IN Aberdeen, seeking a better view amidst a crowd 15,000 strong, women used small mirrors from their handbags as periscopes. In Glasgow’s George Square, the high windows of adjacent buildings were full of eager onlookers. In Edinburgh, two girls had a fine view from their perch on the lower roof of St Giles’ Cathedral. Large crowds and local notables assembled everywhere from Renfrew town hall (above) to Arbroath, Helensburgh, and Forfar Leith.
Such were the scenes across Scotland on Monday, December 14, as civic ceremonies publicly read out the Proclamation of Accession of George VI, in the wake of the Abdication Crisis. Everywhere, there was the sober memory that this was the second such proclamation in less than a year. But as the Glasgow Herald said of events in Edinburgh: “The spontaneous welcome by the ... citizens of a new order of things was evident at the close with the singing of the National Anthem and the cheers for King George VI, which amplifiers sent re-echoing along the Royal Mile.”
In the Commons that day, Clement Attlee remarked: “The task upon which King George VI has entered, that of being the constitutional Monarch of this country and of the other democracies united with us in the British Commonwealth of Nations, can never be easy. In days like these, when democracy is being assailed, and when the advocates of force against the rule of reason are vocal, it becomes still more onerous.”
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