Abbey Has Room For About 7500 Persons

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27055, 2 June 1953, Page 7 (Supplement)

Abbey Has Room For About 7500 Persons

FULLY REPRESENTATIVE ATTENDANCE

[Specially written for "The Press” by

NIGEL THORPE

LONDON, May 22.

Westminster Abbey will have room for about 7500 persons to witness the Coronation Ceremony. This may seem a very small number compared with the 50,000,000 inhabitants of the British Isles, and very small indeed compared with the population of the world. Yet, this small number, by careful arrangement will be fully representative.

Invitations to attend the Ceremony are sent, generally not to individuals but to organisations, societies, trade unions and so forth.

Certain individuals must be at the Coronation. Her Majesty’s Judges, all of them, will occupy the “Judges’ Box” overlooking the Bishops in their stalls below.

All peers who are members of the Orders of Chivalry, such as the Garter, the Thistle, St. Patrick, or are Grand Commanders of the Orders of .Knighthood, or members of the Imperial Order of the Crown of India, or holders of the Order of Merit will, because of their eminence, be invited to be present. They will not have to chance their luck in the peers’ ballot for seats. The orders of Knighthood will be represented by knights chosen by each Order. The Army, Navy and Royal Air Force will be represented by personnel chosen by the Departments concerned. Famous marshals and admirals will be taking part in the ceremony and will also be there in their own right, as it were. Dames Grand Cross will also be invited.

Representatives of other monarchies must not be the actual Sovereign. No foreign crowned head may be present at any British Coronation. A Crown Prince, or a Sovereign’s consort, such as Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands may attend, however.

Republican countries are represented by their Ambassadors, who usually wear the ceremonial diplomatic dress of their country.

There are no rules as to what type of dress must be worn, except that mourning is definitely barred. Our Coronations are regarded as joyous affairs. Full evening dress, or tails, is acceptable. Indeed, such is the sensible and flexible outlook at the Earl Marshal’s Office that even “a dark lounge suit is sufficient.”

The Lord Mayor and the Corporation of the City of London will be present. In fact, until Henry VIII’s time the King of England was not King of London until he had been declared so by the Corporation.

The trade unionists will be represented by members of the Trade Union Congress, the doctors by representatives of the British Medical Association; surgeons and physicians by members of their Colleges; scientists by representatives from the Royal Society and Roy;.l Charter institutions; and the religious denominations will also be represented. The Moderator of the Free Churches, for example, will be at the Abbey.

The Commonwealth Prime Ministers and High Commissioners in London of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Ceylon and Pakistan will be present. The Governors of the Colonies will not come to London, because they will be busy holding ceremonies and declaring Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as the crowned head of their territories.

All the Lords Lieutenant of the Counties must attend in order to carry back the glad tidings, as personal repre- •

sentatives of the Sovereign, to the inhabitants of their counties. With radio, television and newspapers, that is no trouble to them today.

The Barons of the Cinque Ports— Hastings, Sandwich, Dover, New Romney and Hythe—had, because of the one-time pre-eminent importance of the ports, the job of holding the canopy over the Sovereign when, after enthronement in Westminster Hall, he proceeded across to the Abbey for his Coronation. Since the time of George IV there has been no enthronement in Westminster HalL The Sovereign drives direct from Buckingham Palace to the Abbey, so the Barons now hold Royal Standards during the Service and subsequently return them to the Standard B'earers.

Industry will be represented by the Federation of British Industries and other organisations.

There is not room for all Members of Parliament; only some of them will be at the Abbey, but all the principal officers of the Houses of Parliament will attend, however, led by Mr Speaker and the Lord Chancellor.

The policy that has been followed in deciding who shall be at the Coronation has been to allow the various organisations to choose their own representatives. In this way it is hoped that the Ceremony 'will be witnessed by as great a cross-section of the British people as is possible. The choice has not been dictated from the top, but rather it has been left to latent British good sense and responsibility to make the Coronation gathering a unified collection of several thousand individuals from all walks of life.