A right royal time

The Royal visit, 1953-54

On 10 Jan 1954 the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh visited Wellington as part of their tour of New Zealand.

I had not long turned three years old and have a vague memory of being held aloft amidst a noisy crowd as the Royals drove out of Lower Hutt city across the Ewen Bridge.

 

For those New Zealanders old enough to have experienced it, the visit of the young Queen and her dashing husband, Prince Philip, to New Zealand in the summer of 1953-54, is a never-to-be forgotten event. Those who were children at the time recall the BIG Day, marked for months in the calendar, when they dressed in their posh clothes, pinned a royal tour medallion to their chests, collected a butter box to stand on, a Union Jack to wave, and perhaps a periscope to look through, and set out to 'see' the Queen.

Perhaps three in every four New Zealanders did see her, as the Queen visited 46 towns or cities and attended 110 separate functions. One woman saw her 30 times. Crowds would turn up hours before and wait patiently for the split second when she drove past. At Tirau, a community of 600 people, there was a crowd of 10,000. At the Ellerslie and Trentham races, crowds turned their backs on the horses to gawk at the royal box.

People went to extraordinary lengths to show their devotion. Sheep were dyed in the patriotic colours of red, white and blue; in New Plymouth both bowling club members and the local pony club formed into an E on the ground. Screens were erected to hide unsightly buildings, and citizens were instructed when and how to plant blue lobelias, red salvias and white begonias. Hardly a car did not sport a Union Jack, hardly a building in the main cities was not covered in bunting and flowers during the day and electric lights at night. This was truly a remarkable event.

While in Wellington, the capital, the Queen fulfilled her constitutional role. She opened Parliament and invested New Zealanders with honours. As head of the Church of England she laid the foundation stone of the Anglican cathedral, and as head of the Commonwealth's armed forces she laid a wreath at the cenotaph. Such events emphasised the loyalty of New Zealanders to the British Empire and Commonwealth.

It is true that some contemporaries saw the tour as publicising the monarch's status as 'Queen of New Zealand', as giving recognition to a new independence within the Empire of a self-governing dominion.

It is also true there was some concern from the Returned Services Association (RSA) that their interests had been overlooked. After complaints, the cenotaph wreath-laying was added to the itinerary and it was suggested that RSA representatives might be presented at local receptions and servicemen line the streets. A request that the Queen lay the foundation stone for the Auckland War Memorial Museum extension was turned down. But she did visit Devonport naval base, Whenuapai air force base, Burnham army camp and a disabled servicemen's training centre in Christchurch.

Throughout the tour New Zealanders expressed their pride as part of Britain's empire. The flags they waved were Union Jacks, not the New Zealand ensign; the films they showed the Queen were British films; and the songs, which were sung while the crowds waited outside hotels for the Royal Couple to appear, included 'Land of Hope and Glory', 'Sussex, Sussex by the Sea', and 'There'll Always Be an England'.

As the Rotorua Post commented when the tour was over,

Few can have failed to see in the young Queen the embodiment of all the glories of England and Empire of which they read as children in their history books; of the seadogs, the yeomen and bowmen, the explorers and the scientists and the men of words and letters who made the world their oyster and tilled the cultural soil in which we have our roots. The Queen is the stuff of British history.

A Great Place to bring up Children

On the day of the reception for children at Athletic Park, the Evening Post wrote: 'As the mother of two young children 12,000 miles away, the Queen today assumed the role of mother to her wider family, and it was this maternal aspect that so caught the imagination and love of the New Zealand citizens of the future'.

Special efforts were made throughout the Royal Visit to give prominence to the nation's children and to the Queen's role as mother. This had not initially been the case. When the draft itinerary was released in April 1953 there was a host of criticism about the absence of specific gatherings for children. The organisers responded. There were children's gatherings at Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin and Invercargill; and the Queen visited children's wards at two hospitals and spent time at Karitane Hospital in Dunedin.

Communities were asked to group children in prominent positions along the Queen's route. The Education Department agreed to fund the transport of children to see the Queen and produced 380,000 commemorative medallions which were presented to children in classroom ceremonies.

How is this emphasis on children explained?

• The Queen herself was a young mother who had left Prince Charles and Princess Anne behind in Britain and it was believed she would be interested in children.
• As the country recovered from depression and war, New Zealanders were in the midst of a baby boom. In 1953 there were 46,000 births among the non-Maori population, an increase of over 50% on the figure ten years earlier.
• There was a fear that the younger generation might not have the instinctual loyalty to Empire of those who had participated in world wars. The royal visit might imbue them with these imperial feelings.
• It was believed that the sight of healthy children was an excellent advertisement for New Zealand and might encourage young parents in Britain to emigrate.

http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/pictorial-parade-no8-new-zealand-celebrates-coronation-1953