queen's speech 1953

THE QUEEN'S SPEECH

§ The QUEEN, being seated on the Throne, and attended by Her Officers of State (the Lords being in their robes), commanded the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, through the Lord Great Chamberlain, to let the Commons know, "It is Her Majesty's pleasure they attend Her immediately in this House."

§ Who being come, with their Speaker:

§ Her Majesty was pleased to speak as follows:

§ "My Lords and Members of the House of Commons

§ "I look forward eagerly to the visits which I am about to pay with My dear Husband to My peoples in overseas countries of the Commonwealth and Empire.

§ "My Government will continue to regard the relaxation of international tension and the preservation of peace as prime objects of their policy. To this end they are persisting in their efforts to bring about an early meeting between the Soviet Union and the three Western Powers.

§ "My Government will continue to take their full part in all efforts by the United Nations to promote international co-operation. The North Atlantic Alliance is fundamental to My Government's policy and they will do their utmost to keep it vital and strong.

§ "My Government are resolved to work constantly in harmony with the Government of the United States of America. They will also continue to co-operate with their partners in Western Europe to promote European unity and economic well-being. They hope to see the early establishment of the European Defence Community and will afford it all possible support.

§ "My Government will continue to work for a settlement of the problem of German unity, in conjunction with the Governments of France and the United States and in consultation with the German Federal Government. They will also maintain their efforts for the conclusion of an Austrian State Treaty.

§ "Though the fighting has ceased in Korea My Forces have still a part to play there under the United Nations Command. My Government are co-operating in efforts to bring about a political conference on Korea.

§ "My Government hope for a renewal of those friendly relations which have been traditional between this country and Persia and for an early resumption of normal diplomatic relations between the two countries.

§ "My Government attach the utmost importance to continued consultation with their partners in the Commonwealth and will take part in the Conference of Commonwealth Finance Ministers which will be held in Australia in January.

§ "My Ministers will continue to work for the progress and well-being of the 3 peoples of My Colonial territories and protectorates. They will seek to ensure that measures of social and political advancement and of economic development are promoted in the interests of all races.

§ "My Government will ensure that My Forces continue to make their full contribution to world peace and stability.

§ "A measure will be introduced to strengthen and improve the effectiveness of My Reserve Forces and a proposal to continue the present National Service Scheme for a further period will also be presented to you.

§ "Members of the House of Commons

§ "The Estimates for Public Services will be laid before you in due course.

§ "It will be the constant aim of My Ministers to strengthen the national economy and thereby to safeguard the high standards of the social services and the stability of employment. To this end they will strive for a further improvement in the balance of overseas payments by encouraging the expansion of exports and of services earning income from abroad.

§ "My Ministers will continue to encourage the building of houses and schools. They will also stimulate a vigorous resumption of slum clearance. Legislation will be introduced to facilitate the repair and improvement of existing houses both by local authorities and private owners.

§ "Bills will be laid before you to amend the financial provisions of the Town and Country Planning Acts and the existing arrangements for payment of equalisation grant to local authorities in Scotland.

§ "Legislation will be introduced to effect leasehold reform in England and Wales and in Scotland.

§ "My Ministers will continue to encourage the agricultural industry to increase food production and improve the quality and efficiency of home output. My Ministers are consulting farmers and the trades concerned about new methods of providing price guarantees and of marketing which 4 will be required as rationing and allocation cease to be necessary.

§ "My Government will also continue to pay close attention to the welfare of the fishing industry.

§ "Proposals will be laid before you for the transfer of responsibility for atomic energy from the Ministry of Supply to a statutory corporation.

§ "A measure will be introduced to bring the salaries of the judges of My Superior Courts of Law in the United Kingdom more into keeping with the dignity and responsibilities of their office.

§ "Legislation will be proposed to revise, consolidate and extend the law on the safety, health and welfare of miners and quarrymen, to provide benefit for certain further cases of disablement from industrial diseases, to amend and consolidate the law relating to food and drugs and to restrict night working in the baking industry.

§ "My Ministers are attentively examining the Road Traffic Acts with a view to introducing further legislation to improve road safety and promote the orderly use of the roads.

§ "Bills will be introduced to amend the constitution of the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery, to provide for a new governing body for the National Museum of Antiquities in Scotland and to prolong the powers of the National Film Finance Corporation.

§ "Among other measures which you will be invited to pass will be Bills to remove the restrictions at present imposed upon private persons wishing to trade in raw cotton and wind up the Raw Cotton Commission and to reorganise electricity supply in Scotland.

§ "My Ministers will lay before you their proposals for carrying out their policy for television development.

§ "My Ministers will give further consideration to the question of reform of the House of Lords.

§ "I pray that the blessing of Almighty God will rest upon your counsels."

§ Thereafter, Her Majesty withdrew.

§ House adjourned during pleasure.

§ House resumed at three of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

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Queen's Speech 1953, Auckland

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The Queen’s Speech

Written by Vaughan Yarwood      

On the evening of December 25, 1953, radios around New Zealand tuned in, as usual, to the Queen’s annual Christmas Day broadcast to the Commonwealth. But this year, the voice wasn’t coming from very far away. The 27-year ­old Queen Elizabeth II was seated at a desk before two microphones in a room at Govern­ment House in Auckland. With the scent of flowers drifting through the window and city lights beginning to show beyond the darkening shrubs, she reeled off her itinerary: Bermuda, Jamaica, Fiji, Tonga and now, as of two days before, Auckland. Next would come Australia, Ceylon and “a glimpse of other places in Asia, Africa and in the Mediterranean”, before she set foot once more on English soil.

A month earlier, on November 23, the Queen and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, had left a chill London at the start of what one journalist dubbed “the greatest royal progress in history”. No reigning monarch had ventured so far. And now, Queen Elizabeth had fetched up on the shores of her farthest-flung dominion. Her words, broadcast on six channels through a Post Office transmitter at Himatangi near Palmerston North and a naval radio station at Waiouru, circled the globe telling those who cared to listen, from Adelaide to Zanzibar, that she felt “completely and most happily at home” in New Zealand.

The Queen arrived in Auckland, in drizzle and a buffeting westerly, aboard the royal yacht—the commandeered Shaw, Savill and Albion liner Gothic —and departed five weeks later, trailed by flag-bedecked oyster boats, from Bluff. During this (today, unthinkably long) royal visit, an estimated two-thirds of New Zealanders saw the Queen and 4000 were formally presented to her. She visited marae, sat through films, saw factories and farms, visited the sick and mingled with all.

On Christmas Day, after the inevitable round of presents, turkey and plum pudding, the Queen and Prince Philip left their 120-strong entourage behind and indulged in a little unsupervised sightseeing by car, surprising 40 or so fellow sightseers on the summit of Mt Eden.

An earlier precautionary recording of her Christmas Day broadcast had been sent to the BBC in London by officials skilled in antici­pating mishap. But there was no technical glitch and the live broadcast went out. Which was just as well, because, for perhaps the only time in her life, at the close of her message, the Queen came close to delivering breaking news.

“Last night, a most grievous railway accident took place at Tangiwai which will have brought tragedy into many homes and sorrow into all…”

Early on Christmas morning, the tele­phone had woken the Prime Minister, Sidney Holland, at his room in the Grand Hotel, a few hundred metres from Government House, to tell him that the northbound express had crashed into the Whangaehu River. The final death toll in this, the country’s worst railway disaster, was 151.

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Queen's speech in Auckland, 1953

The Queen’s speech from Auckland, December 1953. (Audio removed)

This is the first time that I have spoken to New Zealanders in their own homeland and my first words must be to tell you how happy I am to be amongst you. I am looking forward with hope and happiness to the journey I am to take with my husband, from this city to the southernmost part of the South Island. A journey during which I shall meet many of you in your own homes and see something of the beauty and greatness of your country.

I want to thank you, too, for your welcome to my husband. We have both been deeply moved this morning. It has indeed been an inspiring experience for us to travel across two vast oceans from one side of the world to the other and to find ourselves not in a foreign land and amongst alien people, but at home with our kinsmen.

Radio New Zealand Sound Archives Reference: D 548/3-5 Sound files may not be reused without permission from Radio New Zealand Sound Archives Ngā Taonga Kōrero.

How to cite this page

Queen's speech in Auckland, 1953, URL: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/sound/queens-speech-in-auckland, (Manatū Taonga — Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 16-Oct-2013

• Queen Elizabeth
• Auckland City

at Christmas, I asked you all, whatever your religion, to pray for me on the day of my Coronation — to pray that God would give me wisdom and strength to carry out the promises that I should then be making. Throughout this memorable day I have been uplifted and sustained by the knowledge that your thoughts and prayers were with me. I have been aware all the time that my peoples, spread far and wide throughout every continent and ocean in the world, were united to support me in the task to which I have now been dedicated with such solemnity. Many thousands of you came to London from all parts of the Commonwealth and Empire to join in the ceremony, but I have been conscious too of the millions of others who have shared in it by means of wireless or television in their homes. All of you, near or far, have been united in one purpose. It is hard for me to find words in which to tell you of the strength which this knowledge has given me. The ceremonies you have seen today are ancient, and some of their origins are veiled in the mists of the past. But their spirit and their meaning shine through the ages never, perhaps, more brightly than now. I have in sincerity pledged myself to your service, as so many of you are pledged to mine. Throughout all my life and with all my heart I shall strive to be worthy of your trust. In this resolve I have my husband to support me. He shares all my ideals and all my affection for you. Then, although my experience is so short and my task so new, I have in my parents and grandparents an example which I can follow with certainty and with confidence. There is also this. I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but the living strength and majesty of the Commonwealth and Empire; of societies old and new; of lands and races different in history and origins but all, by God's Will, united in spirit and in aim. Therefore I am sure that this, my Coronation, is not the symbol of a power and a splendor that are gone but a declaration of our hopes for the future, and for the years I may, by God's Grace and Mercy, be given to reign and serve you as your Queen. I have been speaking of the vast regions and varied peoples to whom I owe my duty but there has also sprung from our island home a theme of social and political thought which constitutes our message to the world and through the changing generations has found acceptance both within and far beyond my Realms. Parliamentary institutions, with their free speech and respect for the rights of minorities, and the inspiration of a broad tolerance in thought and expression — all this we conceive to be a precious part of our way of life and outlook. During recent centuries, this message has been sustained and invigorated by the immense contribution, in language, literature, and action, of the nations of our Commonwealth overseas. It gives expression, as I pray it always will, to living principles, as sacred to the Crown and Monarchy as to its many Parliaments and Peoples. I ask you now to cherish them — and practice them too; then we can go forward together in peace, seeking justice and freedom for all men. As this day draws to its close, I know that my abiding memory of it will be, not only the solemnity and beauty of the ceremony, but the inspiration of your loyalty and affection.

I thank you all from a full heart.

God bless you all.  

More History

Christmas Message, 1953

Delivered on 25 December 1953.

Last Christmas I spoke to you from England; this year I am doing so from New Zealand.

Auckland, which I reached only two days ago, is, I suppose, as far as any city in the world from London, and I have travelled some thousands of miles through many changing scenes and climates on my voyage here.

Despite all that, however, I find myself today completely and most happily at home. Of course, we all want our children at Christmas time - for that is the season above all others when each family gathers at its own hearth. I hope that perhaps mine are listening to me now and I am sure that when the time comes they, too, will be great travellers.

My husband and I left London a month ago, but we have already paid short visits to Bermuda, Jamaica, Fiji and Tonga, and have passed through Panama. I should like to thank all our hosts very warmly for the kindness of their welcome and the great pleasure of our stay.

In a short time we shall be visiting Australia and later Ceylon and before we end this great journey we shall catch a glimpse of other places in Asia, Africa and in the Mediterranean.

So this will be a voyage right round the world - the first that a Queen of England has been privileged to make as Queen. But what is really important to me is that I set out on this journey in order to see as much as possible of the people and countries of the Commonwealth and Empire, to learn at first hand something of their triumphs and difficulties and something of their hopes and fears.

At the same time 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.

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 forbear, who was blessed with neither husband nor children, who ruled as a despot and was never able to leave her native shores.

But there is at least one very significant resemblance between her age and mine. For her Kingdom, small though it may have been and poor by comparison with her European neighbours, was yet great in spirit and well endowed with men who were ready to encompass the earth.

Now, this great Commonwealth, of which I am so proud to be the Head, and of which that ancient Kingdom forms a part, though rich in material resources is richer still in the enterprise and courage of its peoples.

Little did those adventurous heroes of Tudor and Stuart times realise what would grow from the settlements which they and later pioneers founded. From the Empire of which they built the frame, there has arisen a world-wide fellowship of nations of a type never seen before.

In that fellowship the United Kingdom is an equal partner with many other proud and independent nations, and she is leading yet other still backward territories forward to the same goal. All these nations have helped to create our Commonwealth, and all are equally concerned to maintain, develop and defend it against any challenge that may come.

As I travel across the world today I am ever more deeply impressed with the achievement and the opportunity which the modern Commonwealth presents.

Like New Zealand, from whose North Island I am speaking, every one of its nations can be justly proud of what it has built for itself on its own soil.

But their greatest achievement, I suggest, is the Commonwealth itself, and that owes much to all of them. Thus formed, 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.

To that new conception of an equal partnership of nations and races I shall give myself heart and soul every day of my life.

I wished to speak of it from New Zealand this Christmas Day because we are celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace, who preached the brotherhood of man.

May that brotherhood be furthered by all our thoughts and deeds from year to year. In pursuit of that supreme ideal the Commonwealth is moving steadily towards greater harmony between its many creeds, colours and races despite the imperfections by which, like every human institution, it is beset.

Already, indeed, in the last half-century it has proved itself the most effective and progressive association of peoples which history has yet seen; and its ideal of brotherhood embraces the whole world. To all my peoples throughout the Commonwealth I commend that Christmas hope and prayer.

And now I want to say something to my people in New Zealand. Last night a most grievous railway accident took place at Tangiwai which will have brought tragedy into many homes and sorrow into all upon this Christmas day.

I know there is no one in New Zealand, and indeed throughout the Commonwealth, who will not join with my husband and me in sending to those who mourn a message of sympathy in their loss. I pray that they and all who have been injured may be comforted and strengthened.

This work is in the public domain worldwide because it was created by a public body of the United Kingdom with Crown Status and commercially published before 1974.

See Crown copyright artistic works , Crown copyright non-artistic works and List of Public Bodies with Crown Status .

Public domain Public domain false false

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Coronation Speech - June 2, 1953

Queen Elizabeth II's speech delivered on the evening of her coronation day.

When I spoke to you last, at Christmas, I asked you all, whatever your religion, to pray for me on the day of my Coronation — to pray that God would give me wisdom and strength to carry out the promises that I should then be making.

Throughout this memorable day I have been uplifted and sustained by the knowledge that your thoughts and prayers were with me. I have been aware all the time that my peoples, spread far and wide throughout every continent and ocean in the world, were united to support me in the task to which I have now been dedicated with such solemnity.

Many thousands of you came to London from all parts of the Commonwealth and Empire to join in the ceremony, but I have been conscious too of the millions of others who have shared in it by means of wireless or television in their homes. All of you, near or far, have been united in one purpose. It is hard for me to find words in which to tell you of the strength which this knowledge has given me.

The ceremonies you have seen today are ancient, and some of their origins are veiled in the mists of the past. But their spirit and their meaning shine through the ages never, perhaps, more brightly than now. I have in sincerity pledged myself to your service, as so many of you are pledged to mine. Throughout all my life and with all my heart I shall strive to be worthy of your trust.

In this resolve I have my husband to support me. He shares all my ideals and all my affection for you. Then, although my experience is so short and my task so new, I have in my parents and grandparents an example which I can follow with certainty and with confidence.

There is also this. I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but the living strength and majesty of the Commonwealth and Empire; of societies old and new; of lands and races different in history and origins but all, by God's Will, united in spirit and in aim.

Therefore I am sure that this, my Coronation, is not the symbol of a power and a splendor that are gone but a declaration of our hopes for the future, and for the years I may, by God's Grace and Mercy, be given to reign and serve you as your Queen.

I have been speaking of the vast regions and varied peoples to whom I owe my duty but there has also sprung from our island home a theme of social and political thought which constitutes our message to the world and through the changing generations has found acceptance both within and far beyond my Realms.

Parliamentary institutions, with their free speech and respect for the rights of minorities, and the inspiration of a broad tolerance in thought and expression — all this we conceive to be a precious part of our way of life and outlook.

During recent centuries, this message has been sustained and invigorated by the immense contribution, in language, literature, and action, of the nations of our Commonwealth overseas. It gives expression, as I pray it always will, to living principles, as sacred to the Crown and Monarchy as to its many Parliaments and Peoples. I ask you now to cherish them — and practice them too; then we can go forward together in peace, seeking justice and freedom for all men.

As this day draws to its close, I know that my abiding memory of it will be, not only the solemnity and beauty of the ceremony, but the inspiration of your loyalty and affection.

I thank you all from a full heart.

God bless you all.

Speech from http://www.emersonkent.com/speeches/coronation_speech_elizabeth_ii.htm .

Neither the Catt Center nor Iowa State University is affiliated with any individual in the Archives or any political party. Inclusion in the Archives is not an endorsement by the center or the university.

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From the Observer archive, 31 May 1953: Power of speech is a crowning glory

One of the shrewdest observers of the modern scene said to me this week, in effect: "Sound radio will die next Tuesday. It will die at 10.15 in the morning, on the dot, when the television programme on the Coronation begins." Indeed, I could hardly deny that those with television sets are unlikely to leave their screens blank on Tuesday, in favour of sound radio. Even the prices of seats on the Coronation route include (after "champagne buffet") the essential words "and television".

It will, of course, be a great day and a great week for television. Nor, at a time of unity, do I want to involve us all in a great argy-bargy about the television-radio rivalry; I merely remind my shrewd friend that the burial of sound next Tuesday may be premature. The mourners may, for instance, look a little out of place with their crepe bands at 8pm, when the voices of the Commonwealth come in. It seems to be modelled, this Long Live the Queen programme, on past Christmas Days and that is a noble kind of example to follow. Crowds in London streets; a commentator in the deserted Abbey; bonfire-lighters and ox-roasters; the sirens of boats on the Mersey; troops of British armies abroad; the Queen's subjects in the Commonwealth; talking drums from Rhodesia; Antipodean messages: all this, amid much more, with a final roll on the drums from the Prime Minister – and then the young voice of the Queen herself, speaking to all her peoples.

All this does not present much of the appearance of a corpse. Can television match this programme for sonority and range and imagination? Why, its programmes will join it for the voices of Her Majesty and her first minister – on sound only! But I seem to be playing partial, which I am not. I forecast merely that sound, marshalling its forces for the week, shows itself a formidable power.

In the simple matter of jubilatory entertainment, the names assembled of clowns and cantors read like a muster roll. Variety opens the ball with its Commonwealth Gala today, studded with indigenous glitters and southern stars. Since all revelry has a decent basis in recollection, Light Up Again revives BBC favourites of the past seven years: and, since revelry also needs a topical impulse, Let's All Go Down the Thames brings us the Woolwich Ferry as a Coronation Show-Boat, among the riparian lights, vaudeville en fête. Wilfred Pickles holds A Coronation Party in the streets of Hoxton. On the same night, Gilbert Harding in Now It's Over is giving us his "thoughts and afterthoughts" about Tuesday, which should be interesting. As for what [Peter] Ustinov and [Peter] Jones are going to do with In All Directions , I tremble to think.

Now when you consider at random the concerts – with all the BBC stops pulled out and Shakespeare, and fitting royal dramas like Happy and Glorious ; and the speeches of the luncheons of the great; and the choirs of all Great Britain in Song of Britain – then you are still only skimming off some of the cream of the BBC in Coronation week. I have no space to deal with the talks, the recollections of past Coronations, the investigations of the concept of monarchy and all the richness and variety the BBC can bring to the microphone.

For sound radio, no flowers yet. Addressing itself, through the ear only, to the imagination, it will reach the inward eye.

This is an edited extract

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The Queen’s Christmas Broadcast 1952 Transcript

After her Accession on 6 February 1952, The Queen broadcast her first Christmas Message live on the radio from her study at Sandringham, Norfolk. Read the transcript here.

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Queen Elizabeth: ( 00:06 ) Each Christmas at this time, my beloved father broadcast a message to his people in all parts of the world. Today, I am doing this to you who are now my people.

Queen Elizabeth: ( 00:22 ) As he used to do, I am speaking to you from my own home, where I am spending Christmas with my family and let me say at once how I hope that your children are enjoying themselves as much as mine are on a day which is especially the children’s festival, kept in honor of the child born of Bethlehem nearly 2,000 years ago.

Queen Elizabeth: ( 00:51 ) Most of you to whom I am speaking will be in your own homes, but I have a special thought for those who are saving their country in distant lands far from their families. Wherever you are, either at home or away, in snow or in sunshine, I give you my affectionate greetings with every good wish for Christmas and the New Year.

Queen Elizabeth: ( 01:22 ) At Christmas, our thoughts are always full of our homes and our families. This is the day when members of the same family try to come together, or if separated by distance or events, meet in spirit and affection by exchanging greetings. But we belong, you and I, to a far larger family. We belong, all of us, to the British Commonwealth and Empire, that immense union of nations with our home set in all the four corners of the earth.

Queen Elizabeth: ( 02:03 ) Like our own families, it can be a great path for good, a force which I believe can be of immeasurable benefit to all humanity. My father and my grandfather before him worked all our lives to unite our peoples ever more closely and to maintain its ideals, which were so near to their hearts. I shall strive to carry on their work.

Queen Elizabeth: ( 02:37 ) Already, you have given me strength to do so. For, since my accession, 10 months ago, your loyalty and affection have been an immense support and encouragement. I want to take this Christmas Day my first opportunity to thank you with all my heart. Many brave problems and difficulties confront us all, but with a new faith in the old and splendid beliefs given us by our forefathers and the strength to venture beyond the safeties of the past, I know we shall be worthy of our duty.

Queen Elizabeth: ( 03:22 ) Above all, we must keep alive that courageous spirit of adventure that is the finest quality of youth. And by youth, I do not just mean those who are young in years, I mean too all those who are young in heart, no matter how old they may be. That spirit still flourishes in this old country and in all the younger countries of our Commonwealth.

Queen Elizabeth: ( 03:56 ) On this broad foundation, let us set out to build a truer knowledge of ourselves and our fellowmen, to work for tolerance and understanding among the nations and to use the tremendous forces of science and learning for the betterment of man’s lot upon this earth. If we can do these three things with courage, with generosity and with humility, then surely we shall achieve that “Peace on earth, Goodwill toward men” which is the eternal message of Christmas, and the desire of us all.

Queen Elizabeth: ( 04:43 ) At my Coronation next June, I shall dedicate myself anew to your service. I shall do so in the presence of a great congregation, drawn from every part of the Commonwealth and Empire, while millions outside Westminster Abbey will hear the promises and the prayers being offered up within its walls, and see much of the ancient ceremony in which kings and queens before me have taken part through century upon century.

Queen Elizabeth: ( 05:22 ) You will be keeping it as a holiday, but I want to ask you all, whatever your religion may be, to pray for me on that day, to pray that God may give me wisdom and strength to carry out the solemn promises I shall be making, and that I may faithfully serve Him and you all the days of my life.

Queen Elizabeth: ( 05:52 ) May God bless and guide you all through the coming year.

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