Silver Jubilee Celebrations
The 7th of June 1977 AD
Although Queen Elizabeth II actually acceded to the throne on February 6 1952 , it was decided to celebrate her Silver Jubilee on June 7, coinciding with her official birthday, as even in Britain the weather is going to be better in June than in February.
Formal celebrations were held in London , the Queen and Prince Philip travelling from Buckingham Palace to St Paul’s Cathedral in the state coach, their route taking in Trafalgar Square and Fleet Street. At St Paul’s 2,700 of the great and the good joined the royal family in commemorating the milestone.
Around the country, however, celebrations of a more intimate nature were the order of the day. Schools were closed; many factories and offices likewise made it a holiday; and for once our diffidence played second fiddle to our love of a good knees-up. Tens of thousands of street parties had been organised; jellies set; cakes baked; sandwiches cut. The national drinks of Tizer, Vimto, R. White’s Lemonade and Irn-Bru sold by the bucketful for the kids; parents made do with beer and (so rumour had it) for the very posh Liebfraumilch.
A wonderful discordant note was sounded by the Sex Pistols, however, who managed to get themselves arrested in one of Malcolm McLaren ’s best stunts, playing their anti-establishment God Save the Queen on a boat a short distance from Parliament. The song was supposedly number 2 that week: banned from the airwaves, many think it really sold more than the official chart-topper, Rod Stewart with I Don’t Want to Talk About It. Personally I was too full of pork pies to care.
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