King George VI - Professor Vernon Bogdanor

ladies and gentlemen this is the fifth of six lectures on the monarchy and this is on George the sixth whose coronation occurred eighty years ago on the 12th of May 1937 and that date was originally intended to be the date of the coronation of Edward the eighth but as I explained in my last lecture Edward the eighth abdicated in December 1936 and the second son of George the fifth came to the throne as George sixth at the accession Council in December 1936 George the sixth said I meet you today in circumstances which are without parallel in the history of our country the circumstances were indeed unprecedented one King was following another not as a result of the death of his predecessor but because of his voluntary abdication and George 2/6 was the third of the kings in that year of 3 Kings 1936 he was the unexpected king and also a very reluctant one indeed until three and a half weeks before the abdication he had no reason to believe that he would in fact be king when he realized that he was going to be he burst into tears but he said to the king's assistant private secretary if the worst happens and I have to take over you can be assured that I will do my best to clear up the inevitable mess if the whole fabric does not crumble under the shock and strain of it all now Georgia the sixth was born in December 1895 the second son of the Duke and Duchess of York later to become George the fifth and Queen Mary he was a shy boy overshadowed by his more glamorous elder brother and as is well known he had a stammer but he was to overcome it by qualities of great and determination which he was also to display as king but even so he never found public speaking easy and his Christmas broadcasts which he delivered conscientiously were somewhat of a torture for him not being heir to the throne he was able to mix more widely with his future subjects than would otherwise have been possible first in the Royal Navy and then in activities relating to industrial welfare like his father he joined the Navy and was at the naval colleges Osborn and Dartmouth and his captain at Osborn made a comment which perhaps symbolized his whole life he said he shows the grit and never say I'm beaten spirit which is strong in him in May 1916 he fought as a sub left tenant at the Battle of Jutland and was indeed the only British sovereign to have seen action in battle since William the fourth in the early 19th century he was also the first member of the royal family to enter the raf and to qualify as a pilot he received instruction and his pilot's license in his spare time he played tennis and in 1920 he won the RAF tennis doubles but lost in the semi-final of the singles in 1926 in the jubilee year of the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships he entered the doubles but was defeated in straight sets in the first round and no less I think he is the only Road member of the royal family to have competed at Wimbledon but his prime interest during the interwar years was in industrial welfare and in 1919 he became president of the boys Welfare Association later renamed Industrial welfare society and he held this position for 16 years his visits to factories gave him first hand knowledge of industrial conditions and in his speeches he emphasized the human factor in industrial relations indeed he spoke about these matters currently that he came to be nicknamed the foreman by other members of the royal family in 1921 he instituted boys camps the Duke of York's camps whereby boys from different social backgrounds could enjoy a week's holiday as his guests these camps continued until the outbreak of the second war in 1939 their aim was to break down what he thought of as artificial social barriers and each year a hundred industrial firms were invited to send two boys each and another 200 came from a hundred public schools now although this conception may appear somewhat naive to modernize the camp's did do something to bring boys together in the grim Depression years in 1923 he was given permission by George v to marry outside the royal family and he married Lady Elizabeth bowes-lyon daughter of the Earl of Strathearn a turbot a McQueen Elizabeth and his Queen seemed to charm any everyone even the notoriously difficult to please George v and once she appeared late for a meal at Buckingham Palace but George v who was normally a martinet for punctuality simply said we must have sat down a little early today now as Duke of York the future king carried out his public duties quietly and efficiently until the abdication living the life of a country gentleman with sporting interests much as his father had done he was I think the first sovereign without any political history at all whose political views were completely unknown when he came to the throne and this no doubt helped him to be an impartial constitutional monarch and he always insisted that his private secretaries were impartial too there was been no repetition of the problem that had affected his father George v and his grandfather Edward the eighth out of the seventh I beg your pardon that one of his private secretary is Lord Stram Fordham had been a known conservative and the other Lord Knowles unknown but the reason why george'll six political views were unknown was because he wasn't particularly in stood in politics or government before coming to the throne he showed little more interested in politics than an ordinary country gentleman which he hopes to remain and upon learning that he was to be king he said to his friend Lord Mountbatten Dickie this is absolutely terrible I never wanted this to happen I am quite unprepared for it I've never even seen a state paper I'm only a naval officer it's the only thing I know about he was unfamiliar with public affairs Edward the seventh and George the fifth had for years been in touch with leading political figures and had formed views about government george'll sixth on the other hand felt unprepared and untrained and he felt he could not do the job as well as Edward the eighth because he lacked the charisma he found in looking at the papers of the archives in Buckingham Palace that there was a great deal of guidance on ceremonial matters the opening of Parliament trooping of the color and so on but no real manual guidance on constitutional or political matters except perhaps for Badgett and Badgett was becoming out-of-date and no doubt for this reason he was to make sure that his elder daughter the Queen did not have the same problem he gave her rigorous training in public affairs and in the duties of a constitutional monarch he also gave her the benefit of a happy family life now Georgia thick's had greatly admired his father but it has to be said that george v had not established unequivocally happy relationships with all his children georgia six did indeed he was probably happiest living quietly with his family and he certainly proved a role model for the Queen and it's often said the Queen's main concern is that should be worthy of her father's example but during the period of the abdication some felt the Duke of York could not really do the job the monarchy was in uncharted waters and one constitutional authority the first parliamentary Council Samaras guar wrote to the PM's advisor to suggest that queen mary widow of george v be appointed queen regent she would rule and George the fifths fourth and youngest son George Duke of Kent would become king at a later date so Morris said the difficulty about the immediate succession of the Duke of York is that a substantial part of the country might still favor the present king and see his brother as a sort of interloper Queen Mary as regent would re-establish the reputation of the monarchy and the Duke of Kent was considered the most suitable successor as king because he was the only one of George v sons who himself had a son who could become Prince of Wales that so it was argued would avoid putting too heavy a burden on the shoulders of the proposed Regent Queen Mary but in the end these attempts to alter the succession came to naught and the Duke of York assumed the throne the new king always felt he'd be compared with his more charismatic and glamorous brother he was later to say to one of his ministers all my ancestors succeeded to the throne after their predecessors had died mine is not only alive but very much so and the ex-king tended to pester George six at first he continually rang him up giving him unwanted advice about how to perform the duties of the sovereign then he wanted to have his wife presented at court and he continually tried to secure a major diplomatic post for himself and all this added to Jordan six troubles Edward the aged had always been known to his family as David and at the end of the war there was a Thanksgiving service at Windsor Castle at which the chaplain and wisely chose as a psalm Lord remember David and all his troubles the Kings private secretary felt this was not the most tactful of choices now the abdication did arouse fears for the future of the monarchy the official biographer of George the sixth wrote in his bio of the king it is idle to believe that because the abdication crisis was of short duration and because it was skilfully handled that there are no grounds for the assumption that it was not of the utmost gravity and it in slightly different circumstances the stability their monarchy might have been imperiled George the 6th himself felt the monarchy could in his own words crumble under the shock and strain but these fears proved unfounded in Parliament a republican motion put forward by a radical Labour MP attracted just 5 votes and popular support for the monarchy remained as strong as it had ever been and was rapidly transferred from Edward the aides to the new king but it was support for a monarchy along traditional lines and the new king appreciated this although his first name was Albert and his friends and family called him Bertie he chose as his title George the sixth both as a sign of continuity and also as homage to his father with whom he had always got on well indeed when he had married Elizabeth George v wrote him the following significant letter you have always been so sensible and easy to work with and you have always been ready to listen to my advice and to agree with my opinions about people and things that I feel that we have always got on very well together bracket very different to dear David in a commons tribute to the new king the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin made the following pointed remark what will endear him to his people is that more than any of his brothers he resembles in character and mind his father and George the sixth to the unexpected Monica proved to the surprise of some a highly successful one a model indeed of what a constitutional monarch should be and it is coronation Winston Churchill previously a support of Edward the eighth told his wife you were right I see now that the other one wouldn't have done at the end of the first year of his reign the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote to the new king saying you have grown into your high office thus the courage with which a year ago you accepted the burden of a great responsibility suddenly thrust upon you has been amply vindicated now perhaps because of the abdication George 6 was very concerned about the future line of succession the next in line to the throne Princess Elizabeth was just 10 years old and clearly if anything happened to the king she was not yet in a position to assume the role of sovereign and the king therefore proposed that specific statutory provision be given to a situation in which either because the sovereign was a minor or because the sovereign had become incapacitated and incapable of performing his duties a Regency would be instituted there had been a Regency during the madness of George the 3rd at the beginning of the 19th century but that had been only on a temporary and ad-hoc basis George the 6th proposed permanent statutory provision and Regency acts were duly passed in 1937 and 1943 now although George the 6th wanted to return to a more traditional style of monarchy he would determine not to prove a cipher in the hands of his ministers and he soon showed that he would insist upon his constitutional rights in February 1938 just over a year after he had come to the throne he was disconcerted to be told that his foreign secretary Antony Edom was in serious dispute with the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain on the issue of government policy towards Mussolini's Italy and that Eden was thinking of resigning as indeed he did the king asked why he had not been told of this dispute he thought he might have been able to prevent Eden's resignation had he been informed in time he demanded in future he'd be properly informed and it was agreed that he would in future see the drafts of cabinet minutes the Prime Minister received before they had been officially circulated and he would be promptly informed of any impending crises and this episode I think is constitutionally important because according to Badgett the king has three constitutional rights the right to be consulted the right to encourage and the right to warn but he can only exercise these rights if he is kept properly informed and the King remained throughout his reign determined to use his constitutional rights in 1945 he asked his new Prime Minister Clement Attlee leader of Britain's first majority Labour government who would be his foreign secretary and in the words of the Kings diary the Prime Minister suggested dr. Hugh Doulton the King disagreed saying that foreign affairs would be the most important subject for new government and that Ernest Bevin should be appointed the king disliked Dalton indeed Dalton was the only member of the cabinet whom he did dislike and it's fair to say the king was not unique in disliking Dalton most people did but the king's view was not based mainly or even entirely on that he thought Bevin was a bigger man and in the end actually did make Bevin Foreign Secretary and Dalton Chancellor in his memoirs Ackley insisted the decision was his own that might have been to protect the King we will never know but the King certainly believed that he himself was responsible for the substitution of Bevin for Dalton as foreign secretary in 1950 the King's private secretary using the pseudonym senex old man wrote to The Times to insist the King retain the constitutional right to refuse a dissolution and in 1951 the King successfully objected to Anthony Eden being given the title of Deputy Prime Minister in Winston Churchill's peacetime government on the ground that it would limit his prerogative of appointing a prime minister when a vacancy occurred now like most modern monix George the six tended to sympathize with the policies of his current prime minister whoever it was and he believed the role of a constitutional monarch was to be loyal to his Prime Minister and this accounted for two misjudgments during the early part of his reign the first was in 1938 after the Munich Agreement with Hitler when he appeared with the Queen on a balcony of buckingham palace with his Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain this was I believe the first time in British history that the sovereign had invited a commoner onto the balcony of a Hume palace but it was a mistake since the Munich Agreement was the subject of a division in Parliament and was opposed by the Labour Party the King also issued a public statement praising Chamberlain's quote magnificent efforts and that too was a mistake in the Kings defence it may be said his misjudgment was shared in an atmosphere of near hysteria by the vast majority of the public relieved that the country did not have to go to war again just twenty years after the end of the First World War which had produced casualties in almost every family in the land and indeed the Labour Party's criticism of Chamberlain was not that we should have gone to war but that a firmest stand on the part of the British government would have deterred Hitler or made him climb down so that war would have been avoided that that in my view was a dubious judgement when war did actually come in 1939 the King remembered in his diary that in August 1914 at the time of the outbreak of the first world war he had been a midshipman in the Royal Navy and he said this in the Grand Fleet everyone was pleased that it had come at last we had been trained in the belief that war between Germany and this country had to come one day and when it did come we thought we were prepared for it we were not prepared for what we found a modern war really was and those of us who had been through the Great War never wanted another and that last sentiment was very widely shared at the time of the Munich Agreement sometimes in reading memoirs of the period or watching interviews with people who lived through it while one can get the impression the whole populations against the Munich Agreement at the time it was widely welcomed and the King's feelings probably were shared by many in the country now the Kings second misjudgment was to prefer Lord Halifax to Winston Churchill in 1940 as a new prime minister when Neville Chamberlain resigned and when Chamberlain told the king that he intends to resign and that a successor would have to be found the King in his own words said I of course suggested Halifax but he told me that Halifax was not enthusiastic I was disappointed over this statement as I thought Halifax was the obvious man but again it is fair to say that this misjudgment was shared by many Conservative MPs and whatever they were to say in later years by many in the Labour Party who distrusted Churchill as the enemy in their view of the labour movement and the opponent of Indian self-government in addition Churchill had shown bad judgment during the abdication crisis in supporting Edward the eighth against the government and this too no doubt prejudiced the new King against him and after appointing Churchill the king wrote in his diary I cannot really think of Winston's p.m. I met Halifax in the garden and told him I was sorry not to have him as p.m. but nevertheless after initial difficulties the King did establish an excellent relationship with his new prime minister which Churchill described in his war memoirs as without precedent since the days of Queen Anne and Maura during his years in power and from September 1940 the king instituted informal lunches at which he and Prime Minister could discuss the war in detail the menu was in accordance with strict wartime food rationing and the king and the Prime Minister had to serve themselves because discussing secret matters it was thought inappropriate that anyone else be present they were therefore somewhat spartan lunches but lunches eaten on royal crockery as one historian has put it spam on a gold plate the relationship between the king and Churchill became increasingly informal so much so that at a dinner party at Buckingham Palace in October 1942 Churchill kept excusing himself so he could use the telephone to discover the outcome of the Battle of El Alamein the first British land victory against Germany in the war the assembled company knew that the battle had gone well when Churchill returned to the dinner singing roll out the barrel with great gusto but little evidence of musical talent but the king was not overruled by Churchill frequently questioning him about the war and on at least one occasion altering his mind when he persuaded his Prime Minister not to go with the troops to France on d-day so to avoid putting himself in danger in strict constitutional theory the Prime Minister needs the Kings position permission to go abroad but the king did not rely on this he simply said to Churchill I was not raising any constitutional point I asked him as a friend not to endanger his life and so put me and everybody else in a difficult position at the time of his death in 1952 the king was seriously considering to ask Churchill who had become Prime Minister for the second time at the age of 76 to consider resigning on grounds of age he was perhaps the only person who could have persuaded Churchill to take this step whether he would have succeeded as a moot point Churchill did not in fact retire and he was 80 in 1955 saying in his own inimitable fashion that he intended to stay in the pub till closing time the king's reign was marked by war and by the shadow of war preparations for war after 1936 recovery from war after 1945 his father George v had been king during the first world war but war was not so central to his reign as it was to be for his son and it was during the war that the King really came into his own and as the archbishop had said grew into his role in the summer of 1939 shortly before the outbreak of war he visited the United States the first visit by a reigning monarch to the United States this produced great good feeling and Roosevelt predicted wrongly that and I quote if London was bombed America would come in nevertheless the visit did help to cement anglo-american friendship and perhaps also helped to dispel isolationist feeling in the United States after the fall of France in 1940 the king did not despair but said perhaps expressing the feeling of the country I feel happier now that we have no allies to be polite to and to pamper in that same year the Monarchs of Holland and Norway came to Britain after their countries were conquered by Hitler although the heads of government of Czech Slovakia and Poland and other exiled European governments came to London and established their headquarters there and the king became a symbol of the resistance of free peoples to Hitler during the Blitz he returned to Buckingham Palace every day from Windsor to share the rigors with Londoners he in effect came back to London every day to be bombed and Buckingham Palace was in fact bombed more than once on the 9th of September 1940 a delayed-action bomb fell just below the king study of the 12th of September 6th bombs dropped on Buckingham Palace - landed just 30 yards from where the king and queen was standing and the third destroyed the chapel the king wrote in his diary we all wondered why we weren't dead the Kings closest scape was not widely known not even Churchill was told until much later how close the bombs had come to killing the king in 1945 Churchill was unexpectedly beaten in the general election his first instinct was to remain as Prime Minister until Parliament met as he was constitutionally entitled to do for the purpose of continuing to represent Britain at the Potsdam Conference but the king together with Eden persuaded Churchill to resign immediately on the ground that a lame-duck prime minister at Potsdam could exert a little influence and they convinced Churchill of that the King offered Churchill the Order of the Garter at the end of the war but Churchill declined saying would be inappropriate to accept the Order of the Garter when the voters had just given him the order of the boot the king found his new Prime Minister Clement Attlee very rude to communicate with him the king himself was a shy and diffident man Atlee even more so and when a key came to the palace to be appointed Prime Minister there was a long silence eventually broken by Attlee who said I won the election the king replied I know I heard it on the radio after the meeting the king said his new Prime Minister ought to be called not Claire madly but clam idli but the King formed a good relationship with Ashley and with the labor cabinet with the exception as I've said earlier on Dalton whom he thoroughly disliked he formed a good relationship with leader the left in the cabinet an iron Bevin the Minister of Health who liked the king and conquered a stammer and said how much he admired the king for having done the same but the king disagreed with Bevins resignation in 1951 over charges for false teeth and spectacles or perhaps it is fair to say the king did not really understand the ideological reasons behind it now just before the budget which led to Bevins resignation the king had the Chancellor Bevins grade enemy Hugh gates kill and his wife to stay overnight at Windsor Castle and gates kill kept a diary of the event when the king told gates kill there was only one of your people I can't abide Gaitskell assumed he meant Bevin rather than Dalton but the king said of Bevins cabinet resignation he must be mad to resign over thing like that I really don't see why people should have free-falls teeth anymore than free shoes waving his foot at gates kill the king then spoke of the forthcoming budget - Gates killed wife I wonder what he has got in his box for us I hope it will not be too terrible his wife said I don't suppose it will be as bad as all that after all he is rather right-wing this the King thought a tremendous joke and as gates Gill said laughed a great deal at the idea of my being thought right-wing but the truth was that the king unlike most professional politicians did not think in ideological terms who who was right-wing and who was left-wing there were people he liked and people he didn't like as for government that was something that had to be done effectively by the group of people elected to do it in Georgia thick's took the view as I think his father did and I think the Queen does like most modern monarchs what you might call a managerial or administrative view of government the job of the Prime Minister was to govern the country the king's job was to help them as best he could in terms of the famous slogan the Kings government must be carried on and the king proved a particular help to the Labour government in helping it avoid a clash with the House of Lords because the Labour government proposed to reduce the delaying power of the Lord's from three sessions in the 1911 Parliament Act enacted by the pre-war liberals to just two sessions and the Conservatives who had a large majority in the Lord's were opposed to this the King begged them to be conciliatory and not to oppose and conserve his were perhaps less likely to oppose it if they knew that the king himself was happy with it at any rate the 1949 Parliament Act was passed without any repetition of the problems which plagued george v and Edward the seventh during the years nineteen nine to nineteen eleventh the king also sustained his labour government on Commonwealth matters because the Commonwealth was changing profoundly during the late 1940s in 1947 the King made an official trip to South Africa which had a political purpose to assist the Prime Minister general Smuts against his nationalist opponents who were Republicans and who would introduce apartheid all the visit one nationalist Republican told the Queen that he had visited England and liked the country he said it was only the people he couldn't stand the Queen replied tactfully I quite see what you mean I am Scottish and married to an Englishman but you soon get used to them now the government has Smuts though opposed to apartheid was itself racialist and insisted the king must not personally pin medals on non-whites nor shake hands or engage in conversation with non-white recipients of medals but must instead hand the medal over to an official of the native department so that the king did not come into personal contact with people whose skin was not white the king was revolted by this but was told that as he was in South Africa as king of South Africa he had to accept the advice of his South African government but when the King visited the British protectorates the Basu toll and bet joanna land and Swaziland he gave both non-whites and whites medals personally shaking hands and speaking with all recipients sadly the purpose behind the tour of South Africa was not achieved in the 1948 election the Nationalists defeated Smuts and proceeded to introduce apartheid which in 1961 was to prove incompatible with common Commonwealth membership so that South Africa on becoming a republic left the Commonwealth the king disliked his visit to South Africa and his Queen never went there again though she lived for another 55 years his daughter who became Queen in 1952 refused to visit South Africa during the pit of apartheid and did not go again until Nelson Nelson Mandela had become president in 1949 there was a major alteration in the Commonwealth by which India upon becoming independent George the 6th ceased to be emperor of India now in 1877 Queen Victoria had been proclaimed Empress of India as the result of an initiative by Disraeli and from that time she signed her letters VRI Victoria Regina a tempura Trix George the 6th however would no longer be able to sign gri but only gr George Rex not George Rex at Imperato but India posed a problem for the Commonwealth because previous self-governing countries such as Canada and Australia had remained monarchies and recognized the king as king of Canada or king of Australia there had been colonies and settlement composed largely of people of British stock but India was not a colony of settlement but composed of indigenous peoples and unlike previous self-governing members the Indian government wanted her to be a republic and not a monarchy and as an independent country India clearly had the right to choose her own form of government but her decision meant the head of state would not be the king but a president elected by the Indian people now could India remain a member of the Commonwealth as a republic in 1947 Burma had become independent and a republic and had left the Commonwealth the first country to leave what have been the empire since America in the 18th century she was followed by Ireland which in 1949 also became a republic and seceded from the Commonwealth the king was very upset by this and asked the Irish Minister in London why leave the family he had been pleased to see relations with Ireland improving and had hoped to visit Dublin he asked the Irish Minister whether he was in any way to blame the Minister said even the angel Gabriel could not have prevented it and the Queen replied well whatever we are we are not - angel Gabriel when the Irish government published their new law and Citizenship and Immigration Georgia six said he wished Ireland well but he said sadly to the Irish Foreign Minister what does this new legislation of yours make me in Ireland an undesirable alien because hitherto the King had been the link between the countries of the Empire and Commonwealth the members all monarchies were held together by having the same head of state now a new title had to be found and there was some agonizing about the Indian High Commissioner said to athle the Prime Minister the king should be called the first citizen of the Commonwealth and Atlas alone oh that sounds like Rob's beer so they eventually fixed on the title the head of the Commonwealth and this formed a new relationship with India which was expressed in the Declaration of London in 1949 and the Declaration of London said this it began by saying that India wished to become a republic but then went on to say the government and India have however declared and affirmed India's desire to continue her full membership of the Commonwealth of Nations and the acceptance of the king as a symbol of a free association of its independent member nations and as such the head of the Commonwealth now the head of the Commonwealth is a purely symbolic position by contrast with the position of the monarch the head of the Commonwealth is not advised by any ministers responsible to Parliament as the Queen is in her role as Queen of Britain Canada Australia and so on the role of head of the Commonwealth has no constitutional duties whatever and discharges no constitutional functions in that role so there's no question of advice because the Indians would not have accepted a figure with constitutional duties she wants to be a sovereign and independent republic and she was frightened that membership of the Commonwealth would in a sense subordinate her to a super state of some sort and the Indian Prime Minister mr. Nehru insisted that her Commonwealth membership should not limit her independence or freedom of action she would be subject to no external Authority and a subject would oh no allegiance to the king the agreement was won by free will and could be determinated at any time by free will the only obligation of a member of the Commonwealth was voluntary cooperation and India accepted on that basis that far from dearö gating from her independence it would enhance it she thought it would be independent Plus not independence - now the Declaration of London in 1949 is the founding document of the modern Commonwealth and the Commonwealth in a sense main part be defined by what it is not there are no constitutional duties no allegiance the Commonwealth cannot have a government of its own it's an association of States voluntary cooperating in not a union so the position of Head of the Commonwealth is not as it were an office but an expression of a symbolic character of the wish of the Commonwealth members to remain an association as free and equal members but in order to work that the position must not be seen as a mere extension of the British monarchy now the Queen in her role as head of the Commonwealth delivers two messages each year a Commonwealth day message on the second Monday in March and the Christmas message which concrete perhaps what most of us think is not delivered to Britain alone but to the Commonwealth a majority of whose citizens are not Christians and do not celebrate Christmas and these messages are the only occasions on which the Queen speaks in public without advice now in 1949 the King expressed the wish there wouldn't be too many Republican stars in his crown India was seen as an exception but of course what had been given to India could not in logic be denied to other newly independent countries and Asian and African countries upon achieving independence have followed the Indian example it may be some of the older dominions such as Australia comes do the same and it was fundamental the 1949 Declaration because she ensure the Commonwealth would not remain a white man's club that would be inconsistent with the principles on which the Empire and Commonwealth had been constructed as early as 1897 Joseph Chamberlain the Colonial Secretary reminded representatives of the colonial conference to bear in mind the tradition of Empire which makes no distinction in favor of or against race or color in the late 1940s the cabinet secretary reiterated this point to regard the Commonwealth as essentially European in race and British in culture and outlook would indeed be wholly inconsistent with our colonial policy which contemplated as an aim of political development the ultimate attainment by the dependent territories of responsible self-government within the British Commonwealth so the government's motive was not only to accommodate India but to create a multiracial body which could help avoid a collision of races and in the modern Commonwealth non-whites outnumber whites by around 6 to 1 and this completed I think a remarkable transformation of Empire hitherto based on a relationship of domination to one of equal and voluntary membership the King accepted this and that he was no longer there to be the Emperor of India but in the words of the Declaration of London the symbol of the free association of its independent Member States and as such the head of the Commonwealth and the King asked the Indian High Commissioner what am I now simply and as such but High Commissioner said he did far more than his known or need be said to help and at Lee said after the King's death that during his reign there were developments in the Commonwealth some of which entailed the abandonment of outward forms which a lesser man might have found it difficult to surrender but he was essentially broad-minded and was ready to accept changes that seemed necessary now around the time of the Declaration of London in 1949 the King began to suffer from serious illnesses burgers disease and arteriosclerosis a product perhaps of heavy smoking and perhaps a result of stress during the war and post-war years and these illnesses caused severe pain in his legs and it was feared one time that amputation might be necessary then in 1951 he was found to have cancer of the lung and a lung was removed in what I suppose for those days was quite a complex and dangerous operation the king appeared to be recovering but died suddenly in his sleep on February the 6th 1952 not from cancer but from a coronary thrombosis in a moving tribute in the House of Commons of the King Churchill said that he had walked with death as if death were a companion an acquaintance whom he recognized and did not fear the Kings poor health was known to his ministers but the public had assumed that he had recovered and his death came as a shock there was an outpouring of public grief of the news the king was 56 when he died the last monarch to have died as a younger age had been Queen Anne at 49 in 1714 had the King lived to the age of the Duke of Windsor who died in 1972 his daughter would not have become Queen until she was in her late 40s as it was she succeeded to the throne at the age of just 25 the reign of George the 6th was not marked by constitutional crisis as the reign of his father George the 5th had been the main change the commonwealth relationship was achieved by negotiation and agreement with little controversy but the reign of George the 6th was marked by an atmosphere of Perpetual tension and anxiety Churchill said his was the hardest reign of modern times there was first the worry of the pre-war years then there was a war itself and after that the difficult post-war years of economic austerity and privation and the Cold War sadly the king did not live to see the reduction of international tensions after the death of Stalin in 1953 nor the so-called affluent society of the 1950's the foundations of which were perhaps laid in the late 1940s the key to Britain's survival during these difficult years lay in a very high degree of cohesion of British society Britain proved a much less divided society than the countries of the continent which were either ruled by Nazi or fascist governments or conquered by them and it was this social cohesion that helped Britain resist Hitler's onslaught and whether the strains of the post-war years while retaining a stable and moderate political system which at that time at least many people envied the king played his part in helping to cement that social cohesion especially during the war years in 1941 Churchill told the King the war has drawn the throne and the people more closely together than was ever before recorded the monarchy during these difficult years proved a factor both for stability and for continuity but perhaps the best tribute to the king with which I shall conclude came in a dispatch from the French ambassador to his government a dispatch not intended to be seen by the public and therefore one can assume that it expresses something very sincere the Ambassador said if the greatness of a king can be measured by the extent to which his qualities correspond to the needs of a nation at a given moment in its history then George the sixth was a great King and perhaps very great king courage work and austerity have been the watchwords of the country over the last fifteen years and one could say that the king provided an example of them he had to learn everything at the age of 41 on ascending the throne and he learned quickly and well by his simplicity he good will his courage and his sense of duty his respect for constitutional principles and the example of his private life King George the sixth as a master round the throne a capital sympathy and loyalty upon which he could call in case of crisis brought to the throne in a climate of dynastic and constitutional crisis George the thick died leaving to his daughter a throne more stable than England has known throughout almost her entire history thank

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Keywords: gresham college, gresham, lecture, free lecture, gresham lecture, public lecture, free public lecture, free education, education, college, museum of london, visiting gresham professor, political history, vernon bogdanor, monarchy, King George VI, King George V, King Edward VIII, King Edward VII, queen elizabeth ii, queen victoria, the unexpected king, world war, wwii, WW2, World War II, world war 2, dictatorship, decolonisation, Commonwealth, Ireland, India

Id: 9JV-_MgqPPc

Length: 49min 18sec (2958 seconds)

Published: Tue May 02 2017