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Chairman. The first and most important decision taken by the Committee, reported on
10 July 1952, for which Norfolk was subsequently blamed, was that no television should
be allowed inside the Abbey for the service. A ‘cinematographic film’ was to be made
and television viewers would have to be satisfied with a later showing of that. Their
decision was approved by the Cabinet. Historians have believed that Elizabeth stepped
in and overruled the Government. A study of Cabinet papers and other contemporary
sources show the truth to have been rather different. In this, the first pitched battle of
her reign between the traditionalists, those who wanted to preserve the ‘mystique’ and
magic of royalty, and the modernizers, who wanted to let light in on the magic,
Elizabeth sided with the traditionalists. In most situations her reactions were
conservative; she may have felt that certain moments of the ceremony were so sacred
that they should be private. Churchill’s feeling was that live television would impose too
much additional strain upon the Queen, but he was certainly influenced by a minute,
dated 7 July 1952, from Colville saying that the Queen herself did not want it
televised. 21
When the decision was announced by the Commission on 20 October that no
television cameras would be allowed to film east of the screen in Westminster Abbey,
there was uproar. ‘A very odd way of doing things,’ commented the Chairman of the
BBC, Sir Alexander Cadogan, who had not been consulted, adding shrewdly, ‘I think that
we can leave it to an enraged public opinion to bring pressure on the Government.’
Next day he commented with satisfaction, ‘The Press have started up well on the
Coronation ban… Everyone [i.e. the Government, the Palace and the Commission] has
already got the wind up.’ 22 ‘Let the People see the Queen,’ John Gordon demanded. A
hasty retreat was beaten with Tommy Lascelles telling the BBC that there would be ‘a
compromise’: television would be allowed into the Abbey to film the service but not the
communion. The Palace ‘compromise’ was taken up by the Cabinet. The public would
see, live, the recognition, the crowning and the homage, but would be excluded from the
most private and sacred parts of the ceremony, the anointing, the communion prayers
and the Queen’s communion. The episode of televising the Coronation was a typical
example of part misunderstanding, part cock-up, according to Edward Pickering’s report
to Beaverbrook:
The chief opponent of television seems to have been the Queen herself. It was because of her known
antipathy that the matter was never fully examined. Lack of technical understanding caused much of the
confusion. The Cabinet, for example, were under the impression that it was necessary to have high-powered
lamps trained on the Coronation chair; at no stage was the BBC consulted. Both the Cabinet and the Court
were surprised by the public indignation caused by the decision. 23
When she saw how much her people wanted to see her actually crowned and how
outraged they were that they should be excluded from a spectacle confined only to high
officials, peers and foreigners, Elizabeth became convinced that the ban was a mistake
and sent Tommy Lascelles to the BBC to propose the ‘compromise’. But she was certainly
not the origin of the ‘Let the People see the Queen’ movement. For the first time the