes and hair, their silly feuds, and their sometimes awful lives. Its obvious, too, that mammies everywhere might feel a fair amount of sympathy for Elizabeth and the constant embarrassment that most of the family cause her, though Kate Middleton seems like a decent, normal-enough, woman.
Like my colleague, John McGuirk, who is fond of the ceremonial razzmatazz these occasions bring, lots of people also simply like a good show, and the celebrations of the past week, given lavish attention by the media here as well as in Britain, were likely colourful and entertaining.
This cutsie video with Paddington Bear is a reminder of why nostalgia is so powerful, and how very smart the Buckingham Palace PR team is.
This on par if not better than the Olympic James Bond scene.
The Queen having tea with Paddington – incredible that at 96 and after 70 years on the throne she still has the power to surprise #platinumpartyatthepalace pic.twitter.com/88NP1ScpXx— Michael Cowan (@mrmikecowan) June 4, 2022
Bless. The Queen of Britain is everyone’s favourite gran who has lived a long life of service to public duty, and carries marmalade sandwiches in her handbag. That’s genius. It’s not entirely the full story, of course.
Elizabeth is the personification of the British Crown, and with that comes, not just a long and chequered history, but a ridiculous amount of what passes for etiquette going back to the time when the monarchy cunningly decided that their absolute right to rule was, in fact, derived from God.
It’s difficult to understand why the antiquated customs of bowing and scraping to another human being are still continued and why anyone is meant to respect them. Most of those holding the title of monarch enjoy that position because someone in their lineage was brutal, ruthless, and ambitious to the point where they imprisoned or killed their enemies in a merciless climb to the top.
Elizabeth’s admirers would deny her part in any such machinations, but even so, the custom of kneeling or curtseying – “the begging bow” of Gilray’s print – continues a tradition of subservience which is frankly absurd. Such notions.
I’m with the Great O’Neills on this matter: I kneel only to God.
Not that the British Queen, I’m sure, will ever have me to the palace for an occasion which would demand that I kneel. And again, that’s fine. I’m not British and expect as little from Elizabeth as she expects from me.
I realise that if this was our own Queen, I might feel differently. Brian Ború, one of the last of the High Kings of Ireland was a man who should elicit admiration and praise for ridding us of the troublesome Danes – and for his musical compositions that have endured for ten centuries. Sometimes I think, wistfully, that a latter-day Brian might sort out the unmitigated mess being made of the country by a succession of inept politicians. A poll last week found that Queen Elizabeth was more popular with Irish people than any of the leaders of the political parties. No surprise there.
It did point to our own failure – or more accurately to the failure of governments – to celebrate our own heroes. It’s a hang-up from colonial times perhaps, or an attempt to quell nationalism by deliberately ignoring or understanding the breadth of learning and achievement in Gaelic Ireland, and the many heroic attempts for freedom since.
Certainly when Enda Kenny tried to make the centenary of 1916 more about the fields of Flanders than the Battle of Mount Street, a significant public backlash forced the government to let local historical societies and relatives groups mostly take charge. But we still had nothing like the state-funded street parties and fireworks seen in Britain last week. The Brits know how to honour those they see as heroes and they apologise to no-one for it. Good for them. We should do the same.
Then there are the valid objections, barely aired anymore it seems, to celebrating the British Crown, considering the long and very ugly history of said Crown in this country. If thousands – even hundreds of thousands – of Irishmen died in the service of various British armies over the year that’s because a dispossessed people often chose military service over starvation.
Its also hard to divorce the monarchy from political reality when relatives of those shot dead by Paratroopers on Bloody Sunday are understandably upset at the Queen dishing out MBEs to the same regiment.
Everyone wants to move forward in peace, but that doesn’t mean all of our history should be simply forgotten. And it doesn’t mean we are obliged to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee either.
None of that is to imply that I bear any ill will towards the 90 year-old Queen. If I had bumped into her at the shops, I likely would have wished her well and conveyed my good wishes and the hope that she would have an enjoyable party. And, of course, I’m a traditionalist in many things, and the British people are perfectly entitled to celebrate their Jubilee with as much fanfare and gusto as they desire.
Just as I’m entitled not to. And that’s all fine.