Political leaders across Ireland and Northern Ireland have hailed the Queen’s role in applying balm to centuries of conflict between nationalism and unionism as one of the most consequential uses of her symbolic power.
Grief was most viscerally expressed in loyalist and unionist areas of Northern Ireland, where murals of the late monarch turned into shrines and gathering points for people to share memories.
Joy Crawford, 51, after laying a bouquet off Shankill Road in Belfast, said: “She meant everything, she was like a second mum. It’s very sad. We’re not going to see her smile again.” Crawford’s commitment to the crown remained undimmed. “It won’t change what I am. I’ll always be British,” she said.
Crawford wore a waistcoat adorned with pictures of the Queen. Beside the mural, which showed a young Queen, a new image appeared overnight showing her in her later years, alongside an epitaph reading: “The people’s Queen is dead, 1926–2022.”
Julie Beckett, 55, said she felt devastated. “I don’t think we’ve processed it. You always imagined she’d be here for ever. She was doing her duty right up to the very end,” she said.
Others laid wreaths outside Hillsborough Castle, a royal residence in County Down. “Ma’am, you served us all graciously. Thank you. Rest easy,” said a note in the name of Neil and Karen McGran. Gladys Reid, 67, said the emotion came in waves. “I was making a cup of tea this morning and the tears just came,” she said.
Her husband, John, 66, a retired Royal Air Force police officer, said her death was numbing. “She was my commander-in-chief. We were always toasting the Queen,” he said.
Politicians on both sides of the border recalled her landmark visit to Dublin in 2011, when the Irish people gave her a rapturous welcome, as well as her handshake in 2012 with Martin McGuinness, the IRA leader turned deputy first minister.
Both occasions represented high-water marks in relations between Britain and Ireland, and turned the crown, once synonymous with imperial power and the antithesis of republicanism, into a vehicle for reconciliation.
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, said people across Northern Ireland were deeply sorrowful: “This is just the saddest news and our hearts are breaking. There is no doubt Her Majesty the Queen played a very important role in helping to build reconciliation. Her visit to Dublin was a cathartic moment in the history of British-Irish relations.”
The Queen’s death comes at a fraught time for unionists and loyalists, who have been rattled by the post-Brexit Irish Sea border and calls for a referendum on Irish unity. Many considered the Queen a symbol and safeguard of their British identity.
Mary Lou McDonald, the leader of Sinn Féin, saluted the late monarch as an advocate for peace. “The Queen saw and was part of very big changes. It is a very big loss,” she told RTÉ.
The taoiseach, Micheál Martin, said the 2011 state visit to the Republic of Ireland, when the Queen spoke Irish and laid a wreath for Irish rebels, helped normalise relations. “That visit was a great success, largely because of the many gracious gestures and warm remarks made by the Queen,” he said. She led by quiet and dignified example, he added.
Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, said the visit had a profound impact. “It was a high point in British-Irish relations and she made that possible,” he added.
The Queen’s promotion of reconciliation, notably the handshake with McGuinness – an image that went around the world – resonated all the more given the IRA’s murder of her cousin Lord Mountbatten in 1979.
Not everyone was mourning. On the Falls Road in west Belfast, a nationalist and Catholic area, some people shrugged.
“I can’t watch the news any more. It means nothing to me,” said Sean Duffy. “Fair play to the lady, she lived a long life. But what did she do for the working class?”
Another member of the Duffy family, who withheld his first name, said he danced a jig upon hearing the news of her death. “I was just being an idiot. I didn’t mean any harm,” he added.
The Facebook page of a pub in a nationalist area briefly advertised a party to celebrate the death of “Lizzy”. It was taken down but screengrabs were shared in loyalist areas, prompting condemnation.
