Eighty Years Ago This Week

31st January 1936 The new reign began to slip into routine with a small Privy Council meeting at 11am. The two politicians who attended, Ramsay MacDonald and Sir John Simon, each had separate audiences with the King as well. MacDonald was present in his capacity as Lord President of the Council, an antique office which still today ranks as the fourth highest of the great offices of state. It serves as a bridge between the sixteenth century government and today's.  The holder sits in Cabinet as a minister without portfolio. MacDonald's presence was a tribute to the political skills of King George V. MacDonald had been Britain's first Labour Prime Minister in 1924. It was a delicate moment in the change in British politics from its aristocratic past to a broad democracy. But for the King's easy and open espousal of the right of the Labour ministers to their posts and his willingness to treat them no differently to their more conventional predecessors, the process w...

30st January 1936 An exhibition opened at Charing Cross Underground Station on the Special Areas. These were zones of especially high unemployment in the North and Wales, mainly dependent on coal-mining, which had been designated by Act of Parliament in 1934. Even though the rest of the country was slowly pulling itself out of its economic problems, conditions in the Special Areas had not improved much since the depths of the Depression. London, then as now, was the most prosperous part of the country and part of the exhibition's goal was to bring home to them how fortunate Londoners were. It was a cause close to the new King's heart and he had written a letter of support for the exhibition before his accession. In 1929 he had toured the coal-mining areas of Durham and Northumberland, expressing sympathy for the miners and horror at their conditions. The whole visit and his comments had been deplored by Lord Londonderry, a government minister and major mine owner.

The funeral of King George V had brought a huge influx of dignitaries to London and Royal duty demanded that the most senior, at least, be received by the King. The day after the funeral these included Baron von Neurath, the German foreign ministers, and Prince Stahremberg, the Vice-Chancellor of Austria. The King had also spoken to another German visitor, his distant kinsman,  ardent Nazi and wild fantasist, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg. The Duke reported to the German foreign ministry  a ludicrously improbable conversation in which the King claimed that an alliance between Germany and Britain was urgently necessary and that he intended to take control of government personally. Worryingly, this type of nonsense found an eager audience in Berlin and quite unrealistic ideas developed as to how the new King might be exploited.

As the funeral procession was on Marble Arch, the police cordon broke and the crowd surged towards the gun carriage bearing the coffin. The King had a horrible vision of the coffin being knocked to the ground, but mercifully it got through safely. The incident left a deep enough impression for the Duke of Windsor, as he had become, to claim that he would inspect every police checkpoint on the funeral procession for his brother, King George VI, in 1952 to ensure that there would be no repetition.

The final night of the lying-in-state was enhanced by a striking innovation. By one account it was the idea of Edward VIII himself and he certainly espoused it with enthusiasm. At around midnight he and his three brothers wearing ceremonial military uniforms took the places of the regular troops around the catafalque and stood guard over their father's coffin. It was a striking and moving act of homage to the dead King and it was recorded in a painting after the event entitled The Princes' Vigil: 12.15am, January 28, 1936. In 2002 the gesture was repeated at the state funeral of his daughter-in-law, Elizabeth, the Queen Mother with four of her grandsons, including the Prince of Wales, standing guard.

The third day of the lying-in-state of King George V was a Sunday and the number of mourners surged yet again. The weather was also much better. At its longest the queue formed a large U shape running west to Vauxhall Bridge, crossing the bridge and the running eastwards as far as Westminster Bridge, just across the river from its destination. By midnight 250,000 people had paid their respects, making a total of half-a-million since the Hall had opened its doors on the Friday morning. It was decided to keep Westminster Hall open through the night, wisely as the queue still reached Vauxhall Bridge at midnight.

The second day of King George V's lying-in-state was a Saturday and the number of people who came to pay their respects was far above that on the previous day. By the time Westminster Hall closed its doors at midnight, 150,000 people had passed through compared to 110,000 the day before. There was a noticeable increase in the number of mourners when businesses closed at lunchtime.  They had waited for three hours or more, enduring rain and fog in a queue that stretched up the embankment and halfway across Vauxhall Bridge, a mile from the Hall.