Geraint Davies – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II
The tribute made Geraint Davies, the Labour MP for Swansea West, in the House of Commons on 10 September 2022.
There is nothing more important to a child than their mother. She provides comfort, security and stability amid the worries of the world. She is the person assumed by all of us to go on forever. And so it was with Queen Elizabeth, the mother of our country, our queen of hearts.
The people across the four nations of the United Kingdom owe so much to Her Majesty the Queen for providing steady continuity through war and peacetime, through the peaks and troughs of change. So we feel a sense of deep grief across our United Kingdom for the loss of our eternal mother. For me personally, I feel a special affection as my own mother was of the same generation and met my father during the war, when he served in the Royal Navy.
Elizabeth bore the weight of the United Kingdom on her young shoulders from the age of 25, when Winston Churchill was the Prime Minister, for over 70 years of global change. She has been an anchor for Britain in a sea of change through 15 Prime Ministers, 14 US Presidents and seven Popes, supporting the world with the long-term interests of her communities and nations in mind, not the short-term expedients of others. As a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, she had to lead a family often in personal turbulence, in the public view, with a steady hand, carefully balancing the interests of the country with those of her own family.
I had the privilege of meeting the Queen briefly on behalf of Swansea West on a few occasions since 2010. In those fleeting moments, I could appreciate her wisdom and quiet gravity amid her sunny demeanour whatever the weather. She will remain loved by so many millions for so many things. Her continuity has helped anchor our fundamental values of fairness and democracy amid the undulating changes of political leadership, and the storms and sunshine of global events.
We shall never forget the Queen, and the people of Wales—and of Swansea West—will always hold her in our hearts for her service and devotion to our country. Our thoughts are of course with her family, wishing them strength at this most difficult time, and the comfort of remembering, with love and affection, the happy times shared together as a family with Elizabeth, who will continue to live in our hearts.
Finally, for Swansea West, I recall how on 14 May 1946 Elizabeth, at the tender age of 20, attended a recital of poetry at Wigmore Hall with her mother, Queen Elizabeth, and sister, Princess Margaret. There Dylan Thomas, Wales’s greatest poet—born in Uplands in my constituency of Swansea West—read “Fern Hill”. The last verse reads:
“Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow-thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh, as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.”
Diolch yn fawr, Elizabeth. Rest in peace. God save the King, and the Prince and Princess of Wales.
