Above so below

I watched the Jubilee celebrations for a while. When Elizabeth became Queen, we had a sport’s day in our village, and there were lots of prizes, I’ve still got one of the pearl necklaces I won that day!
Throughout her reign the Queen has always taken time to meet the people, and in the early days, before terrorism caught on, she would move freely wherever she wanted to go. There was a time also when her security was very fearful for her safety, but Elizabeth insisted on making contact with as many people as she could.

There are calls to get rid of the monarchy, but those sorts of complaints come from people who would get rid of their own mothers for the same reasons, she costs too much to keep and there’s no need for her now.

In this mad world anything is possible, but when you are royalty, you have been born to a life of service to your subjects and they, in their turn, are supported by the presence of kingship. Those words seem a bit ponderous, but they have real meaning, coming out of a very early time when the ruler protected those who lived and worked on the royal lands and the people, in their turn, did service to uphold the ruler.
This bond between a ruler and his people is very strong. It exists in the heart; it is a long-standing response that is in no way matched by the flighty, short-lived process of present-day governance, with its continual changing of statutes, rules and regulations.

Royalty represents the long past and the future, it offers stability to the people which no government can hope to aspire to. Those in the crowds who were interviewed all responded in like way; from the bottom of their hearts, not as Whigs or Tories, Republicans or Democrats, which they might well have been, but because they recognised the one element in their lives which was not subject to arbitrary change, and which gave them a real sense of continuity.

A nation that doesn’t pay attention to this sort of continuity is a very nervous one. The countries of Europe who became republics did so by maintaining the old infrastructure upon which royalty had depended.
Other forms of republic, that cannot call upon that framework, have been forced to elevate parts of their structure of governance to create the pinnacle of leadership, but this will always be difficult to maintain; there is nothing below, no long historical thread, no heart-felt bond that will carry the people on through thick and thin.

The Queen connects with her people because she knows that if it came to the crunch, they would choose her over any form of government. She has done her job faithfully, and largely well for sixty years, which is more than can be said of any British government during that time. Having the monarchy connects the messy every day and ephemeral with the solid core that is the country, and in a strange way this reciprocal connection allows change to occur, without incurring undue instability.

Fairies are put at the top of the Christmas tree for a purpose, they are there to be looked up to, they represent what can be aspired to.