The Lord Mayor of London

MR. HERMANT:

Ladies and gentlemen: Our honoured guests this evening, the Lord Mayor of London, and his wife, the Lady Mayoress, have a remarkable number of ties to Canada. Sir Robin Gillett served with the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company from 1943 to 1957; Lady Gillett was educated at a French-speaking school and still regrets the fact that she is not bilingual!

These two facts aside, the Gilletts have Canadian relations, Canadian relatives, and extremely close ties to both the Commonwealth and the Empire Club of Canada. I am sure Sir Arthur Chetwynd will elaborate on these themes later in the evening and I would not wish "to stand on his lines" as they say in the theatre.

But there are many more coincidences in the Lord Mayor's life than his one-time employer and his Canadian relationships. He was born on Lord Mayor's day and is the son of a former Lord Mayor of London. Fate would seem to have been on his side.

It appears only natural then that Sir Robin Gillett would one day inhabit the Mansion House as the Lord Mayor of London. As a matter of fact, when he actually entered the famed residence this year, the event coincided with his 55th birthday and I wouldn't have said that, Sir, if it hadn't been included in your public relations release.

But what of the background of the Lord Mayor? He has always been a sailor and loved the sea which is not surprising considering that at least one of his ancestors sailed with Nelson. Sir Robin Gillett trained at the Nautical College, Pangbourne, where he was the chief cadet and captain of the fencing team-a perfect combination for a budding Errol Flynn.

While with Canadian Pacific, he rose to the rank of staff commander-the youngest ever to hold that post at that time and before that, during the war, he ferried troop convoys through the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. But the profession of seamanship was not a lasting one and after serving aboard such famous vessels as the Empress of Scotland and the Empress of Britain, he entered the City of London in 1960, with the famous insurance firm of Lloyds of London.

His administrative and personnel talents were instantly and politically recognized because he was elected a common councillor for the City's Bassishaw Ward in 1965 and four years later, Alderman. And once again coincidence raises its head, for the same ward had been represented by his father, Sir Harold Gillett. Combining their service to the people of the area, it totals more than fifty years.

As the 649th Lord Mayor of London, Sir Robin Gillett found himself recently in the world's eye when he introduced the Queen on Silver Jubilee Day in the Guildhall of the City of London-television coverage reached more than five hundred million people and will always be remembered by those who saw it.

And speaking of the Silver Jubilee, I cannot refrain from quoting a few lines from Times' reporter Neville Hodgkinson's analysis of the events of June 6th, 1977, entitled "Britain celebrates strength of monarchy". After listing two and a half columns of the woes which have befallen Britain in recent years, he suddenly shifts to the positive by listing the following facts: four British households out of five live in a house as opposed to a flat; central heating is standard in new houses; nine households in ten have a vacuum cleaner; more than two in three, a washing machine; more than four out of five, a refrigerator; 95 % of households have a television set; Britons in 1977 will take forty-eight million holidays-almost as much as the Canadian strike rate; two-fifths of Britons visit their public houses for a drink and a chat on a regular basis; about one-fifth take part in other sports and games; well over half of all households have a car, more than a quarter a dog, and one in five, a cat; half the nation has a hobby Sir Robin Gillett is clearly in the half that has a hobby.

To quote his biography, "Throughout his life, Sir Robin Gillett has been prepared to seize the initiative wherever the opportunity arose, a characteristic reflected in his signature today which he precedes with a small robin. A bright bird, the robin, with quick eye and lively sense of humour, strongly territorial and liable to be very aggressive if his territory is threatened."

Well, Sir, I should say the City of London is in good hands and I would now ask the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Robin Gillett, to address us.

SIR ROBIN GILLETT:

Your Honour, Your Grace, Your Worships, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen: It is with some trepidation that I speak to the Empire Club. I have read the tome that you publish year by year, showing lists of distinguished speakers and what they said. I hope I am not going to say anything out of place. I merely feel that the Archbishop of Canterbury could probably say it better. I was really surprised and somewhat alarmed to find him on the guest list. Not, you understand, that I have any personal animosity to his Grace. It's just that he continually listens to me back home in the City of London. I thought that for once, apart from my permanent captive audience, the Lady Mayoress, I would have fresh fields to plough tonight. Perhaps, since the Jubilee, I could claim that we are the best double act in the business.

Before I go any further, may I thank you for those beautiful cufflinks, and whatever it is the Lady Mayoress got, which she hasn't let me see, but which doubtless was equally extravagant and pleasing. The warmth of the welcome that we have had in Canada in general and Toronto in particular has been really overwhelming.

I would like, however, to correct one small mathematical error in the curriculum vitae that was produced just now by Mr. Hermant. His wife tells me he wasn't much good at math. It is fifty-one, not fifty-five! I just look fifty-five.

I spoke, as some of you will know, today at the CNE luncheon, as a sort of surprise witness, and I was asked to speak about the Silver Jubilee, so here I won't say much about the Jubilee, because some of you were at the lunch. I thought it might be interesting to you in the far-flung wilds of the woolly west to know why the Lord Mayor should be in Toronto, apart from the fact that he is having a jolly good dinner, why he is swarming around the world, what is a Lord Mayor and what does he do.

You can look at the very excellent brochure, the handout. If you want to break off now and read that instead I shan't mind. It has a few illustrations which may amuse those of you who can't read in this light, including one of my little pad. Many people haven't seen the Mansion House. It's really quite cosy.

The Lord Mayor is slightly different from other animals, as far as the mayoral set is concerned, certainly in the U.K. and in my experience anywhere else. The fact that we were the first, and haven't changed, and that everyone else is out of step, is neither here nor there. As you will see in the brochure, we started quite a long time ago. We had our first Mayor in 1192. As Mr. Hermant said, I am the 649th Lord Mayor of London. Those who are good at math will know that adding 649 to 1192 does not com to 1977. This is because the first chap did about twenty years, until they decided that that wasn't a very good idea. King John, in an attempt to buy the citizens of London off his back, because they were supporting the barons and making him seal Magna Carta, offered them a new charter in which he restored and confirmed all their rights and privileges, and also the right to elect a Mayor each year. One imagines that the citizens were getting a bit suspicious that a "cult of individuality", as the Russians would say, was creeping in, and it might not be long before the King started trying to appoint the Lord Mayor. So ever since then, we have elected a new one each year. There have been some who have done it more than once, but seldom, if ever consecutively and not very often.

One of the reasons that we continue to indulge this practice-which is common I may say in England- where mayors normally only serve for a year-is to avoid a cult of personality. It is the office that matters and not the man. I would hope that in a year or two, when somebody says "Who was the Lord Mayor in 1976-77?" they won't remember. The important thing is that there was and had been for nearly eight hundred years and hopefully for another eight hundred, a Lord Mayor. And that's really how it's kept going. It is not the individual personality. We don't want very good ones and then very bad ones, but we want people who will consistently support the office.

What is this office? What is it all about? It has changed, as other things have changed, over the years. I think we have been able to keep it alive, much in the same way as the Monarchy is being kept alive by subtly adapting it all the time, as we go along, without having any dramatic revolutionary changes. The role of the Lord Mayor of London today is very different to what it was fifty years, a hundred years, seven hundred years ago.

In the past, he was a fairly political animal. London was a political place. The City of London, the "City of the square mile" as we call it, today of course is just in the middle of Greater London, but it was once all that there was. So when we talk of London, that is the City of London. It was a place of great liberalism. It had always been a seat of democracy. Democratic government, as given to England, was modelled on the City's constitution. It spread out through the world to be known as the Mother of Parliaments. I suppose you could call us, in the Corporation, the Grandmother of Parliaments.

But the citizens were always a pretty Bolshy lot, not taking kindly to the rule of princes and kings, and having, since 1192, elected their own head of state to protect their interests. And so the development of political life in England was very much bound up with the development of political thought in the City of London. It would be wrong to pretend that the Mayoralty has always been nonpolitical. After all, John Wilkes was one of our Lord Mayors, and one could hardly say that he was nonpolitical! Or even Mayor Walworth, I suppose, who stabbed Wat Tyler in the Peasants' Revolt.

But since the beginning of this century, we have assumed a different role. Nowadays, the Lord Mayor is strictly nonpolitical, as is the Common Council, that is the Corporation, the elected Council of the City of London. It is surrounded now, as you know, by what we call Greater London, comprising thirty-two independent, autonomous boroughs and cities with the City of London at the centre. These are without exception governed on party-political lines, as is the Greater London Council itself. The City of London alone has remained nonpolitical. We are all, I suppose you would say, independents. It is easy for the City to remain nonpolitical because we do not have the social problems which generate party-political and ideological thought. We have no housing problem, we have no schools other than those that we support, we have very few people. Five thousand sleep there by night, half a million work there by day. We have now become the financial centre, not only of our country, but I would suggest of the world. So we have different problems from the rest of the boroughs. They go home to their dormitory boroughs and towns, and that is where their social problems are and that is where they are solved by their local authorities, largely along party-political lines. This, I think is a pity. I don't advocate party politics getting so far down into local government, but it is a fact of life.

But because the Corporation has been able to maintain its nonpolitical flavour and the Lord Mayor as its head has no political strings, in this day and age he is used very much as a roving ambassador and a host. Regardless of the political persuasion of the government in power, all recognize the value of this. And so without lêse-majesté, during our year of office we are used as a sort of miniroyalty, where it is neither convenient nor suitable to send a member of the Royal Family. Quite often at the Foreign Office's request, the Lord Mayor of London will go on a city-to-city visit, principally as an ambassador of good will. International friendships, like private friendships, need to be kept constantly alive if they are not to wither and die, and so frequent visiting by what the media nowadays call VIPs is important. I once thought that it wasn't, that it was a waste of time and money, until as a sheriff I started doing it with my then Lord Mayor and I soon began to realize the amount of good that these visits overseas and the hosting of inward missions did for international relations.

I would not deny that there is also a slight vested interest in it. Representing as I do a trading city, I get the opportunity when I am overseas to speak to Chambers of Commerce and businessmen, and I do a little hard sell for the services that my city has to offer. But principally the travelling is for good will and good relations. I am not troubled by members in my Council leaping to their feet and saying, "You mustn't go to Country X. We don't approve of the politics of Country X." Or the other side getting up and saying, "Well, you're not going to Y either, because we don't like their politics." Nor are the inward missions, the heads of states to whom the City acts as host, hampered by such considerations either. If the Queen is prepared to receive them, or the government of the day, then so are we, because it has always been the policy of the City to help the government of the day regardless of its political persuasion. We reserve the right to criticize, certainly, and do criticize parties of both political persuasions. If we think they are going off the rails, we'll be the first to say so. But not to actively get in their way, get under their feet, or try to obstruct what they are trying to do to rule the country. They have been elected democratically so to do, and it is our job to give them support. I only wish that everybody felt the same way and we might get a few more things done.

So that is why I find myself here. Not directly, because this is not an "official" visit. I haven't come with sword and mace and sheriffs and chief commoners and other funny things, as I would have had it been official. That finished in Hong Kong. I have been to Singapore, Djakarta, Manila and Hong Kong as part of the official visit, and then because Canadian Pacific asked the Lady Mayoress to launch a ship for them in Japan, it was logical to continue and as I had never seen the west coast of Canada, or in fact anywhere west of Montreal, I took eagerly their offer to bring us home this way.

But whether it is official or whether it isn't, your hospitality has been the same and also my pleasure at being here.

It's a pity in a way that I haven't brought some of the funny gear. It's often thought, I think, that the Lord Mayor of London spends his time poncing around in medieval drag. Don't mistake me. I am not mocking the ceremonial one bit. I'm very fond of it. I believe in it, because it is an outward and visible sign of the things that the City stands for. I find that this is something that is lacking in other parts of the world. Other people have thrown away the baby with the bath water all too often in a desire for reform. They have swept away what they consider the outmoded trappings of the past. These trappings may be of the past but they are not outmoded. They serve to remind us, both the wearer and the observer, of traditions stemming far back into our history. They are good traditions. We preserve nothing in our City which is not good to preserve.

I have only with me, I'm afraid, one small sample of the City regalia and it isn't even the real one. I'm not allowed to take the real City jewel, or the chain or the sword or the mace for that matter, outside the City. It's not that we think you'll pinch it, but nowadays we travel around by plane and if the airplane falls out of the sky, the Lord Mayor is replaceable but not the regalia.

This is known as the City jewel. There are 243 diamonds. It has, surrounding a sardonyx cameo the City's coat of arms, the City's motto: Domine direge nos, Lord, direct us. In fact that is the prayer that we use before every Common Council meeting. The Lord Mayor rises and gives that as our prayer. It's a pity I haven't got the chain, because I think the chain is the more interesting piece of the regalia. It was made in 1802, after a fiddling around for a couple of centuries deciding what to hand from the magnificent Collar of Esses, as it is called.

The chain consists of ten Tudor roses and knots and a little portcullis in the front. It was left to the City in the will of Lord Mayor Aylin in 1545, who said it was to be used as the Lord Mayor's chain in perpetuity. We think it was made in 1520. In any case, it was made in Henry VIII's reign and it has been used ever since and at home I wear it every day! Living history.

We don't lock up our history and put it in museums. We use it. The gold plate, the swords, the mace-the pearl sword that I used for the Jubilee-believed to have been presented to the City by the first Queen Elizabeth. The mace is quite new-1751. That's because in those days the mace-bearer used to ride a horse, and if he thought he was going to fall off, if the horse shied at a fractious crowd or something, he dropped the mace first and held on. These things are used each day, as they have been back through the centuries.

When I have that chain round my neck, I am conscious of history and the City that I represent and its traditions. I draw a source of power from it, I suppose. So I don't think it is a lot of archaic nonsense, as some in our country would have it. What is important is that the man inside the clothes is a real man and believes in what he's doing.

You might say that the uniform of the RCMP is out of date. It stems from an earlier age and to keep it would be meaningless if the men inside it were not real policemen-if they were students or actors dressed up for ceremonial occasions whilst the real policemen were dressed in something else and doing the job. Then I would say "Away with it!" It's the same with the Trooping of the Colour. Men in Crimean-type uniforms, parading around, would be meaningless if they were not real soldiers inside, perhaps just back from Northern Ireland or off to serve in Germany. It is the same with our uniforms. If I were a young, dynamic, forward-looking, cuddly city businessman underneath my tricorn hat with its ostrich feathers, then the thing would be a charade. But it isn't, because I'm not.

I hope I have described a little of what a Lord Mayor does, and why. Let me close by going over just a little of the ground of the Jubilee. Most of you, I think, saw it. Many of you heard me describe, in a fairly intimate way, my personal impressions of it at lunch today.

Let me just take the part that I really will always remember-the Walkabout-and leave out the ceremonial the sword, the lunch at Guildhall, leave out the contribution of his Grace, that marvellous sermon at the St Paul's service. Because it is the Walkabout which will liv in my memory forever. To be privileged to walk wit one's sovereign through her people, and to be, almost a first hand, on the edge of the beam if not absolutely in the focus of that astounding love and affection which cam out in waves from the people assembled down Cheapside that was something that I will never forget. It wouldn't have mattered if there had been no flags at all. The people themselves provided all the decoration that was necessary And (I didn't believe this until I ran the videotape t check) there wasn't a policeman within two hundred yard of the Queen and myself in either direction. They melted away as she approached, and they only returned after the procession had passed to make sure the crowds didn't hurt themselves on the barriers.

I said to a young policeman, "Did you have a good view? Were you on duty somewhere where you could see the Queen on Jubilee Day?" And he said, "No. We were all told to get out of it." I thought this was a bit strange, so I asked the Commissioner of Police, "Were there no policemen?" And he said, "No, there weren't. The Queen doesn't like having policemen near her when she's doing a Walkabout. She thinks they get in the way! They're taken out well ahead of her, and they only return once she has passed."

Now that tells us something. Where else in the world would a head of state walk so freely amongst her people? There was no need for any policemen because they love her like you wouldn't believe.

Let me leave you with that thought. There is a place in this world for people who are not constantly involved in active politics, who are there to set an example-leadership by example and not by precept. And in his humble way, that is what the modern Lord Mayor tries to do for his City. The Queen does it, superbly, for the whole Commonwealth. We are very proud of her. She's ours. But she's yours too.

The appreciation of the audience was expressed by Sir Arthur R. T. Chetwynd, Bt., a Past President of The Empire Club of Canada.