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about Ulster – indeed as we all are.’ ‘She looked at me very straight’, he recalled, ‘and
said, “Martin, we said we’re going to Ulster and it would be a great pity not to.”’
Despite all the foreboding the celebrations in June were a spontaneous explosion of
popular feeling. Flags and slogans were everywhere – there were bonfires and streetparties,
a huge national coming-together which no one had expected, least of all
Elizabeth, who was bombarded with bouquets and cheers wherever she went. ‘She was
floored,’ said her domestic chaplain. ‘She could not believe that people had that much
affection for her as a person, and she was embarrassed and at the same time terribly
touched by it all.’ Her reaction was just like that of her grandfather, George V, at the
time of his Jubilee, when he couldn’t believe that the people really liked him for himself.
People recognized that Elizabeth, like her grandfather, was decent, honourable and
totally dedicated to her job, and they loved her for it, feeling a common sense of
gratitude at having someone like her to represent Britain. Martin Charteris said, ‘The
Queen had a love affair with the country.’
Charteris attended Elizabeth on all her domestic tours in Jubilee. Year and for most of
the 56,000 miles that she travelled visiting the countries of the Commonwealth. Among
them, curiously, was Papua New Guinea, which had never been a part of the British
Empire but from having been a mandate of Australia had elected to invite Elizabeth to
be its head of state. The inhabitants had been invited to write their own endogenous
constitution by former Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam while he was in power
and had opted for a republic with independence on 1 August. In February Charteris had
a visit from the Australian High Commissioner, Sir John Bunting. ‘You’re not going to
believe this,’ Bunting said, ‘but they want the Queen to be their Queen and sit on [their]
throne.’ ‘Why?’ Charteris asked. ‘First of all because they like her and know her because
she’s been there. Second, they want someone who will be above local squabbles. Third,
they want to go on getting British decorations. But they only want her for ten years.’
‘The Queen was tickled with the idea and accepted,’ Charteris recalled. ‘Now it’s twentyfive
years on and they’re still devoted to her…’
Otherwise there were increasing signs that enthusiasm for the British monarchy was
on the wane, in the ‘Old Commonwealth’ at least, as was demonstrated in Canada in
1978, when she spent two weeks there, the principal reason for her visit being the
opening of the Commonwealth Games. Familiarity had lessened the impact of her visits;
she could no longer expect the ecstatic receptions which had greeted her in the 1950s.
The French-Canadians disliked the British connection and in 1978, in order to distance
himself from it, Trudeau was not there to greet Elizabeth when she arrived. He went on
holiday to Morocco, a deliberate breach of the Commonwealth and United Kingdom
custom that when the monarch enters or leaves the country, the Prime Minister is in
attendance.
At home 1979 saw the beginning of an entirely new direction in British politics as
Callaghan’s Government went down in a turmoil of industrial unrest and economic
instability and Margaret Hilda Thatcher stepped on to the political stage. For Elizabeth,
dealing with another woman at the highest level in British politics was a new