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Mourners wait next to Tower Bridge in London in the queue for Queen Elizabeth II’s lying-in-state.
Photo:
Vuk Valcic/Zuma Press
It’s at the same time unprecedented and also a deep part of Britain’s cultural tradition: A line many miles long has formed in London as Britons brave the elements for hours for a chance to pay their respects at the coffin of Queen
Elizabeth II
as she lies in state in Westminster Hall.
When the queen died last week, some snarky American social-media denizens asked, in essence, what good the British monarchy had ever done for anyone. This is the answer.
The queue for the queen is, in a literal sense, a walking and talking rebuff to the online woke who couldn’t resist accusing yet another Western institution of irredeemable racism and colonialism. The queue is remarkable for its diversity—old and young, well-dressed or casual, white, black, South Asian, East Asian, and more.
The first person to line up was
Vanessa Nanthakumaran,
a Londoner of Sri Lankan heritage. “For their service, it is sort of like payback,” Ms. Nanthakumaran told the Guardian newspaper explaining why she was there. “Whatever they did for the Commonwealth, we have to appreciate what they did, and for the independence they eventually gave back when Sri Lanka wanted the rights back.”
The third was
Grace Gothard,
who now lives in south London but immigrated from Ghana in the 1980s. “She binds the Commonwealth together,” Ms. Gothard said of the late queen, according to Canada’s National Post.
Britons and their friends from around the world are expected to queue in the hundreds of thousands for many hours, day and night, and to do what? Mourners are allowed only a few seconds beside the queen’s casket to bow, curtsey, salute or pray. They aren’t allowed to film or photograph, so no selfie-obsessed social-media influencers here.
One theme to emerge from the mourners is service. Many Britons observe that the queen served them faithfully for 70 years, so they owe her whatever time and hardship it requires to stand in line to pay their respects. Another is community. Queuing by all accounts has accentuated a sensibility about national family, with camaraderie welling up among neighbors along the line.
It suggests the queen’s woke critics got things exactly backward. They claimed Britain’s monarchy oppresses people—as many monarchies, including sometimes Britain’s, have done over the millennia. Britons seem to feel this particular queen instead set them free, inspiring the better part of their national identity. It has been a sad week for Britons, but also a proud one.
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