From 11am on Wednesday, people were filtering in to the Mall, to Horse Guards Parade, to Whitehall, to watch the procession of the Queen’s lying-in-state from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey. The crowd control was so much more intense than the crowd itself: huge metal barriers, greater than the height of two people, ran across the capital’s most recognisable thoroughfares – Trafalgar Square, Parliament Street – while small groups walked past at respectful speeds. The mood was sombre thanksgiving rather than patriotic display. Tracy, 47, had come down from Lincolnshire with her husband, Neil, and said: “I just felt that I needed to come. They’ve all got this really rubbish life. What do they do if they just want to go to the shops? They’re people just like us, and there’s a lot of pressure on them.”
For those too young to remember the death of Diana, the crowd control must have looked a bit dystopian, as though the police and assembled authorities had been predicting not a payment of respects but a riot. For those not too young, it was immediately obvious what they’d expected: a re-run of 1997, when the streams of people heading towards Kensington Palace were completely uncontrollable, and many of the individuals completely uncontrolled. People were honestly keening in the street back then; I worked in an office overlooking the spontaneous procession, and you could hear these sounds, utterly unfamiliar, surprisingly loud.
This fostered, for many of us, not necessarily a heightened republicanism but a lifelong scepticism around outpourings of grief. The mood on Wednesday, five days before the funeral, was completely different. Restraint, politeness and self-abnegation were qualities of Elizabeth II that people referred to often, and they were mirrored in everyone’s behaviour. Nobody was there to make a scene. Nevertheless, if you’re royal-sceptic to begin with, the adulation involved in just turning up takes some getting your head around.
Tim Bott, 57, a retired police officer, said simply: “This was my chance to come and pay my respects to a woman who was formerly my boss.” He’d met the Queen once, in 1994, when she had inspected his ceremonial guard in the Cayman Islands. “I felt that she completely connected. It’s absolutely personal to you in that moment. And when you think of the millions of people she did that for, the service, the duty.” He explained his medals: one for length of service, one each for the silver and golden jubilees. Then a life-saving order from the Knights of St John, for the time he had rescued a woman suffering a mental breakdown from a rooftop. It seems particularly important for those who have served themselves, to see the concept of service represented in both person and institution. Gareth Hodder, 50, was formerly a Coldstream Guard; he’d flown over from South Africa, to stand on the same spot where he’d done birthday parades in the past, “standing here, for a long time, getting very hot”. The figurehead embodied “a sense of service, selflessness, commitment, serving with your friends. You feel a sense of connection and a sense of pride when you see the royal family. It sounds pompous but it’s not meant to,” he said.
Twenty yards up towards St James’s Park, Leigh Lewis, 72, Morris Wiseman, 74 and Vivien Korn, 72, were reminiscing about the coronation, which only Leigh would admit he could not remember. The other two swore they did. He loved the monarchy generally because it’s above politics – “anything against authoritarianism works for me” – and all three returned insistently to the sotto voce royalism of their Jewish emigre parents, Wiseman and Korn’s escaping Nazis, Lewis’s born in the UK, after his grandparents had fled earlier antisemitic violence in eastern Europe. “My father was immensely proud of the fact that he was able to vote, and attend the coronation,” Wiseman said. Lewis agreed: “They were intensely proud of being here, being allowed to vote, being allowed to serve, being allowed to participate, being allowed in.”
There was an element of more abstract respect, expressed by Sammy, 45, who’d arrived with his 14-year-old nephew Amali. “I’m not a royalist, but I have a passion for English history, constitutional history. The royal family is a living connection with that; some individuals more than others.” Asked if he thought King Charles would manifest this connection as seamlessly as his mother, he said carefully: “A lot of the factors determining that are outwith his control. But he’s had quite an apprenticeship.”
The O’Shaughnessys were there with their 10-year-old daughter, Amaya, and 12-year-old son, Milen, who they’d pulled out of school since, Jim, 44, explained: “These won’t appreciate it now, but when they get to our age, they’ll realise they might not ever see anything like this again.” Nitiksha, 44, drew from the Queen “a great sense of comfort, something to believe in”. “I don’t think many countries could do what we do,” Jim added, “have a democracy co-existing with the monarchy.” “So you’re in it for the nuance?” I asked, and he replied: “It’s also classy. It’s very, very classy.” Milen had had his football cancelled at the weekend, but decided, on balance, that this was proportionate. Amaya said: “My friends think it will be weird to say King instead of Queen.” And they’re only 10; how do they think it is for the rest of us?
People always talk about the international brand-building the royals do for Britain, and this was borne out by the tourists in the crowd. Anna Pawerova, 16, from the Czech Republic, said: “It’s emotional, really; we learnt a lot about her at school, her early life, her experience of the war. We learnt about colonialism too, but not really in a bad way. Germany, we learned about in a bad way.”
Recent allegations, coming from its very centre – Meghan and Harry – that the immediate institution is racist, nobody has any time for. Clara, 36, is quite insistent on this point: “It was a particular person, she wasn’t accusing the whole family.” Her boyfriend, Dale, 47, has a Ghanaian friend who has worked closely with King Charles on knife crime in the past, and says “he really seems to have his finger on the pulse, with diversity”.
In this crowd, Prince Andrew goes by many names, “the odd bad apple”, “you’re always going to get a few people in life who act differently to the others”. It’s doubtful that a full-blooded republican would come away from this event loving the royals, but as a half-blooded republican, I can’t help admiring the sincerity of royalists, their patient determination to see the best in people.
