By Guy Trammell Jr.
At 5 years old, in London on our return trip from Indonesia, I remember Big Ben and the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Queen Elizabeth II was on the throne then, and now she has passed away after 70 years as queen. When Elizabeth told her sister Margaret their father was now the King of England, Margaret asked, “Does that mean you will be queen?” to which Elizabeth answered, “Yes, one day.” Margaret replied, “Poor you!”
Queen Elizabeth’s story is of a little girl who sacrificed her life as a wife, mother and grandmother to be of service to her country. She was at the full mercy of the press at every turn. When Princess Diana was killed in a car wreck, the country called for her to return to London to mourn with the public. However, she chose to stay at the castle in Balmoral, and as grandmother she sheltered and comforted Princess Diana’s children.
She had to serve through both Parliament and the Church of England, in a position of power, privilege, and wealth lavished on the few in the Royal Family. So where did the wealth come from, and how has her rule over British imperialism affected Royal territories?
Between 1690 and 1807, over 6 million Africans were forcibly taken to America by the Royal Adventurers on British ships protected by the Royal Family and Parliament. Africans were branded with “DY” to represent the Duke of York. The Crown opposed abolition; Bristol was a slave trade port. Eric Williams, who led the Trinidad and Tobago colonies to majority rule in 1956, said, “There is no brick in Liverpool that does not have slave blood on it.” Today British companies own over $1 trillion of Africa’s key resources.
In India, from the 1700s to the mid-20th century, about $45 trillion was stolen by the British Crown, and famines from British non-intervention policy killed over 30 million Indians. The Queen’s largest diamond, the Kohi Noor, was stolen from a 10-year-old prince, along with his land, in the 19th century. Both India and Pakistan have asked for it back, to no avail.
Queen Elizabeth II first learned she was queen while visiting Kenya. Harvard’s Caroline Elkins book, “Legacy of Violence,” tells of Britain’s detention camps in Kenya from 1954-1960, with 1.5 million Kenyans detained in barbed wire villages to suppress the Mau Mau anti-colonial revolution with torture, murder and cover-up. Queen Elizabeth’s picture hung in each detention camp, as detainees were beaten to exact their loyalty to the British Crown.
From 1967 to 1970, 3 million Nigerian Igbo people fighting for independence were massacred by order of British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and Britain prevented the United Nations from intervening. The military report stated that “everything moving” was shot.
Britain is a murderous human oppressor, and 15 countries are currently under the British Empire. Mukoma wa Ngugi of Cornell University said: “Colonialism happened to real people.”
By Amy Miller
Everyone is talking about when they met the queen. Paul McCartney met her eight or nine times; he lost count. American tourists strolling through the park met her and didn’t even know it was her.
I met her in 2018 in my pajamas in a cabin in Maine. The women in my book group were strewn about on mattresses around the living room. We had awoken at 6:30 a.m. to make coffee and join 1.9 billion other people watching Meghan and Harry walk down the aisle at St. George’s Chapel. The queen sat in front of a sea of fascinators as her beloved and impish grandson married a Black, American, divorced woman.
In years past, that marriage would have been an impossibility. But there they were, with a ceremony that befitted the occasion. The first African-American leader of the Episcopal Church quoted Martin Luther King Jr., then referenced slavery and colonialism; a Black gospel choir sang “Stand By Me,” and a 19-year-old Black cellist, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, performed.
The queen presents herself as the definition of dignity, yet somehow retains a look of humility. She has the agility to fold her well-documented pluck into a millennium of pomp. She approved this historic marriage in advance, and reportedly had a healthy relationship with Meghan, though eventually the couple, complaining of painful and sometimes racist treatment, left the royal fold and the country.
Before the day of the wedding, I could have passed Queen Elizabeth on the street and not noticed. Now I’ve watched “The Crown,” followed the death of Phillip, and listened to Oprah’s interview with Harry and Meghan.
But the calculus of colonial power does not add up to a pretty picture. I have deep misgivings about a monarch who was immune from equity hiring policies that bound the rest of her country and reportedly minimized people of color in her entourage. Or a family whose annual budget equals the entire income of countries it has ruled.
On a more intimate scale, I feel for royal family members who gave up love to fit the monarchy’s rigid rules, or held onto love at the cost of family acceptance.
Still, I love a good fairy tale. Somehow, against all odds and reality, Queen Elizabeth bridged the gap between Diana’s truth and a Disney princess. My comfortable place in the world allows me to think beyond the wide swatch of humanity that has suffered at the hands of the Queen’s nation, allows me to see in the queen that girl who was plunked on the throne 70 years ago and spent her life working to adapt to the times.
As one friend from my book group said, “To be a queen for 70 years and hold that position through all that has happened… to be a woman on the international stage in your 20s in the 1950s. Yikes.”
Color Us Connected 