London There hasn’t been anything like this in London since the 2012 Olympic Games: The British capital is preparing for a mass rush of more than 500 state guests and more than a million mourning citizens to the funeral of the late Queen Elizabeth II on Monday.
“It’s the biggest challenge we’ve ever faced,” says Andy Byford, head of Transport for London (TfL). The strike-friendly British transport workers’ unions also see it that way and have therefore canceled the industrial action originally planned for the weekend.
The fact that the British have had to learn a lot of code names in the past few days shows that the government and royal family have been preparing for this mega-event for years: from Operation “London Bridge” to Operation “Spring Tide” to Operation ” Feather” the course of the ten-day national mourning up to the funeral on Monday was planned meticulously and meticulously.
The first two operations cover the death of the Queen and its direct consequences, and the first steps taken by Charles III. as the new king. Operation Feather revolves around the logistical challenges of the Queen’s state funeral at Westminster Hall and the state funeral at Westminster Abbey.
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Hundreds of thousands of Britons have personally said goodbye to “their” Queen since Wednesday afternoon. TfL boss Byford estimates the number of mourners who want to pay their last respects to the Queen and pass by her coffin at up to 750,000. Many of them had to wait up to 20 hours in a line up to eight kilometers long. Still, authorities estimate not all will make it to Westminster Hall.
People are well prepared for the long waiting times.
(Photo: Getty Images)
The line reached its maximum planned length early on Saturday morning. Authorities urged citizens to stop traveling to London and queue up. The rush was just too big. The line is to be closed on Sunday so that the funeral service can begin promptly at 11 a.m. on Monday.
In the past few days, the “queue”, as the line of people waiting is called, has stretched from Southwark Park along the south bank of the Thames past Tower Bridge and Tate Modern via Waterloo Station and Lambeth Bridge to the Palace of Westminister .
Mourners have provisions and camping chairs with them
Anyone standing in line was given a colored bracelet so that they could go to one of the 500 mobile toilets that were specially set up or get groceries during the long wait without losing their seat. The mood was relaxed nonetheless. Many mourners had brought provisions and camping chairs. Former soccer star David Beckham also queued patiently at 2 a.m. on Friday and still only reached the Queen’s coffin after 13 hours.
The onslaught of visitors brought strong “windfall profits” into the tills of the hotels in London, which were not exactly cheap anyway. According to the travel portal Trivago, the average price for an overnight stay on the weekend of mourning rose by more than a third. Many hotels are well over 90 percent booked.
Thousands of police officers ensure security
“Safety first” is the maxim at the state ceremony: the barriers are 36 kilometers long, around 10,000 police officers are supported by around 1,500 military personnel. Special units of the Special Air Service (SAS) are also to ensure security in the capital for the first time. “This is the largest single policing event the Met Police has ever conducted. As a single event it is bigger than the 2012 Olympics,” police spokesman Stuart Cundy said.
The high security requirements are also the reason why most state guests are not allowed to drive up in front of the royal church in their luxury cars as usual. Apart from Joe Biden, almost all presidents, heads of government and monarchs of friendly royal families in west London have to change to a shuttle bus and are driven from there to the funeral service in Westminster Abbey, which seats 2,200.
Only the US President is allowed to remain seated in his armored Cadillac (nicknamed “The Beast”). It was still unclear whether the Japanese Emperor Naruhito and Israel’s President Isaac Herzog would also receive an exemption.
According to a British official, the whole event can only be compared to “hundreds of state visits in two days”. The British Foreign Ministry has therefore set up a 300-strong task force to deal with the finer points of protocol for the visiting state guests. Media professionals estimate that more than four billion people around the world will watch the funeral ceremonies on TV on Monday. That would be the biggest TV event of all time.
In addition to most of the heads of government of the 14 Commonwealth countries, prominent figures also include French President Emmanuel Macron, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. However, three countries were not invited: in addition to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the dictators from Belarus and Myanmar are also not welcome. In addition, they do not want to see Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in London. However, an ambassador from the country is welcome, it said. Also invited is the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who is said to have ordered the murder of the regime critic Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
Chinese delegation has to stay outside
According to the British Foreign Office, Chinese head of state Xi Jinping is also on the guest list – although the new British Prime Minister Liz Truss is said to want to declare China a “national security risk”. Criticism came from former Conservative party leader Ian Duncan Smith, who called the invitation to Xi “an amazing kowtow”.
But Xi won’t come anyway. Speaker of the House of Commons Lindsey Hoyle banned a delegation of Chinese MPs from entering Parliament’s Westminster Hall in retaliation for Chinese sanctions against British MPs.
The Chinese leader will not attend the funeral.
(Photo: IMAGO/ITAR-TASS)
British organizers have asked state guests to use scheduled flights if possible to avoid chaos with private jets. The “hopping” of celebrities in helicopters is also prohibited over the closed London airspace. The funeral service was also scheduled for 11 a.m. so that top politicians like Biden could travel back to New York for the United Nations general debate on the same day.
This time there is hardly any time for the usual political talks on such occasions. For example, Liz Truss will meet Joe Biden shortly afterwards in New York at the UN General Assembly. At the state funeral of Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister at the time, Harold Wilson, spoke of a “working funeral”.
However, the week of mourning was not entirely apolitical. There were isolated protests by republican opponents of the monarchy in Edinburgh, London and on Friday in Wales. “A police officer confirmed that if I wrote ‘Not My King’ on my sign, they would arrest me under the Public Order Act,” civil rights attorney Paul Powlesland tweeted.
It was only in the spring that the British Parliament passed a new security law introduced by the Johnson government, which gives the police extensive rights to determine and prevent so-called disturbances of public order at their own discretion.
The additional public holiday that the British were given on the occasion of the state funeral also has its price: According to the hospitals, many doctor’s appointments in the badly battered NHS state health system have been cancelled, which is causing the already long waiting times to be a little longer. “A short-term holiday is a nightmare for us,” the Times quoted family doctor Dr. Helen Salisbury.
>> Read here: Why the British inflation rate unexpectedly falls
The non-working day of mourning could also give the British economy a nudge into recession. Economic growth was already stagnating in the second quarter and the loss of a full working day could thwart the national accounts.
Royal bees now deliver honey to Charles III.
The week of mourning also drove some stylistic blossoms of the British monarchy. According to a report in the Daily Mail, the royal beekeeper broke the tragic news of the Queen’s death to the Queen’s bees and also informed them that Charles III is now entitled to their honey. The tradition of “Telling the Bees” has not only existed in England for centuries.
The national weather office received a “shitstorm” on the Internet after initially misleadingly announcing that the meteorologists would only distribute a weather forecast for the coming day and no longer for the whole week on social media out of “respect for the Queen”. Apparently, there was great uncertainty among many organizers as to how far the mourning should restrict public life.
The London Town Musicians are also involuntarily unemployed during national mourning. The transport association TfL banned performances at 25 places in the subway network until Tuesday. Even the arch-conservative and royalist Daily Mail asks: “Is that really what the Queen would have wanted?”
More: Thousands say goodbye to the Queen