The Thin Black Line Dividing Britain; The Queen Mother was dead, the

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Apr 7, 2002 | by Trevor Royle

IT was the best of times for the Queen Mother's death to be announced - in the twilight zone between listening to the football results and getting ready for a Saturday night out. In that in- between hour, the resting place that separates sport and shopping from pleasures yet to come, the news produced in the nation a moment of reflection and as it filtered out in small waves of sympathy, shock, grief and, it has to be said, indifference, the reaction spoke volumes about the way we viewed this little old lady. And in no small measure her death also told us much about ourselves and our country at the beginning of a new century.

Surprise was out of the equation; she was in her 102nd year and had deteriorated physically and mentally since the death of her youngest daughter, Princess Margaret Rose. No-one, not even the nation's cosseted favourite grandmother, can expect to live forever, but acceptance of that fact was balanced by an overwhelming sense that a parting of the ways had been reached. A relic from the distant past had done the disappearing trick and, being the last of her kind, she was there to be inspected by the curious and the inquisitive, just as a dodo in a glass cage might be.

That aspect of the Queen Mother's existence had to be examined and in the canyons of obituaries and commentaries the message came across loud and clear. Here was a woman whose life crossed centuries of change and whose lifetime ran from the certainties of the Edwardian period to her daughter's peevish Elizabethan age. She was a survivor whose presence seemed to be ageless. If longevity is a cause for celebration then it was right and proper that her life should have been marked so fulsomely. The British can be sentimental about such matters, not because they have any particular respect or liking for the elderly (the reverse often seems to be a truer reflection) but because people such as the Queen Mother are living reminders of a past that has disappeared, hence the endless references to wartime blitzes and imperial splendour.

But beyond the words of comfort and the retelling of the facts of a life well spent, the Queen Mother's death produced a rather different tone. No sooner had the first eulogies appeared on air or in print than they were followed by angry discordant noises complaining about the style, content and approach of the coverage. These blasts from the past allowed a somewhat different Britain to come into focus and its claret-coloured colonel's face was not a pretty one. It used words like "respect" (lack of), "standards" (decline of) and "insult" (presence of). Its mouthpiece was the Daily Mail, that self-appointed guardian of the values of middle Britain, and its main target was the BBC, that troubled, Janus-faced national institution which has to be all things to all people. The criticism was also a manifestation of the country at its most bigoted and self- important worst.

Public enemy number one was the BBC presenter Peter Sissons who had the temerity to decline to wear a funereal black tie and then to compound the sartorial error by asking a succession of clumsy and impertinent questions of the Queen Mother's niece. For the Daily Mail, and to a lesser extent the Daily Telegraph, this was akin to treason. Even reporter Nicholas Witchell got it in the neck for announcing his report from Buckingham Palace as Good Friday and then repeating the mistake by calling it Easter Saturday - some pedant wrote in to remind him that it was in fact Holy Saturday. But at least he wore a black tie.

Worse followed. No sooner were preparations under way to move the Queen Mother's body to London than new insults were being traded as the Daily Mail thundered fresh disapproval of the BBC. In its outraged eyes the Beeb had been put firmly in its place by the Prince of Wales who had chosen to give his thoughts about his "darling grandmother" to ITN as a punishment for Sisson's insolence. "There could scarcely be a more damning indicator of the decline of a once great institution," was the paper's editorial line as it explained to its readers the reasons for the prince's choice of station for the interview. Never mind that Prince Charles could hardly have seen the offending item, being otherwise engaged in flying back to Britain; forget the denial which came from his press secretary; ignore the silence from Buckingham Palace - the voice of apoplectic Britain had to be heard.

Taking its cue from the rancour, BBC Radio Four's Today programme responded with a cod corporate song which was roared out in unison by Thursday's news team. The joke about all of them knowing when to wear black ties was all the better for knowing that presenter Jim Naughtie will be donning one during the radio coverage of the funeral on Tuesday.

All this might not matter and could be written off as a spat between rival media organisations while they battled to win a bigger audience or attract higher sales - the Mail On Sunday's "tribute" ran to 76 mawkish pages - but beneath the pettiness there lies a fault line which is helping to delineate modern Britain. No-one would deny that the Queen Mother led a good life or that she was not central to a certain way of viewing the country's history. She lived through the momentous years of the mid-20th century when her country had to fight for its life against a vicious enemy and then reinvent itself in the difficult aftermath of victory. She was a participant in critical events such as the abdication crisis of 1936, she was on the side of those appeasers who would have stitched up a deal with Adolf Hitler, she entertained unacceptable views of race and class which were common among those of her background in her day, she distrusted Winston Churchill and, following her husband's death in 1952, she retired from public life with ill grace and never quite forgave her daughter for taking her place.