Posted by Ben Walters, 16 September 2022, 1:53pm.
Bodies taking up public space is a kind of politics.
As I write this, on the morning of Friday 16 September 2022, the government has just closed the Queue for those wishing to view the late Queen’s coffin as it lies in state in Westminster Hall. Nearly five miles long, snaking along the south bank of the Thames from Westminster to Southwark, it is officially at capacity.
In recent weeks, some have asked what it would take for the people of this country to take to the streets. Now we know.
What it means is a different matter. The motivations of those willing to stand in line for hours – perhaps almost a day – are, of course, personal and hugely various.
To some, she was sovereign, to some Commander in Chief, to some Supreme Governor of the Church; to others, an employer or patron, an imagined family member, the face from the news, a part of history, and so on.
When asked by reporters why they are there, many in the Queue express highly generalised senses of gratitude, love, duty or occasion.
Perhaps over seven decades at the centre of so many deep imaginaries, Elizabeth’s body has simply accreted an abundance of meanings, more than enough to make of the riverside walk a modern pilgrims’ way.
Perhaps the phenomenon has also taken on a momentum distinct from any initial individual motivations: show the British a queue and they’ll join it.
Its participants’ intentions aside, however, the Queue is a mediated spectacle that has been put to particular political use at a particular time.
During a period of cataclysmic upheaval, it is a marvel of inertia, a reassuringly placid non-event. In this sense, it is like Elizabeth II.
Right now, we are in a lull between the most obviously eye-catching bits of pageantry around the death of the monarch.
This might be a period for mainstream media coverage to engage with what is at stake in this moment in constitutional terms; or indeed with subjects not directly related to the Queen’s death, such as the accession of the most radically rightwing cabinet in UK history, the acceleration of the processes of structural inequality described as the cost of living crisis, the sharp new rise in COVID transmission rates, the cascading collapse of the planet’s capacity to sustain life as we know it, and so on.
Instead, since the arrival of the Queen’s coffin in the capital, national media have directed our attention to the Queue, to an absurd extent.
It is an interesting thing, for sure. But not that interesting, given the state of the country and the world.
It is a lot of people politely standing in a line that advances at a predictable pace.
So the insistence that we remain focused on it, through a 24-hour feed streamed by the BBC if the mood takes us, is itself interesting. Other large gatherings in central London, such as marches in support of trans rights, are certainly not considered so newsworthy.
In some ways, the Queue seems to supply the lack it marks. It substitutes for the thing we cannot see. It stands in for the Queen.
It does this partly in the sense of providing something to look at when her body is beyond witness (both because she has passed on and because the coffin itself is closed) and no ceremony of pomp is underway.
But perhaps it also stands in for the Queen phenomenologically. In its very dullness and non-specificity, it seems to represent the kind of unflappably neutral nothingness that was the Queen’s own distinguishing characteristic.
Like her, it must be seen to be believed and, like her, it seems to offer little in terms of stimulation beyond that.
No singing, no dancing; no emoting; no demanding.
This last seems critical. The Queue might be seen as a kind of anti-protest – a huge public gathering seeming to assert an investment not in change but in continuity.
The biggest problem we face, it seems, is that more people want to pay loyal tribute than conditions allow.
The Queue’s members are there to bear brief, quiet witness to an absence, having waited a working day or longer to do so, and then to go.
What do we want? Nothing. When do we want it? Whenever it is made available.
To be clear, I am not saying this accounts for the actual thoughts and feelings of those in the Queue, but that this is what media coverage of it implies.
It’s not hard to imagine whose interests are served by the insistent spectacularisation of this apparent force for unchange, and why its complex meanings might be flattened into a signifier of grateful deference. It’s notable too that this great placidity occupies a part of London – the south bank of the Thames – historically associated with licentious disorder.
The Queue seems dignified, quiet, unobjectionable. It keeps calm and carries on. Yet it takes up so much space, it distracts from so many critical realities, and it’s hard for anything else to happen while it is there. It seems a fitting tribute.
