Slowly the gun carriage went up St James’ Street, watched by 10,000 wet eyes. Men fainted, men burst out crying; from where I stood I watched them being helped, and sometimes carried, into an emergency relief station below me on the pavement by Marlborough House. After the gun carriage disappeared came the queen’s coach, magnificent in its red trappings. She sat at the window all in black … the queen looked incredibly magnificent, and composed.
Chips Channon, diary, January 28 1936, Funeral of George V
LP Hartley’s famous line that “the past is a foreign country” was always of uncertain application in Britain. Tony Blair once observed that he loved Britain’s history but didn’t want to live in it, suggesting that the past lived and breathed, perhaps too robustly, in the present.
And at no time more so than in yesterday’s funeral for the queen.
If some details had a decidedly modern touch — the presence of world leaders, and of Commonwealth prime ministers, enabled by air travel; Vaughan Williams on the hymn list; the relocation to Westminster Abbey from Windsor — most of the ritual of the event was straight from the multiple royal funerals of the first half of the 20th century, when successive male monarchs came and went, sandwiched between two mighty female reigns. Chips Channon would have bitched about Harry, lamented the appearance of some of the peers of the realm, derided Keir Starmer, and felt perfectly at home. Hell Saint-Simon would have as well, after recovering from seeing a French president rather than a king.
Unlike the ultimate reality TV show that is a royal wedding, the ritual and ceremony of royal funerals is inexplicable to outsiders. The pageantry of a wedding can be dismissed as “fairytale”; there’s no need to explain any of it, but the details of yesterday’s event would have made no sense even to many Britons, let alone Australians. Why the gun carriage? Why are Royal Navy servicemen and women drawing it? What’s on the coffin? Why the archbishop of Canterbury?
Overlooked is the fact that the monarch is the head of the Church of England; her death is a supremely Anglican moment; Charles can talk of diversity of values and allowing different faiths to prosper, but nothing changes that the sovereign is innately, fundamentally, a religious figure, in a society that’s about as irreligious as they come. The struggles of the Reformation and the political events of the 16th century, long forgotten in other countries, live on in the perpetual body of the sovereign. In the supreme head of the Church of England King Charles III, the past is not merely not a foreign country, it’s not even the past.
The strangeness of this radical intrusion of the five centuries of history into 2022 is doubled, tripled, watching from Australia, a country lacking an established religion, or a rigid social hierarchy — we hand out suffixes for people, peculiarly based on merit, rather than their birth — or its own extended white history. The closest we get are state funerals and memorial services, inevitably lacking in even perfunctory ritual and certainly no pomp. Pomp gets you mocked in this country, unless it involves military uniforms, in which case slavish respect is demanded, and received.
What we do have is an ancient history, 60,000 years’ worth, far longer than that available to Europeans, a culture that lives on not through the giant theme parks of history — castles, cathedrals, abbeys — but through the people who have survived invasion and dispossession. But it’s one we’ve turned our backs on, without even the simplest recognition of our First Peoples in our institutions or constitution, leaving us bereft.
The republican debate must inevitably address that absence; monarchists seek to channel the past, to continue to import another country’s increasingly alien rituals and history, along with the religion that inevitably accompanies it. They understand, probably better than many republicans, that people need a past, even if they don’t want to live in it.
The first step is thus to acknowledge our own, deep past, and its continuing existence, recognising our First Peoples and their experience. The alternative is an increasingly incomprehensible past beamed in from Westminster Abbey.
Is it time Australia embraced its own past rather than England’s? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Really? Wholly Anglican? I saw the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, the Moderator of the Independant Churches, and even the Catholic Cardinal of Westminster get up and say their piece. Yes it was primarily an Anglican funeral in an Anglican cathedral, but let’s face it, HM was an Anglican.
The gun carriage. Well it get’s used a bit. It hasn’t been used for the funeral of a monarch for 70 years, but it got an outing for Churchill, Lord Mountbatten, for the Princess of Wales, and the Queen Mother. It’s the norm for a state funeral of a significant figure.
It’s drawn by naval ratings because once upon a time they were going to draw it with horses, except they were a bit skittish and the notion of the horses bolting with the body of the late moarch hurtling through the streets of London and possibly even coming adrift onto the ground was considered a tad unseemly for a Royal funeral. So the RN have had the gig ever since.
All of this stuff is out there. You really shouldn’t conflate your own disdain for the institution and it’s rituals with a general lack of knowledge or interest. It was, as full on ceremonial events go, an absolute cracker.
I think this article is for people who only consume their media from within the culturally safe space that is Crikey. Anybody else would have worked it out themselves, or listened into the multiple explanations provided on ABC or commercial tv.
Interesting that the Monarch is an Anglican in England BUT a Presbyterian in Scotland.
Lord only knows what happens in Wales.
A Callithumpian?
In 1969 it Non-Conformist/Methodist Chapel – as per Charles’ investiture as Prince of Wales when he managed to slaughter a couple of sentences in awful Welsh.
Agree. I dont much hold with the Monarchy (and for heaven’s sake let’s pronounce it properly – every day I listen to the ignorant Monaaaark instead of Monnick / Monnuck which is correct), but it was a grand show. now one does pomp and circumstance like the Poms.
It’s only pronounced Monnuk by people with a speech impediment that prevents them from pronouncing the letter ‘r’ (ie most of England and Australia). We hear similar struggles with words like “vu’nerable” and “Feb’uary”. I suppose eventually usage decides what is correct.
Yes but emphasis is important. You are right – I’ve resigned myself to usage locally being Monaaark
A bit like the now almost universal pronunciation of ‘ceremony’ as ‘cere-moany,’ rather than the correct ‘cerem’ny’
Stress patterns on polysyllabic words and use of the schwa on unstressed syllables. Love it.
Lot of that in Straya.
I’m more concerned by American cultural influences on Australia than I am English (or even British) ones.
And not pure American, but America-centred that is mediated by internationalist institutions and consumerism. Across the world you’ll see protests against American policy by protesters wearing baseball caps, t-shirts, denim jeans and American-branded sneakers, coordinating their protests through American-owned apps and refreshing themselves with American-branded fast foods and soft drinks.
Agree, me thinks King Charles needs to be prepared if one follows some mutterings Oz-US-UK media groups’ related journos and influencers; includes UK non-dom proprietors.
Once a period of grace has passed Charles’ green and environmental views will be pilloried and ridiculed by particular outlets both broadsheet and tabloid (plus tv), one has seen much criticism via Anglo conservative grifters’ Twitter accounts; fossil fuels will trump the monarchy, EVs, environmental regulation etc.?
Don’t stress bro, us Austrians is adaptable eh.
What a party pooper. Even us republicans can enjoy a good show without agonising over the meaning of it for Australia.
Give credit where it’s due. No-one does pomp and ceremony like the Brits, and that was on full view at yesterday’s service. I identify as a republican, but even I found the spectacle interesting – a lot better than most of the rubbish that is shown on TV these days, at least. Each culture has its own death rituals and where many wail, the Brits wear uniforms. So be it. To denigrate the funeral rites of one culture is no more acceptable than to denigrate the rites of any other. The long shots of all those members of the procession slow marching in step seemed almost comical until the camera zoomed in to show individual faces. Each one solemn and holding their grief within. The late queen’s death may have meant no more to me than the death of any other human being, but it certainly did to those taking part in the ceremony.
Now I think it is time to let the matter lie at rest, just as the woman herself now lies at rest with her forebears. There is still a conversation that we Australians need to have about the kind of place we want to be in future, because as far as I’m concerned, the British imperial project that commenced with Cook claiming the Australian continent as property of the Crown came to a conclusion with Elizabeth’s passing. However, until we have had that conversation and reached some kind of consensus, and until we have identified a new project, I see little point in trying to decide the best model for governing that project.
I identify as a republican, but even I found the spectacle interesting – a lot better than most of the rubbish that is shown on TV these days,
I agree. Voted for a republic in 1999 and watched ABC tv until 2:30 this morning. Reality tv, much of what is shown these days, is total rubbish.
But the model is important. We are talking about the government of our country – and the stability thereof. The current system works. My feeling is, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Having said that, I am not, nor will I be, voting for a change to the constitution unless I know what that change entails. I feel exactly the same about the much touted “voice to parliament”. Tell me what that entails up front or it doesn’t get my vote. I’m never happy writing blank cheques.
I agree. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
But I had to laugh.
1 minute to declare King Charles 111, 5 minutes to authorise the firing of the guns and half an hour promising not to invade Scotland.
I do think its about we reconciled with the first nations. This lack of a treaty makes me feel a bit illigitimate now although it never used to worry me.
Things are moving in the right direction.