Guest post: Witness to history

My mother and I were talking about the astonishing number of people who were queuing up to pay their final respects to Queen Elizabeth II, lying in state. During our conversation, Mum dropped the heretofore unknown to me fact that she had done the same thing when King George VI died. Below, she tells the story. 

Witness to history by Anne Le Rougetel

Last week we were saying, “The Queen is dead! Long live the King!” In 1952 we said, “The King is dead! Long live the Queen!” Seventy years later,  from my current home in Canada, here is how I remember that time when I was living in England.

My mother, stylish
in the mid-50s.
My father, equally so.

In 1952, I was living in northern England, in a small town close to Liverpool. The morning of February 6th, I was standing in my kitchen. It was chilly and I was keeping count of the sacks of coal being delivered to our outside coal cellar.

Suddenly the wireless program, which had been running quietly in the background, was interrupted by a somber voice making an astonishing announcement: The King has died.

I knew the King wasn’t well. But dead? Surely not!

I telephoned my sisters, and then my parents. They listened to the BBC, too, and they had heard the same announcement.

It was hard to believe, but it must be true, and, after that, all I could do was wait for the BBC’s regular mid-day news bulletin to tell me more. It never occurred to me to leave the wireless on all day to catch news as it came out. That’s not how you got news. The first news arrived with your daily newspaper in the morning. After that you heard it on the regular BBC bulletins on the wireless at nine a.m., twelve noon, six p.m. and nine p.m.

I read about the Accession and Proclamation ceremony in my Daily Telegraph, which also told me about the King lying in state in Westminster Hall, and the people queuing up to pay their respects to a good man.

This was history. I wanted to be part of it and so did my mother. I was up in Cheshire, she was in a small village in Suffolk. We met in London in a convenient little hotel, and the next day joined the queue to pay our respects.

It was a somber, silent line-up, not much fellowship or friendliness. Though it was seven years after the end of WWII, meat was still rationed, London still looked shabby, and people still felt shabby, too. My mother and I waited less than an hour and then we were inside Westminster Hall, walking slowly, not stopping. My memory is of darkness, not awe, just darkness — the coffin was on a platform, covered with something dark, and four dark silent figures (the sentries) stood at the four corners. Then we were out into the daylight, and silent for a while with our own thoughts.

A few days later on February 15th came the funeral. The BBC commentators (words only, television was still in its infancy and very few people had a set in their home) were very good at creating word pictures of what they were seeing, who was who, what they were wearing. For pictures, you would have to go to the cinema and wait for the Newsreel.

And then came the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, sixteen months later on June 2nd, 1953.

By then, London’s mood had shifted. That day, London was happy, everyone was happy, and I had a ticket for a seat in the stands in the Mall. It was my sister-in-law’s ticket who had received it because her husband was a diplomat, but she was in hospital having her first child, so I used it instead. I got up at the crack of dawn, made my way to the Mall, showed my precious ticket to guard after guard and, at last, reached my place in the bleachers.

It was a day of alternate sunshine and showers. The procession was largely limousines, and most of us in the stands had no idea who was in them, but if they smiled and waved and looked happy, we cheered them. Queen Salote of Tonga, jovial and laughing and waving in an open carriage in the pouring rain, got a roar of approval. And last, the Queen in her golden carriage, beautiful and young and happy.

The scene inside Westminster Abbey was televised and I have seen it many times over the years. But that first sight of the new Queen going to her Coronation is special in my memory.

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In 1952, 305,000 people visited George VI lying in state. In 2022, it is estimated that 750,000 people will have queued to pay their respects to Queen Elizabeth II lying in state.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.