Mayor's Monthly

As Hadleigh’s Mayor for this year I’ve had to participate in certain events which have been scheduled for some time, the Queens Platinum Jubilee, Armed Forces week and a number of other civic ceremonies. The one thing I was not expecting was the death of our beloved Queen. I was on holiday when the Town Clerk contacted me to say that the Queen was ill and that her family were on their way to join her at Balmoral, well there was no other option for me than to pack and come back to Hadleigh.

On the Queens death civic leaders have certain duties to carry out, I say duties but I did not see this as a duty, after all this was our Queen and she has been in my life for ever, she was always in our home on Christmas Day and Christmas dinner was not enjoyed until after we all heard her speak. When Dad took us all to the cinema we never left until we had all stood up for the national anthem. When this country or her family had problems she was always there as a steadying rock, I would just like to correct myself, I said this country or her family, I truly believe that to the Queen this country was her family, so to me it was not a duty but a privilege to honour her life in this towns grief.

Of course when one Monarch passes then another must accede to the throne, and so it was that our Prince was now our King, and proclamations must be read throughout the land, and that was again the responsibility of civic leaders around the country. I attended Ipswich as Hadleigh’s Mayor to not only hear the proclamation of the new King but to receive a scroll which is unique to our town, this scroll had to be read out by myself in our Market Square at an appointed time to the residents of Hadleigh proclaiming our new King. At the appointed time I was truly moved by the amount of Hadleigh residents who attended the reading and then attended St Mary’s for a short service afterwards.

On the day of the Queens funeral a 2 minute silence was to be held around the country as a mark of respect, most of you paid that respect in your own homes whilst watching the funeral, but a few of you attended a small gathering in the Market Square to pay your respects to our Queen with me and I could feel the warmth of emotion for our departed Queen from those who attended. What you have just read is what your Mayor did during this time, but what I would like you to know is that without a support team making sure that I was in the right place at the right time wearing the right attire, reading the correct script this could well have been very different, this is true up and down the country, in small parishes, towns big and small and also cities on differing scales. Plans have been in place for years for the passing of our Queen, but you don’t expect them to be implemented on your watch, and when it does happen you are just glad that you had a team around you that was paying attention.

God save the King.