The 1953 Broadcast

 

Location:  Government House, Auckland, New Zealand

Produced by:  BBC (in association with the New Zealand Broadcasting Service)

Theme:

Speaking from Auckland a little over six months after her Coronation, Elizabeth II  reflects on the six-month tour of the Empire and Commonwealth of which she and the Duke of Edinburgh were on the first leg.  Her Majesty speaks of some of the countries they had already seen, including Bermuda, Jamaica, Fiji and Tonga; and mentions some of the places they would later visit, including Australia, Ceylon and beyond to Asia, Africa and the Mediterranean.

The Queen expresses her wish to see as much as possible of the peoples and countries of the Empire-Commonwealth and 'to learn at first hand something of their triumphs and difficulties and something of their hopes and fears.'  Elizabeth II compares and contrasts the first with what some were calling the 'new' Elizabethan age and expresses her hope and optimism regarding the future of the emerging Commonwealth.

The Queen ends by expressing her sadness and sorrow to the people of New Zealand regarding the Tangiwai railway accident which had happened late on Christmas Eve, resulting in the tragic loss of 151 lives.

Commentary: 

1953 marked the first and to date only time that the Royal Christmas Message has been broadcast in its entirety from outside the United Kingdom.  It had been an extremely busy year for the newly-crowned Queen Elizabeth II with the ceremonial funeral of her grandmother Queen Mary, planning for the Coronation and the massive carnival event itself, preparations for the six-month delayed tour of the Empire-Commonwealth and departing for the tour in November.  Now, Elizabeth II was spending Christmas away from home for the first time in the Auckland summer heat, thousands of miles away from the chilly winter breezes of Sandringham.

The Prime Minister of New Zealand had announced exactly a year earlier, on Christmas Day 1952, that the Queen would deliver the 1953 Broadcast from Auckland; but even with a year to plan, the event still presented a risky technical challenge.  A BBC memo hailed an opportunity for 'a spectacular triumph for Commonwealth Communications...opening a new chapter in the tradition of royal Christmas broadcasts (Pimlott, The Queen, 1996) but communications between New Zealand and the western hemisphere were unreliable and there was also the potential for a disaster which could damage both the reputation of Australasian broadcasting and Commonwealth relations (Pimlott, 1996).  

Nevertheless, the BBC decided to go ahead.  The message was transmitted from Auckland to Wellington via Landline then directly by radio telephone via Sidney and, further along the route, Barbados.  As a back-up in case of poor reception, it was also transmitted from a Royal New Zealand Navy transmitter from the short-wave transmitters of the New Zealand Broadcasting Service (Seward, The Queen's Speech, 2015).  In case of disaster, a pre-recording is said to have been made on the Gothic at Fiji and flown to Sidney for transmission to London; although this also carried technical risks (Pimlott, 1996).

The transmission was handled by Himatangi Radio Station and the message was delivered at 9pm  Auckland time, which was 9am in London.  The message was received right on time and took twenty minutes to transmit to London.  Every possible precaution was in place: 'No risk could be taken and nothing was left to chance. Not taking any chance of a fluctuation in hydro power, the four diesel engines of the station’s stand-by plant were brought into operation as the time for the broadcast drew near. They provide more than three times the power required to operate the station for such a broadcast with no risk of fluctuation. The station became a self-contained unit.'

Everything went according to plan and Elizabeth II was heard clearly by her British Subjects twelve thousand miles away (Pimlott, 1996).  The BBC and the General Post Office in London both acknowledged that a good recording of the Broadcast had been made. The Message was later rebroadcast by the BBC at the traditional time of 3pm (Seward, 2015).

As the Broadcast begins, an announcer's voice intones: 'This is New Zealand calling the Commonwealth.  Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second'.  Then a formal, orchestral version of God Save the Queen is played.  The Queen speaks for almost exactly eight minutes of the ten-minute programme before God Save the Queen is played again at the end.

Given the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the Commonwealth features heavily in Her Majesty's speech.  The term 'Empire-Commonwealth' was still being used in this transitional era, but Elizabeth II was keen to continue her father's work in developing this new association of nations: 'the Commonwealth bears no resemblance to the Empires of the past. It is an entirely new conception, built on the highest qualities of the spirit of man: friendship, loyalty and the desire for freedom and peace.'

What is, perhaps, surprising is the Queen's apparent swipe at her Tudor predecessor and namesake Elizabeth I.  Elizabeth II states:

'Some people have expressed the hope that my reign may mark a new Elizabethan age. Frankly I do not myself feel at all like my great Tudor forebear, who was blessed with neither husband nor children, who ruled as a despot and was never able to leave her native shores.'

The reference to a 'new Elizabethan age' had been used and alluded to many times in Britain after the new Queen's accession, including by Britain's legendary (and in 1953 still serving) prime minister Winston Churchill; but the term was intended to look ahead to a new era of a flourishing of art, culture, exploration and national pride after the grim war years.  Absolutely nobody was comparing the constitutional Sovereign Elizabeth II directly or personally with Elizabeth I, who was an absolute Monarch in line with the rulers of her age.  As for 'despot', Elizabeth I was probably no more tyrannical than any other monarch of her time; in fact, as a highly intelligent, skilled political operator there are good arguments (not for here) for suggesting she was less so.  In these more patriotic times, many Britons with an interest in history were fond of 'Good Queen Bess' who faced down the Spanish Armada.  Ingrid Seward argues that Elizabeth II was making a conscious effort with her words here to appear 'warm and homely' as a wife and mother of the Commonwealth family and her British Subjects:  'She was acknowledging not only the change in her own role, but also that of her country, which was no longer to be seen as a conquering imperial power, but as a much more benevolent force in the world' (Seward, 2015).  As the Queen herself said in her speech, 'I want to show that the Crown is not merely an abstract symbol of our unity but a personal and living bond between you and me.'

 Notes:

Listening to the recording today, it is interesting to note how much more matured and confident Elizabeth II sounds than she had done in her first Broadcast the year before.  Her Majesty had been on the throne almost two years and was clearly growing in the role.  However, her voice still carries somewhat antiquated characteristics - even for the time - of 'marked' received pronunciation and has echoes of the rather grand and regal speaking style of her father and grandfather before her;  perhaps this was expected of a Monarch at the time.  Over time, Elizabeth II would soften her vowels when broadcasting and adopt the more brisk, business-like tone of contemporary BBC announcers.  The beginnings of this change can be detected in the first televised Broadcast of 1957; and ten years later, in 1963, when the Queen delivered a sound-only Broadcast due to pregnancy (as she had done in 1959), her voice seemed to have altered noticeably.

The Queen's comments about the Tangiwai rail disaster, which had happened late on Christmas Eve, were a last-minute addition to the script. 151 of the 285 passengers and crew on board the Wellington to Auckland night express lost their lives when  the Whangaehu River bridge collapsed beneath the train plunging the locomotive and first six carriages into the river.  The tragedy remains New Zealand's worst rail accident and made headlines around the world.  From 1960 onwards, when the Broadcast was pre-recorded, it would not be possible for the Queen to react in her speech to major disasters that happened in the days before Christmas.  In 1988, Elizabeth II had already recorded her Christmas Message when the Lockerbie bombing occurred on 21st December.  On that occasion, a decision was taken to record a brief audio message which was played immediately after the main programme.

It may surprise some, particularly given the fulsome tribute she had paid to her father the previous year, that Elizabeth II makes no reference in her speech to the death and ceremonial funeral of Queen Mary, who had died the previous March.  The Queen's formidable grandmother had been at the heart of the Royal Family through six reigns (beginning with her grandmother-in-law Queen Victoria), two world wars and the Abdication crisis.  Elizabeth II's Christmas speeches were as yet mainly courtier-written and the Queen had paid her public tributes to Queen Mary at the time of her death; beyond that, it was presumably regarded as a family matter.  There would not be another death of a senior member of the royal family (albeit technically a former one) until Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, when public attitudes were very different and it would have been considered unthinkable for the Queen not to have paid tribute to her former daughter-in-law in her Christmas Message (Her Majesty already having been compelled to make a special broadcast before the funeral).  Five years later, Elizabeth II would refer to the deaths of her mother and sister in her 2002 Christmas Broadcast, both having died earlier in the year.

It was reported that the Queen's Message was introduced by New Zealand mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary, who had conquered the summit of Mount Everest earlier in the year, with the news reaching Britain on Coronation Day.

Full text here