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thomas davison

Her reign has seen the worst period of national decline in our history. Yet she will be judged one of our greatest monarchs
By Dominic Sandbrook
PUBLISHED: 23:05, 1 June 2012 | UPDATED: 09:13, 2 June 2012

On February 7, 1952, the night Elizabeth II stepped on to British soil for the first time as Queen, her Prime Minister Winston Churchill broadcast to the nation.

In private, as Churchill waited for his 25-year-old monarch to return from a trip to Kenya, he had told an aide that she was �only a child�. But now, addressing the British people, the bulldog of democracy struck a more reassuring note.

�Famous have been the reigns of our Queens,� he declared. �Some of the greatest periods in our history have unfolded under their sceptre.�

National treasure: Her majesty pictured in 1948 two years before she was crowned
Sixty years on, perhaps not even Elizabeth II herself would claim that her reign represents the most glorious period in British history.

Yet as we mark her Diamond Jubilee, none of us, surely, would dispute that her reign has been an age of dramatic and turbulent change. In six decades, much of British life has been transformed almost beyond recognition.

Momentous: Elizabeth ascended to the throne at the tender age of 25. Winston Churchill even remarked that she was 'only a child'
Like many of her generation, our 86-year-old sovereign probably remembers 1952 as though it were yesterday. And yet for most of her subjects, the world of her accession � the world of Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, of tin baths and football rattles, spluttering radios and ration books � must feel like ancient history.

Born and brought up amid comforts our predecessors could barely have imagined, most of us would find Britain in 1952 a strange and distant place.

This was an age in which Britannia still ruled the waves; yet it was also one haunted by the horrors of World War II. It was a land in which bombed-out ruins stood on every city street, young widows mourned their dead husbands, and thousands of men carried the scars of battle.

Back in 1952, two out of three of the new Queen�s people were manual workers in industry and manufacturing. Proud of their working-class roots, they lived in tight, cramped back-to-backs, without the amenities that most of us now take for granted.

More than one-in-four people had outside toilets; fridges and washing machines were expensive luxuries; televisions were almost unknown; and there were just three million cars on the roads, compared with more than 30 million today.

Despite the introduction of the NHS a few years earlier, most people were far thinner and sicklier than they are today. A boy born in 1952 could expect to live until he was 78; today, a newborn boy can expect to live to the age of 91.
Past: For most Britons celebrating the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, the world of Winston Churchill (left) and Clement Attlee (far right) will feel like history consigned to the classroom

Contrast: The socio-economic conditions for families in the fifties were very different to life in the 21st century
It was an age of smog and fog, thick greatcoats, stodgy food and heavy coins; the age of Stanley Matthews and Billy Wright, Gracie Fields, Vera Lynn and Arthur Askey. Class consciousness hung heavy in the air, yet most people felt tightly connected by their common culture.

Golden era: Elizabeth's Commonwealth tour, pictured here in Kenya, reflected the continued strength of the Empire
It was also the last heyday of Empire, reflected by the young Princess Elizabeth�s visit to Kenya. In school classrooms, maps still showed much of the world coloured British pink, from the great dominions of Australia, Canada and New Zealand to the future independent states of Malaysia, Tanzania, Nigeria and Uganda.

After the Coronation, there was much talk of a New Elizabethan Age, encapsulated by the stunning conquest of Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing, a New Zealander and a Nepali, representing an Empire on which the sun never set.

Little wonder, then, that so many people expected the age of the second Elizabeth to be one of wonder and achievement.

In many ways, of course, we have fallen sadly short of the great ambitions of the early Fifties. Sixty years on, Britain is more dependent than ever on the outside world, not just for its energy, but for its military and economic security.

The Empire fell away in the first two decades of the Queen�s reign, as an exhausted country proved unable to stem the flood of nationalism in the Third World. And only four years into her reign, during the Suez Crisis of 1956, Britain�s superpower ambitions were shattered once and for all.

With American economic might blocking an Anglo-French invasion of Egypt, it was obvious that our worldwide influence had declined to its lowest ebb since the days of the Stuarts. The crisis destroyed the premiership of Churchill�s ally and successor Sir Anthony Eden, and the new Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, threw himself into building a �special relationship� with the Americans.

To this day we live with the consequences of the decisions taken in that first decade of Elizabeth II�s reign. Despite the importance of the American alliance, Prime Ministers from Macmillan onwards have often been too keen to pay fealty to Washington.

Objective: After the Suez crisis, new Prime Minister Harold Macmillan concentrated on building a 'special relationship' with the Americans
Meanwhile, by staying out of the new European Common Market in the Fifties, Britain was unable to stop it developing towards an undemocratic Franco-German superstate. And by the time we did join, in 1973, the trend had become irreversible � with consequences that we confront today.

Even the survival of the United Kingdom itself, perhaps the most successful state in history, now seems in doubt. Once an eccentric sideshow, Scottish and Welsh nationalism have been growing in confidence since the early Seventies.

With a Scottish independence referendum scheduled for 2014, it is a sobering thought that by the seventh decade of her reign, Elizabeth II may no longer preside over a united realm, but a ramshackle collection of squabbling little kingdoms, jumbled together across the British Isles.

Referendum: A vote on Scottish independence, a cause championed by SNP leader Alex Salmond, is scheduled for 2014
In purely military and diplomatic terms, then, the sad fact is that the Queen � through no fault of her own � has presided over the biggest decline in British history. Yet it is to her enormous credit that far from resisting it, she embraced her reduced role.

The Commonwealth could hardly have had a more enthusiastic ambassador, or the newly independent states of the Third World a more affectionate friend, than Elizabeth II. And one reason, perhaps, why we adjusted so smoothly to the new realities of the post-imperial world is that she so calmly and uncomplainingly showed the way.

Of course, she has never wielded real political power. But her relations with her Prime Ministers have always been exemplary.

When she acceded to the throne, British politics was dominated by two of the unquestionably great men in our history, Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee. Theirs was a generation steeped in struggle and sacrifice; since both had fought in World War I, they knew the horrors of bloodshed, the limits of political power and the importance of national solidarity.

The Sixties and Seventies saw the emergence of the grammar-school generation � Harold Wilson, Ted Heath, Jim Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher � who came from modest homes and had worked their way to the top. This was the age of meritocracy and social mobility, when Britain seemed to be becoming steadily more equal, and when brains counted for more than breeding.

Sadly, our politics have gone backwards since then. Today, much of our governing class, educated at public school and Oxbridge, is drawn from an ever more narrow, gilded social world. And not even their greatest admirers, surely, believe that the generation of Cameron, Clegg and Miliband can compare with the giants of the Fifties.

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Do you know how tall the Queen is... or who installed showers at Buckingham Palace? Test your royal knowledge with our Diamond Jubilee quiz

In other ways, too, we have failed to meet the great expectations that greeted the Queen�s accession. Life today is often coarser and less orderly.

We sacrificed much of our countryside to developers in the name of progress. We allowed fool to infiltrate the High Street, unemployment to reach levels unimaginable in the Fifties, and the benefits system to become a way of life for thousands of people stranded by the collapse of industry.
Comparison: Our modern politicians cannot be feasibly compared to the giants of the 1950s
Elite: The Oxbridge educated politicians currently leading our country show that our governing class is increasingly being drawn from a narrow world
Even the Queen�s own family was not immune from the pressures of change, as the marriages of her sister, Princess Margaret, her daughter, Princess Anne, and her son and heir, Prince Charles � as well as Prince Andrew�s to Sarah Ferguson � collapsed under the strain of private infidelity and public scrutiny.

And yet in other ways, life has very clearly improved. We are a much more cosmopolitan, outward-looking country than we were in the early Fifties. Although the new Queen had already visited North America and Africa, most of her subjects had never travelled abroad.

Many hardly ever left their home towns, and life for many families in 1952 was dominated by the traditional institutions of working-class life � the chapel, the working men�s club, the football ground and the pub.

Times have changed indeed. Today, we take travel overseas for granted while, conversely, in the streets of London, foreign accents are often more common than regional British ones.

Ill-fated: Prince Charles' marriage to Diana collapsed amid public scrutiny and allegations of infidelity

Divorce: The marriage of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson ended in 1996
In fact, future historians may well judge that the most important development of the post-war period was the influx of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from outside the British Isles, from the Indians, Pakistanis and West Indians who arrived during the Fifties to the Poles, Albanians and Somalis who have flocked to our shores in the 21st century.

Yet although our society can sometimes be just as unequal and exclusive as it was in 1952, with social mobility stuck in neutral and millions of people alienated from the political process, we benefit from freedoms denied to our predecessors.

We are certainly much more tolerant. Landladies, thank goodness, no longer put signs in their windows reading: �No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs.� Homosexuality is no longer a bar to success in public life; indeed, far from punishing difference, we are now encouraged to celebrate it.

Victory: Margaret Thatcher quashed stereotypes about the traditional domestic woman by becoming the first female Prime Minister
The one constant in those six decades has been the Queen herself. And yet, as a woman, Elizabeth II makes an oddly appropriate symbol of the seismic changes that have transformed our country.

In 1952, most commentators still believed a woman�s place was in the home. Yet over the years that followed women flocked into the workforce as never before.

In 1979, Britain even got its first woman Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. And for the next 11 years, Britain had a female head of state and female head of government.

Has all this change made us happier, though? Perhaps not.

According to an ITV poll, 47 per cent of us think Britain has got worse during the Queen�s reign. We are healthier and more comfortable now than we were in 1952, as well as more tolerant � but we are also more insecure, more individualistic, fatter, greedier and more selfish.

But this weekend, of all weekends, we should stop running ourselves down. There is much wrong with Britain � but an awful lot right, too. We are, after all, one of the richest, safest, most enterprising and most creative societies on earth.

And any country that produces Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Crick, Tony Hancock, Philip Larkin, the Beatles, the champion of hospices Dame Cicely Saunders, David Attenborough, David Hockney and father of the internet Tim Berners-Lee � all of whom feature on the BBC�s list of �New Elizabethans� who defined the Queen�s reign � is surely doing something right.

Certainly, we could hardly have wanted a better figurehead. Elizabeth II never sought her high position; had her uncle, Edward VIII chosen a different bride in the Thirties, instead of abdicating, then she might never have acceded to the throne in the first place.

Yet there could be no better sign of her achievement than the fact the monarchy is just as popular today as it was back in the Fifties. Polls show that seven out of ten of us believe we are better off with the monarchy; little wonder, then, that active republicanism is limited to a bitter handful of fanatics.

Stability: Elizabeth II makes an oddly appropriate symbol of the wave of changes that have transformed our country over the last sixty years
Celebration: Great Britain couldn't have had a better figurehead than Her Majesty
The credit belongs to the Queen herself. For the past 60 years, she has been a model of selfless dedication to duty.

The Jubilee will be a tremendous national celebration. Goodness knows that, in these dreadful economic times, we could all do with a party. But we should not forget that at the centre of it all is not an institution or even a family, but an individual woman � a woman called to her nation�s service 60 years ago, and who has never flagged or faltered since.

We have had more exciting, more effusive and more colourful monarchs. We have had monarchs who intervened in politics, led their troops into battle and rallied the nation. But we have never had a sovereign who worked harder, served her country with more devotion, or better represented the innate decency of our national character.

The second Elizabethan age may not perhaps have measured up to the glories of the first. But after 60 years of service, the second Elizabeth belongs among the greatest monarchs in our history.

"GOD SAVE THE QUEEN"

------- and yet most people felt tightly connected by their common culture then..." This is the most important point. This feeling of belonging has been irretrievably lost - and it is at the root of the malaise in the country. The imposition of so-called 'multiculturalism' on our society will have repercussions for centuries. To become a country again and advance in this world we need to go back to the past, throw out what has been thrust on our nation and reclaim our past.

2Anne · Joined: 04 May 2008 Posts: 399 Location: Norfolk

Its lovely to celebrate this diamond Jubilee weekend. The Queen has been a brilliant head of State for 60 years-most of my lifetime. I can't think of life without her. If she's like her mother we can expect another 20 years or so.
She is to be congratulated for being such a good role model. Its a pity her children let her down so badly but they seem to have settled down now.
Much social good has come out of her reign and inventions and technology have grown apace. We all have easier lives and higher standards of living.
I think the only really bad thing to have happened into the UK are the huge amounts of black and brown immigration that are destroying the fabric of our cultural lives and co-hesion.
A lot of this has been encouraged by The Commonwealth with members claiming right of settlement here. For this reason we are getting vast numbers of Africans,Pakis and Indians.
These peoples have no right to settle in the West and they are destroying our way of life.
An Indian lives next door to my mother in law. He is anti-social,does not mix in with the other neighbours and his house stinks of curry most of the time. Small irritations but a marker of how integration of these people is n ot happening.Is not likely to happen,especially with Islamics who settle here while actively hating the West.