Silver Jubilee 1977
June 1977 was the official month of Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee; the 25th anniversary of her reign.
She had become Queen of Great Britain in February 1952 on the death of her father George IV and was crowned on 2 June 1953.Young and considered beautiful, Elizabeth was a popular monarch. She was seen to bring glamour to post-war Britain that was only just coming out of rationing.
Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip had four children: Charles in 1948, Anne in 1950, Andrew in 1960 and Edward in 1964. There was a general public appreciation of a hard working queen fulfilling her public duties and raising a family.
The Silver Jubilee celebrations began with church services held across Great Britain on 6 February 1977. Then in May the Queen left London for a goodwill tour around Britain. Later in the year, she and Prince Philip went on a tour of the Commonwealth that included New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the West Indies.
The official Jubilee days coincided with the queen's official birthday, which takes place on one of the first three Saturdays in June. On 6 June, Elizabeth lit a bonfire beacon at Windsor Castle and a chain of beacons lit up across the nation to mark the start of the celebrations. The following day, she attended a service of thanksgiving at St Paul's Cathedral followed by lunch at the Guildhall before returning home in a procession. An estimated 1 million people lined the route down the Mall to Buckingham Palace.
Celebrations were planned across the nation throughout June. These included thousands of street parties, with 4,000 organised events in London alone. In the capital, commemorative events included an Easter Parade organised by London Transport. The parade was led by three red buses, one from each of the decades of Elizabeth’s reign.
They were followed by 25 buses, painted silver and refurbished with carpets woven with the queen's cipher and the years of her reign. The parade passed through central London from Hyde Park to Battersea. In other commemorative projects, Leicester Square was pedestrianised and the Jubilee Gardens on South Bank were laid out.
Another major project was the Silver Jubilee Walkway. Metal plaques with motifs combining a crown with the dome of St Paul's were inlaid into the pavements at key point along the walkway route. This passes through central London, and includes Leicester Square to Buckingham Palace, Royal Festival Hall, the Tower of London and St Paul's. The queen officially opened the walkway during a Royal Progress down the Thames from Greenwich to Lambeth.
A final memorable event during the year was the release of the Sex Pistols' anti-monarchist anthem 'God Save the Queen'. The song made it to number 2 in the charts despite radio station play-list bans. This probably reflected the some of the antipathy towards the establishment and the lavish celebrations at a time when economic conditions were depressed, including much unemployment. The band were arrested during the official celebrations on 7 June after trying to give a public performance of the song from a boat on the Thames.
