D-Day ceremonies 6 June 2009

While royal engagements should be severely cut back as explained in Point 3 of the Manifesto, our Head of State should certainly attend the most important ceremonies and events in our national life.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the ceremonies commemorating the 65th anniversary of the D-Day Landings held in Normandy on Saturday 6 June this year. France was represented by the President of France, the USA by the President of the USA, and Britain by a discredited Prime Minister (who in his speech referred to Omaha Beach as Obama Beach!) and a subordinate royal i.e. the son of the Head of State.

Why was the Queen not present? What is the point of the Queen if she does not attend overwhelmingly important events like this one?

It has been suggested that this year’s ceremonies were originally intended to be low-key affairs compared with the 50th- & 60th-anniversary ceremonies: they might have been envisaged just as a Franco-American event to give President Obama the opportunity to visit the Normandy beaches which he missed on his last visit to Europe. After a flurry of Franco-British diplomatic activity in the run-up to June 6 – and a statement by President Obama that he would like to see the Queen attend the ceremony – ‘the Palace’ announced that the Prince of Wales would be attending on the invitation of President Sarkozy.

Why could the Queen not attend? Did she have a more important engagement for that day? Or was she or ‘the Palace’ too proud to change her plans at short notice? Or was she perhaps considered too old to make the journey to Normandy?

Many British people will remember that the Queen served in uniform during World War 2 with the women's Auxiliary Territorial Service and will realise that British D-Day survivors who risked their lives on the beaches and attended the ceremonies this year are now, like the Queen, in their 80s. This was one of the last major anniversaries which they and the Queen were able to attend.

Such a historic moment was not the time for the Queen or ‘the Palace’ to be nursing a grievance about a possible French snub – and, indeed, ‘the Palace’ actually denied that the Queen was offended: "We would like to reiterate that we have never expressed any sense of anger or frustration at all, and are content with all the arrangements that are planned," a spokeswoman said. Nor was it the time to let amour-propre get in the way of making arrangements at short notice.

This was an important international occasion when Britain absolutely needed to be represented by its Head of State.