英女王登基60周年演讲.doc

Most Gracious Sovereign,We Your faithful Commons are honoured to be here to commemorate and celebrate the sixty years of Your reign. We too are pleased to have contributed to the Jubilee Window to be revealed shortly and which will mark this occasion permanently. Time is better preserved in this historic place than in fallible human memory.Time also tells its own story. Sixty years ago, rationing meant rather more than a short wait before the arrival of the latest electronic item. Sixty years ago, Britain had just emerged from a war of an intensity never seen before or since and had slipped into the shadow of the Korean conflict. Sixty years ago, a new “Elizabethan Era” was awaited with enthusiasm tinged with uncertainty about the challenges ahead for the country.If, as Gandhi asserted, “the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others”, then Your Majesty must have found Yourself countless times over the past six decades. You have dedicated Your life to others. The daily example that You set, mirrored by our courageous armed forces of which You are Commander-in-Chief, is extraordinary. Yet perhaps Your Majesty’s most profound contribution has been to the continuity that has made change manageable.For transformation is inevitably turbulent. It has been Your singular accomplishment, Your unique capacity, to hold together that which could have been torn asunder. You have moved with the times and allowed the times to move around the rest of society.This is a different Britain from 1952 but not one detached from then. We are in so many ways a much bigger, brighter and better United Kingdom. This is a land where men and women today are equal under the law and where Your people are respected, regardless of how they live, how they look or how they love. This is a nation of many races, faiths and customs, now beginning to be reflected in Parliament. All this progress has occurred during Your reign. You have become, to many of us, a kaleidoscope Queen of a kaleidoscope country in a kaleidoscope Commonwealth.This gathering is one of many diverse events across these islands in tribute to You and this great anniversary. Our affection as a nation will rightly embrace the Duke of Edinburgh and other members of Your family. These will be moments striking for the sincerity expressed as much as for the scenery encountered. Sixty years of stability. Sixty years of security. Sixty years of certainty. Sixty years of sacrifice. Sixty years of service.Gandhi also observed that “in a gentle way, you can shake the world”. Your Majesty, in a gentle way You have shaken this United Kingdom and the world for six decades. On behalf of all the members of the House of Commons, may I thank You wholeheartedly for all that You have done, are doing and will do for the good of our country.We, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, are assembled here today to celebrate sixty years of Your reign. We record with warmth and affection our appreciation of Your dedicated service to Your people, and Your unequalled sense of public duty over the years - service and duty to which You have only recently, and so movingly, re-dedicated Yourself.We celebrate too Your stewardship of Your high office. You have personified continuity and stability while ensuring that Your role has evolved imperceptibly, with the result that the Monarchy is as integral a part of our national life today as it was 60 years ago.We rejoice in this Jubilee and we give thanks for all that it represents.At the same time, we record our gratitude for the support which You have received throughout Your reign from His Royal Highness Prince Philip, for in this year of jubilee we celebrate his service too.This is one of the first of many celebrations to be held up and down the land. In the coming months You and the Duke will travel widely throughout the Kingdom. But today You have come to Parliament, the constitutional heart of the nation, and granted us the privilege of being the first of Your people formally to honour Your Jubilee. And where better to begin the celebrations than here, in the splendour of Westminster Hall - a hall of kings and queens for almost a millennium.While this Hall has seen many historic events, few are permanently commemorated. So we look forward with great anticipation to the unveiling of the stained glass window which members of both Houses have commissioned in honour of this day. When placed in the window above the great doors, Your Coat of Arms and Royal Cypher will bathe the Hall in colour and be seen daily by members and staff as they walk through to their offices—and by the many thousands of visitors we receive here weekly, from both home and abroad.For we must remember that Your Jubilee will be celebrated with joy in Your other realms and territories, and throughout the rest of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth as we know it today is of course one of the great achievements of Your reign and under Your lea。