According to one of Richard Feynman’s memoirs, he had the impression that you were not allowed to turn your back on the King of Sweden, so prior to Feynman’s Nobel prize ceremony he practiced a ridiculous way of walking backwards (including backwards up a staircase, I think) to mock the idea - but just before the ceremony someone told Feynman that there was no such rule about the King.
Seems usage varies here, though. Here is a YouTube recording of the 1993 State Opening of Parliament. Starting at minute 10:33, you see the same scene as you describe from the 2013 video: The Lord Chancellor presents to the Queen the manuscript for her throne speech. In the 1993 video, he avoids turning his back on the Queen and does walk backwards as he descends the stairs from the throne. So either the protocol changed at some point during those twenty years (which I doubt for this ceremony), or different Lord Chancellors handle it differently.
Probably the latter, varying with the physical fitness of the LC of the day.
Footnote on “national” teams. That’s nothing to do with the constitutional politics of the UK, it’s simply that the rules of those games were codified in the UK first and there weren’t any other national teams to play against.
Just a thought. Could “I’m Walking Backwards for Christmas” by The Goons (No.4 in the UK Hit Parade in June '56) be a reference to leaving he Royal Presence?
The Goons (and especially Spike) were a particular favourite of Prince Charles. His Papa, not so much.
Yes. But there is an interesting parallel in what might have been the nearest equivalent to the Scotland - Endland political union, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Austria and Hungary played each other at football twice a year from 1902 onwards, even though until the end of WW1 they were part of the same political entity.
Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of her other realms and territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.
I wonder if his mother ever saw the “Muppet Show” episode where Sam the Eagle accuses Spike of not speaking the Queen’s English. “Why should I?” he replies. “She never speaks any of mine!”
Austria and Hungary played each other at football twice a year from 1902 onwards
I didn’t know that. Rather gives the lie to the old joke that, in more recent times, when Otto von Hapsburg was once asked if he would be watching the Austria-Hungary match, he said “Who are we playing?”
Wiki says:
“Milligan was born in the British Empire to a British subject mother, and he felt that he was entitled to British citizenship, especially after having served in the British Army for six years. When British law related to Commonwealth-born residents, which had given him a secure place in the UK, changed, he applied, in 1960, for a British passport. The application was refused, partly because he would not swear an Oath of Allegiance. By right of his Irish father, he secured an “escape route” from his stateless condition, becoming an Irish citizen in 1962, and remaining so; this status gave him almost the same rights as a British subject.”
Also:
“A state dinner in honour of the Queen took place in the evening at Dublin Castle. … The Queen began her speech by speaking in Irish : “A Uachtaráin, agus a chairde” she said — “President and friends” which caused President McAleese to turn to others at the table and say “Wow” three times.”
Furthermore:
"Charles, Prince of Wales was a fan and when Milligan received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the British Comedy Awards in 1994, the Prince sent a congratulatory message to be read out on live television. The comedian interrupted the message to call the Prince a “little grovelling bastard”.[3] He later faxed the prince, saying: “I suppose a knighthood is out of the question?”
In reality, he and the Prince were very close friends and Milligan had already been made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1992 (honorary because of his Irish citizenship).[50] He was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in 2001.
On 23 July 1981, the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer were presented with a poem about the forthcoming Royal Wedding, delivered to Buckingham Palace on a 3-foot-9-inch parchment scroll, written under the pen name MacGoonical. A ridiculous verse written in the style of William McGonagall, the ode was commissioned by the Legal and General Assurance society as a “mark of esteem and affection”. The verse, titled “Ode to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales on the occasion of his Weeding”, begins:
Oh! Twas in the year 1981
Prince Philip was reading Page 3 of the Sun !
They were all sitting in Buckingham Palace
Roaring with laughter at the comedy Dallas .[54]"
…
I suspect that The Milligan, a proud though doubtful Irishman, and specifically not British, regarded his relationship with the Royal Family, with his usual gentle but barbed humour, as a fine example of English cultural colonialism in Ireland.
The tradition was abolished by Lord Irvine in 1998 as part of the (not very well thought through) reforms to the State Opening in the first flush of Blairism. It was later briefly revived by Jack Straw when he was Lord Chancellor, seemingly just because he could.
I think Lord Falconer also did it once, as a last hurrah, after it was announced that the office of Lord Chancellor would be abolished (oops).
You’re arguing “etiquette”, which was never something I was talking about. It’s been a well known, public policy objective to promote Britishness and to not exacerbate divisions between the UK’s constituent parts, and to not emphasize English supremacy, since at least the 1930s or so. Before then it’s my contention the English were pretty clearly the supreme components of the Union, both in number and power, and they weren’t shy about it, nor did the Welsh/Irish/Scots have much illusions otherwise. Obviously the modern approach was designed to correct this “poor behavior” and encourage greater national unity as a modern state. Oddly enough and I’m not arguing cause and effect, in an era in which the supremacy of the English entered an all time low, and with widespread adoption by English leaders of every party to promote Britishness, you have seen increased Scottish nationalism and devo-max develop, along with a devolved National Assembly in Northern Ireland and the Welsh devolved Parliament. (All of these devolved legislatures came about in the tail end of the 90s from Tony Blair’s constitutional reforms.)
The only point I made is that despite it being poor etiquette and “politically incorrect” the term “King/Queen of England” has always had some level of common usage within the United Kingdom itself, so the efforts to act like someone using that term is the biggest imbecile in the history of the world is a little much. It’s not at all an uncommon phrase to use. It might be appropriate to point out to a person using it that it is technically incorrect and promotes an impolite view of the United Kingdom, and that’s fine. All I was saying is this isn’t a term Americans invented because they’re too stupid to understand the nature of the United Kingdom’s union, it’s been a term in common usage in the entire English speaking world (including within the UK itself) for hundreds of years.
I don’t believe most people who use the term King/Queen of England are particularly ensconced in the legalities of the title, nor have they ever been. The American colonists for example were subjects of the monarch as it went through the English Civil War and during the time in which England and Scotland entered formal Union, with the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain. Obviously they broke away before Ireland was incorporated in (which is why any period-appropriate depictions of the American Revolution need to make sure they show the British forces flying the “original” Union Jack as it existed between 1707 and 1801 (before the incorporation of St. Patrick’s Flag.) I think it’s fair to say as British subjects the American colonists were fairly well informed on goings on in the mother country, its politics was extensively reported in every regular periodical in the colonies. The Founding Fathers and the writers of the day would have been even more exposed to it as they followed things even more closely. And yet most of these people referred to the contemporaneous Kings as “Kings of England.”
Politics and public sentiment have shifted and this term is no longer viewed as “politically appropriate” in the United Kingdom itself, but its general usage had spread round the English speaking world long before those developments happened, so expecting countries long separate from the UK to incorporate all of its political conceits is unrealistic.
The argument in support of this usage would be stronger for the smaller Crown dependencies of Man, Guernsey and Jersey, which are legally not part of the UK but whose foreign affairs are managed by the UK. They are also under the British monarchy, but as separate entities, whereas England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are all part of the same monolithic entity, the UK.
In a sense it wouldn’t though, those Crown Dependencies are actual feudal holdings that are “attached” to the lineage of the monarch of the United Kingdom, but are actual “personal feudal holdings” long ago holders of the English crown accrued. E.g. Queen Elizabeth doesn’t rule the Isle of Man as queen, but as the Lord of Mann, and she doesn’t rule the channel islands as Queen but as “Duke of Normandy.” These little islands are anomalies in many ways legal and social, but seem content to be left alone as they are and probably aren’t worth excessive concern…
I was recently surprised to see a 50-star American flag flying in F Troop. Not that F-Troop was ‘period appropriate’, but it reminded me that when I was younger I had no idea that any other kind of American flag would have been correct.
This is a strawman argument. Nobody claims that people who use the term “King/Queen of England” are the biggest imbeciles in the history of the world. The discussion began when somebody who had used the term was corrected, and then other people started trying to build an argument that the term was, in fact, not incorrect. That’s all.
As it happens, I was recently at a memorial service. Etiquette is to hold the wreath in the left or both hands, lay the wreath, then:
Take one step backwards,
Pause (or, if in uniform, salute, hold the salute, then)
Turn away and exit.