The Great Survivors Read online

  Seated on the throne, she tells the assembled lords to sit and motions to the Lord Great Chamberlain to summon the members of the House of Commons. He signals to a parliamentary official known as the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, who turns and, escorted by both the doorkeeper of the House of Lords and an inspector of police, approaches the doors to the chamber of the Commons. As he comes near, the doors are slammed in his face. He then strikes three times with his staff (the Black Rod from which he derives his title), and is admitted. At the bar, he bows to the speaker before proceeding to the dispatch box and uttering the following words: “Mr (or Madam) Speaker, the Queen commands this honourable House to attend Her Majesty immediately in the House of Peers.”

  The Serjeant-at-Arms, essentially the head of security for the House of Commons, who since 2008 is for the first time a woman, picks up the ceremonial mace and then, together with the Speaker, leads the prime minister and leader of the opposition to the Lords’ Chamber. By tradition, they do not so much walk as saunter, laughing and joking together as they go. When they arrive, they bow to the Queen and wait by the bar. The Queen then reads out a speech outlining her government’s political programme for the year. It is traditionally written on goatskin vellum. Not a single word has been written by her, but the speech, which she delivers in a deadpan voice, is peppered with references to “my government”.

  Much of the pageantry has its origins in the struggles almost half a millennium ago between the monarch and the House of Commons. The ceremony is held in the Lords rather than the Commons because of a tradition dating back to the seventeenth century that forbids the ‌sovereign from entering that chamber.1 The closing of the door in the face of the Queen’s representative – and the casual manner in which the MPs answer her summons – are further symbolic reminders of how hard their predecessors fought to gain their independence from the crown.

  Away from the public eye there are some other strange twists: before the Queen arrives in the Palace of Westminster, its cellars are symbolically searched by the Yeoman of the Guard to prevent a repetition of the 1605 gunpowder plot in which a group of English Catholics were accused of trying – and failing – to blow up the building and kill the Protestant King James I.

  Even more bizarrely, before the Queen sets off for the day, a member of the House of Commons, known as Vice-Chamberlain of the Household, is brought to Buckingham Palace and held hostage – a reference to the reign of Charles II, when there was concern that the King would be arrested as he entered the Houses of Parliament and suffer the same fate as his father Charles I, executed in 1649. According to past “hostages”, these few hours of luxurious captivity are a pleasant experience. “Prince Philip always greets the Vice-Chamberlain upon their return with the same words: ‘I hope you’ve looked after the shop while we’ve been away,’” recalled Nottingham North MP Graham Allen, the son of a former coal miner, who was ‌given the job in 1998.2

  With its curious rituals, fancy costumes and cast of characters with archaic-sounding names, the ceremony is a reminder of the time when the monarchy, in the words of Walter Bagehot, the prominent British nineteenth-century journalist, editor of the Economist and constitutional expert, gave a “vast strength to the entire constitution, by enlisting on its behalf the credulous obedience of enormous masses”.

  As with much royal tradition in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, however, the impression of continuity is misleading. Despite the frequent references to the seventeenth century, the ceremony took its current form only in 1901 on the accession of King Edward VII, who adored such pageantry and a mere three weeks after the death of his mother, Queen Victoria, processed to the House of Lords in crimson, gold and ermine robes, reading the speech himself. Victoria, by contrast, had refused to come to the state opening for years after the death of Prince Albert, her consort, in 1861, and even when she started turning up again, she and her children and their spouses would sit at the front listening while the Lord Chancellor read the speech. Queen Elizabeth II has opened every session of the parliament since her accession, with the exceptions of 1959 and 1963, when she was pregnant with her second two sons.

  In 1998, a year after Tony Blair had become prime minister with a determination to “modernize” Britain, the ceremony was streamlined and speeded up. The changes were modest, however: the number of participants in the Queen’s procession that year was cut from fifty-seven to thirty-one – among those missing were such exotically named characters as the Gentleman Usher of the Sword of State and Silver Stick in Waiting – while Lord Irvine, the incoming Lord Chancellor, did without the traditional tights, breeches and buckles. And, after pulling the government’s speech from his ceremonial purse and hand-delivering the legislative programme to the Queen, Irvine turned his back on her as he walked away down the carpeted steps, rather than walking backwards as had previously been the case.

  The speech the Queen read that year contained a radical proposal to end one of the most undemocratic and archaic provisions in the British constitution: the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords – even if more than a decade later the country is still without a fully elected upper house. When it came to the ceremony itself, however, the changes were limited. Some traditions, it seems, are too important to tamper with.

  The ceremonial surrounding the British state opening of parliament stands out by virtue of its sheer scale and the richness of its spectacle, but it is not unique: some of the Continental monarchies also still mark their sovereign’s involvement in the political process with shows of pageantry.

  Closest in nature to the proceedings in London is the opening of the Dutch parliament, held on Prinsjesdag (Prince’s Day), the third Tuesday in September, in The Hague. Starting shortly before midday, members of various regiments, resplendent in their dress uniforms, march through the streets. Then on the dot of one o’clock, the Gouden Koets (Golden Coach), carrying Queen Beatrix, her son Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and his wife Princess Máxima, sets off from the Noordeinde Palace, where she works, to travel the short distance through the centre of the city to the Ridderzaal (Hall of Knights) in the Binnenhof, the building that houses the parliament. A more modest coach carrying other members of the family precedes her. With their gilded uniforms, the coachmen look as if they have stepped straight out of a fairy tale.

  Then, seated on a throne in front of members of both houses of parliament, the Queen reads out the Troonrede (“Throne Speech”), which is written for her by the government and outlines the legislative programme for the year ahead. Unlike her British counterpart, she wears a hat – and often quite a spectacular one – rather than a crown. That afternoon she and her family will make a brief appearance on the balcony of the Noordeinde Palace to the delight of the cheering crowds below.

  Beatrix’s short journey, during which her coach is accompanied by members of the armed forces in their ceremonial best, is watched by spectators seated on specially erected stands along the route. Unlike the state opening of parliament in London, it is not so much a tourist attraction as an opportunity for the Dutch to display their support for the monarchy and for the ruling house of Orange-Nassau in particular. This is the day of the so-called Orangists, the grass-roots supporters of the monarchy, or rather of the ruling dynasty. Wearing orange coats or football shirts, or with garlands of orange flowers around their necks, they begin to gather as early as seven in the morning to be sure of securing the best places behind the barriers that line the narrow streets of The Hague. The Troonrede itself is broadcast not just on television but also on giant screens erected on the street, but few people seem to pay much attention: they have turned out for the glory of the spectacle, not to hear dry details of laws planned.

  In recent years Prinsjesdag has also turned into an occasion for female members of parliament and for women out on the street to sport the most spectacular hats, the more extravagant the better – a tribute to the Queen’s own headgear. The creations, reminiscent of the sort seen every June at
Royal Ascot, provide a colourful talking point for the Dutch media, which run competitions asking readers and viewers to choose their favourites.

  Visiting in 2009, I watched the parade from a stand on Lange Voorhout, one of the oldest and grandest streets in The Hague. My fellow spectators, the majority of whom had obtained their tickets through Vorsten Royale, a royal magazine, were mostly in their sixties or seventies. I pointed this out to my neighbour, who would soon be drawing a pension himself. A tour guide by occupation, he was here for work rather than pleasure. “If I think about my own family, my parents were the monarchists, I am not really that bothered either way, while my children just talk about what it costs,” he admitted.

  The atmosphere has traditionally been relaxed, but this year was different: it was only a few months since a failed attack on the royal family in Appeldoorn during celebrations marking Queen’s Day, the other important event in the Dutch royal calendar. The challenge for the authorities was how to tighten security without destroying the character of the event itself. They succeeded with characteristic Dutch aplomb. To protect the parade from a car-borne attack the centre of the city had been completely sealed off, but rather than use conventional crash barriers the authorities opted for concrete flowerpots filled with red and orange flowers. Members of the police, normally in ceremonial uniform, were this year dressed in their usual clothes, while walking alongside Beatrix’s coach were men carrying suspiciously large attaché cases. These cases, the Dutch press claimed the next day, contained special shields that would pop up in an emergency to protect the Queen from attack.

  And then, at two p.m., it was all over. The Queen returned to her carriage and retraced her route back through the city. A few minutes later she and other members of the royal family appeared on the balcony of the Noordeinde Palace and waved to the crowds packed in the street below. “Leve de koningin (long live the Queen),” called out one man, and the crowd broke into applause.

  Royal involvement with the workings of parliament continues to varying extents elsewhere. In Norway the King delivers a speech opening parliament on the second working day of October from a throne of gilt wood and red velvet, with his queen on his right and the crown prince on his left. In Sweden too the King makes a speech to the Riksdag, but it is only a short formal one rather than a statement of government policy and he doesn’t sit on a throne. In Denmark, by contrast, the Queen and her family are merely spectators – albeit high-profile ones whose every gesture is captured by photographer from the moment they arrive in black vintage limousines. Shots of them appearing to nod off to sleep are particularly prized by the press. The Spanish king appears only after a parliament convenes for the first time after an election, when he makes a speech seated at a normal chair and table rather than on a throne. In Belgium, the only occasion on which the monarch sets foot in parliament is to be sworn in at the beginning of his reign.

  However reduced in form, such ceremonials serve as a vestigial reminder of the central role that royalty once played in the political and public life of the nation, when kings not only reigned over their subjects but ruled them. Owed their places often by virtue of military conquest, they maintained control of their realms thanks to a combination of brute force, patronage and clan loyalty. Parliaments, to the extent they existed at all, were purely advisory bodies.

  The story of much of the past millennium is one of attempts by other forces in society to curb such powers. In Britain, one of the earliest such attempts was Magna Carta, the document King John was obliged by the barons to sign in 1215 establishing the principle that the monarch should rule according to law and not trample willy-nilly over the rights of his subjects.

  It has not been a one-way process. In the centuries that followed Magna Carta, the power of the monarchy in England increased rather than diminished – although the execution of Charles I in 1649 and Britain’s brief, and hitherto unrepeated, republican interlude under Oliver Cromwell meant an end to the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings promulgated by Charles’s father, James I.

  The monarchy was restored under Charles II, but when his brother, James II, who succeeded him, tried to reassert royal power, he was driven from the throne and replaced by his son-in-law (and nephew) William of Orange. At the formal ceremony in February 1689 at which they were jointly offered the crown, William and Mary were presented with a Declaration of Rights that marked the limits to their powers. This declaration (passed later that year by parliament as the Bill of Rights), together with a package of other laws over the following few years, known collectively as the Revolutionary Settlement, marked an end to arbitrary rule by the monarch in Britain and established the principle of the supremacy of parliament.

  Initially, at least, the monarch was still left with considerable powers – even if, from then on, these powers had to be exercised within a framework of constitutional rules. As Vernon Bogdanor, one of Britain’s foremost constitutional scholars, has argued, “sovereigns still sought to secure governments which could carry out their policies, but they had to achieve this through methods of political management. They could no longer interfere with elections, but they could seek to influence them… Similarly, sovereigns could no longer ignore parliament, but they ‌could seek to influence it.”3

  As a result, the British in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw a number of battles between successive kings and their ministers – with mixed results. Power was gradually ebbing away from the monarch, due largely to the emergence of a modern party system, which meant governments would come to depend for their survival on the support not of the King, but instead of the party that had a majority in the House of Commons. The process was reinforced by the extension of the franchise, first in 1832 to the middle classes and then in 1867 to some members of the working class too. The British monarchy had thus become a constitutional one, which, according to Bogdanor, was a term first coined by a Frenchman, W. Dupré, who wrote in 1801 of “La monarchie ‌constitutionnelle” and “un roi constitutionnel”.4

  In his influential book The English Constitution, published in 1867 and widely read since (including, it seems, by the monarchs themselves), Bagehot summed up the role of the monarch thus: “To state the matter shortly, the sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights: the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others.” Yet despite Bagehot’s words, Victoria, who had already been on the throne for more than thirty years when his book appeared, had been far from an impartial bystander, initially adopting a highly partisan approach in favour of her beloved Lord Melbourne, a Whig, over the Tories. Her husband Albert, too, began to see the sovereign as an umpire, independent of the parties, who could use his or her influence for the good of the country. Fortunately, perhaps, for the health of the British constitution, Albert died in December 1861. Although Victoria responded to the loss of her beloved consort by withdrawing from public life, she reverted to her old partisan ways in the last two decades of her reign, favouring Benjamin Disraeli, the Conservative leader, who shared her passion for empire.

  Kept away from all affairs of state by Victoria while she was alive, her son, Edward VII, intervened vigorously in all aspects of public life during his own brief reign. He was especially active in foreign policy, where he worked hard to build relations with France, creating the atmosphere that led to signature of the Entente Cordiale in 1904. His son, who succeeded him as George V, also found himself embroiled in politics. No sooner had he come to the throne in 1910 than he was caught up in the crisis prompted by the attempts of the House of Lords to block the budget. The fairness with which he treated the first Labour government in 1924 helped to ensure the party remained loyal to the monarchy rather than republican. Then, in 1931, when the nation was in crisis again, George intervened directly to encourage Ramsay MacDonald, the Labour leader, to form a “national government”, even though it meant splitting his own party. In 1945, however, his son Georg
e VI was unable to prevent the return of Labour, this time with a majority and a programme of radical change.

  A similar process was under way over the same period in Continental Europe. Louis XIV, the Sun King, was as much a believer in the Divine Right of Kings as James I. His phrase “L’état, c’est moi” (“I am the state”) summarizes the fundamental principle of absolute monarchy, namely that sovereignty is vested in one individual.

  Absolutism was on the rise elsewhere in Europe too. In Denmark in 1660, riding on a wave of popularity after his successful defence of Copenhagen against Swedish forces, King Frederik III, whose kingdom included Norway and the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, converted the monarchy from an elective to an absolute, hereditary one. The “Kongeloven” (or “Lex Regia”, both meaning “King’s Law”), signed on 14th November 1665, declared Denmark the personal property of the monarch, who was accountable only to God. His signature was required for all national business and once he signed a decree it became law immediately. The Danish council was an advisory body that the king could dismiss at will. This, in theory, was the most extensive and consistently defined absolutism in Christendom – even if, in practice, the Danish king’s powers and resources were as limited as in other monarchical states and he was just as dependent as other sovereigns on the general acceptance of his subjects.

  Across Europe, the aftermath of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars saw monarchs obliged to accept the kind of constraints on power that had followed Britain’s Glorious Revolution more than a century earlier. In Sweden, the 1809 constitution that followed the coup d’état against Gustaf IV Adolf and his replacement by his elderly uncle, Carl XIII, did away with despotism, bringing in constitutional monarchy in its place. The king, it was decreed, could henceforth only exercise his powers within the government and under the control of the council of state. In the event, Carl, already aged sixty, was decrepit, and any influence he had was swiftly taken away by Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, the French revolutionary turned marshal who was imposed on him as crown prince. When, largely thanks to Bernadotte’s efforts, Norway was united with Sweden under a single crown in November 1814, its people were allowed to keep the liberal constitution adopted that May after the defeat of their former Danish masters. The document remains in force today.