The words the world does not want to hear, but will inevitably
do so.
When people think of a contemporary royal death in Britain,
they think, inescapably, of Princess Diana.
The passing of the Queen will be monumental by comparison.
It may not be as nakedly emotional, but its reach will be wider, and its implications
more dramatic.
“She is the only monarch that most of us have ever known”
The royal standard will appear on the TV screen. The
national anthem will play.
It will be a day when you will remember where you were.
For Queen Elizabeth II of England, the plan for what happens
upon her demise is known as “London
Bridge.”
The prime minister will be woken, if she/he is not already
awake and civil servants will say “London
Bridge is down” on secure lines.
From the Foreign Office’s Global Response Centre, at an
undisclosed location in the capital, the news will go out to the 15 governments
outside the UK where the Queen is also the head of state, and the 36 other
nations of the Commonwealth for whom she has served as a symbolic figurehead.
For a time, she will be gone without our knowing it.
The information will travel like the compressional wave
ahead of an earthquake, detectable only by special equipment. Governors
general, ambassadors and prime ministers will learn first. Cupboards will be
opened in search of black armbands, three-and-a-quarter inches wide, to be worn
on the left arm.
For many years, the BBC was told about royal deaths first,
but its monopoly on broadcasting to the empire has gone now.
When the Queen dies, the announcement will go out as a
newsflash to the Press Association and the rest of the world’s media
simultaneously.
At the same instant, a footman in mourning clothes will
emerge from a door at Buckingham Palace, cross the dull pink gravel and pin a
black-edged notice to the gates.
While he does this, the palace website will be transformed
into a sombre, single page, showing the same text on a dark background.
The Times is said to have 11 days of coverage ready to go.
At Sky News and ITN, which for years rehearsed the death of
the Queen substituting the name “Mrs Robinson”, calls will go out to royal
experts who have already signed contracts to speak exclusively on those
channels.
The obituary films will remind us what a different country
she inherited. One piece of footage will be played again and again: from her
21st birthday, in 1947, when Princess Elizabeth was on holiday with her parents
in Cape Town. She was 6,000 miles from home and comfortably within the pale of
the British Empire. The princess sits at a table with a microphone. The shadow
of a tree plays on her shoulder. The camera adjusts three or four times as she
talks, and on each occasion, she twitches momentarily, betraying tiny flashes
of aristocratic irritation. “I declare before you all that my whole life,
whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service, and the service
of our great imperial family to which we all belong,” she says, enunciating
vowels and a conception of the world that have both vanished.
The idea is for nothing to be unforeseen. If the Queen dies
abroad, a BAe 146 jet from the RAF’s No 32 squadron, known as the Royal Flight,
will take off from Northolt, at the western edge of London, with a coffin on
board. The royal undertakers, Leverton & Sons, keep what they call a “first
call coffin” ready in case of royal emergencies. Both George V and George VI
were buried in oak grown on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk. If the Queen
dies there, her body will come to London by car after a day or two.
In every scenario, the Queen’s body returns to the throne
room in Buckingham Palace, which overlooks the north-west corner of the
Quadrangle, its interior courtyard.
The 18th Duke of Norfolk, the Earl Marshal, will be in
charge. Norfolks have overseen royal funerals since 1672. During the 20th
century, a set of offices in St James’s Palace was always earmarked for their
use.
The first plans for London Bridge date back to the 1960s,
before being refined in detail at the turn of the century. Since then, there
have been meetings two or three times a year for the various actors involved
(around a dozen government departments, the police, army, broadcasters and the
Royal Parks) in Church House, Westminster, the Palace, or elsewhere in
Whitehall. Participants described them to me as deeply civil and methodical.
“Everyone around the world is looking to us to do this again perfectly,” said
one, “and we will.” Plans are updated and old versions are destroyed. Arcane
and highly specific knowledge is shared. It takes 28 minutes at a slow march
from the doors of St James’s to the entrance of Westminster Hall.
The clerk, a senior civil servant named Richard Tilbrook,
will read out the formal wording, “Whereas it has pleased Almighty God to call
to His Mercy our late Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth the Second of Blessed and
Glorious memory…”
On the old boundary of the City of London, outside the Royal
Courts of Justice, a red cord will hang across the road. The City Marshal, a
former police detective chief superintendent named Philip Jordan, will be
waiting on a horse. The heralds will be formally admitted to the City, and
there will be more trumpets and more announcements: at the Royal Exchange, and
then in a chain reaction across the country.
The crowds will be deep for the Queen. She will get
everything. From Hyde Park Corner, the hearse will go 23 miles by road to
Windsor Castle, which claims the bodies of British sovereigns. The royal
household will be waiting for her, standing on the grass. Then the cloister
gates will be closed and cameras will stop broadcasting. Inside the chapel, the
lift to the royal vault will descend, and King Charles will drop a handful of
red earth from a silver bowl.
Thanks to Sam Knight of the Guardian.
Read the whole report at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens-when-queen-elizabeth-dies-london-bridgehttps://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens-when-queen-elizabeth-dies-london-bridge
Comments
Post a Comment