PERSPECTIVE UKNORTH
People and their profiles: dukes, archbishops, actors, writers, monks, oddbods, the garish, the gregarious - here they are in single file, chosen by chance, by inclination, or by necessity ... and all reflecting, one hopes, the essential, but indefinable, spark that makes one human being interesting to many. Geoffrey Mather
The Queen's Speech
Your Majesty: I have taken the liberty of writing your Christmas speech for 2005. I commend it to your attention:
Seventy-three years ago, my grandfather, King George V, made his first radio broadcast. Its 251 words were written by Rudyard Kipling and the country heard his message at 3. 35 pm on Christmas Day.
"I speak now," said the king, "from my home and from my heart to you all: to men and women so cut off by the snows, the desert or the sea that only voices out of the air can reach them. . . "Such was the start of a tradition that continues, through me, to this day.
Fifty-three years ago I made my own first broadcast. I used the same desk and chair that my father, King George V1, and his father, King George V, used. And I promised to continue the work of both to unite the nations of the British Commonwealth and Empire. I wish, today, to devote my message to a celebration of who we are - we, the British. For although it is customary in these times to talk of one society of all creeds and colours, without distinction under the law or in the everyday tasks of work and play, we must not forget our own distinctive character.
We must not submerge it or decry it. Kipling's pride in commonwealth and Empire - whatever faults might be ascribed to him now - must not be sublimated to another ideal in a way that is damaging to our own prides and traditions; and particularly, we should recall what is good in our past. For if we do not do so, we betray both our heritage and our dead.Our dead are the bones upon which our treasured foundations are built. I want to pay tribute to the nation our ancestors helped create. Look around you. English is the paramount langauge of the world. Across the vast stretches of North America and Canada, the language of our forefathers is heard. In Australia, in India, in New Zealand, in Africa, our past is written large. Empires have lost their credence in post-war thought. And as in all human affairs, there were good acts and bad when our will spanned the earth. . But when one considers the way former lands of ours have been governed since we left them, many of our successors have little cause for congratulation.
In 1588, at Tilbury, English forces gathered to fight the Spanish Armada and Queen Elizabeth 1 said, in part: "Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust. "
In the words both of Kipling and Elizabeth 1 you gain that sense of a wider vision; not something confined to these small islands. We have forged our destinies and those of others wherever the sun rose and set. Such is our history. In literature, we have given the world Byron and Blake, Chaucer and Coleridge, Dickens and Donne, Milton and Moore, Shakespeare and Shelley, Spencer and Swift. In discovery, we have given penicillin, television, the internal combustion engine, jet engines and an endless list of other world-transforming things.
We have given the world its major sports. Above all, in the 18th and 19th centuries, we gave it an industrial revolution, an event that transformed our society and all others to come. Here were steam-powered ships and railways, the development of electrical power generation, the cotton loom.
Wherever people live and move, our name is written. Here are the signposts of our island history and they are to be celebrated, not forgotten; remembered, not consigned to an area of guilt. If we do not, now, recall with pride and thanksgiving all who went before us in the creation of our history, then we do not deserve their vision and their sacrifice. If wrongs were committed in the process, then they must be balanced against the rights.
Many come among us now who do not know of this tradition. They are the immigrants, with their own traditions. Their place in our society can be amicable. But they must understand us as we are daily called upon to understand them. They share our prosperity. It is only right that they should share our culture, and respect it, while honouring their own. The nationality they have is theirs. The flag they choose to live under is our flag. There are times when groups and factions call us to account when the justification is lacking. We must not be diverted by this. We must stand for who we are and what we are - honest in our dealings, a Christian country, tolerant where we find tolerance in return, and with the pride in ourselves that our pioneers won for us through their enterprise and their sacrifice. If we do not honour them at this Christmas time, we dishonour ourselves. May God go with you.
Geoffrey Mather © 2005
6 December, 2008