Quinnipiac professor needs history lesson on Queen Elizabeth
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The opinion piece published Saturday by a professor of education at Quinnipiac University on the subject of Queen Elizabeth and the monarchy needs to be rebutted. It is unbalanced, tendentious, plain wrong on so many points and betrays a lack of knowledge of history, the monarchy , and the queen. I am a former Brit, a naturalized American and graduate in history from Oxford and know one or two things that this professor fails to understand and omits entirely from his rant.
He argues that the queen presided over the “remnants of an Empire that enriched itself through the oppression of indigenous populations, theft of natural resources and violence” and failed to speak out against years of injustice in Africa and the Caribbean. He further rails against hereditary privilege inherent in the monarchy and tells us he is “troubled” by the majority support that the monarchy enjoys in the United Kingdom and what he calls “uncritical adulation” by the media, including, incomprehensibly to him, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox.
On the question of the Empire, if the nature and purpose and results of the imperial age are to be assessed, and there is no space here to tackle that vast topic, then the undoubted benefits must at least be mentioned, which the professor fails to do. The British Empire brought prosperity, modernization, rule of law, and education to countries all over the world. The UK was the first country to abolish slavery, led by William Wilberforce in the 19th century. The post war years saw the withdrawal from Empire, Harold Macmillan’s “wind of change.” A friend of mine was a member of Macmillan’s government in the early 1960s, responsible for overseeing independence movements which he described to me as sometimes chaotic but overall conducted methodically and with principle, and in the end retaining ties of friendship and trade that were to the benefit of all parties.
What emerged as a successor organization was the Commonwealth of nations. And crucial in forming the bonds that kept the Commonwealth together and thriving to this day, was the quiet personal diplomacy conducted by the Queen on countless foreign visits and at home, when heads of state and representatives attended meetings of the Commonwealth countries. And beyond the Commonwealth the Queen has rightly been called her country’s best ambassador, playing a key role in the “special relationship” between the UK and the US. There is nothing like a state dinner at Windsor Castle, which every President except Johnson attended, to cement that very special alliance.
Far from complicity in imperial oppression, as the professor implies, Her Majesty was a driving force for peaceful transition from Empire, and utterly devoid of any hint of racism or exploitation. The professor says, however, that the queen failed to speak out publicly against , for example, apartheid, oppression of indigenous people and injustice. So here the professor displays no understanding whatsoever of how constitutional monarchy operates in the UK or if he does understand it then his willful misrepresentation is shameful. The great strength of the system is that there is a distinction between head of government and head of state that has evolved over the centuries. Today’s monarch is not involved in government and policy. Speaking out on political matters is simply not the role of the monarch and King Charles made that abundantly clear in his remarkable first speech on ascending the throne last week.
But what happens behind the scenes? Over the course of her reign the queen “kissed hands” with 15 prime ministers, all elected by the people, and had weekly audiences with all except the last. It was there that she made her influence felt. The professor says he has no evidence for this influence; well, some things are known by most Brits, and recorded by all the prime ministers, and that is that on these occasions Her Majesty expressed her opinion and was very adept at steering and cajoling. She was able to do this because of the reverence in which her position was held by the people and by the politicians and because of her personal character, listed so often in what the professor disparagingly calls gushing media reports: her devotion, commitment, and duty and service to the people.
And there is a final point, on monarchy itself, that the professor cannot understand or accept. The mystical bond with the people through time and over the history of the country confers a special aura to the sovereign that no elected president or head of state could possibly attain. Queues miles long of the people coming to pay their respects as the Queen lay in state in Edinburgh and Westminster Hall attest to this. And further proof of her special place in history was her funeral. It was the focal point of the planet , attended by kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers. I live in America now but still have great love for the country of my birth and admiration for its institutions. And that does not detract at all from my love of our own democracy here in the United States. The systems and history are quite different.
In sum, the professor is entitled to his opinion, of course, and I’ve expressed mine here too but at least mine is based on history and facts, of which the professor is woefully ignorant.
The Queen is dead, long live the King!
John Blankley is a Greenwich resident.
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