‘Whenever she shook hands with Martin McGuinness, that was leadership’: Northern Ireland remembers Queen Elizabeth

In 1953 the young Queen Elizabeth was on her first visit to Northern Ireland as monarch, and Ruby McNaught went to see her.

She recalls how, as a 12 year old, she and her friends elbowed their way through the crowd so that they were near the front when the queen’s car swept through the gates of Brooke Park in Derry.

“I remember being down on my knees, kneeling, trying to get a better view … there was the excitement of seeing the big car, it was like something out of the movies, and then I saw this glamorous woman smiling and waving at everybody.”

In another part of the city, Jeanette Warke grew up with a picture of the queen “hanging in our parlour, the ‘good room’ you weren’t allowed into”.

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A community worker in Derry’s predominantly Protestant Fountain estate, she received an MBE from the queen in 1999.

“When she gave me the medal, she talked to me and she made me feel like the most important person there that day,” says Warke.

She was with a friend when she heard of the queen’s death and they “just burst out crying. It really shocked me, the way it affected us, to be honest. I just thought, Such a terrible loss to the community, to the whole world.

“She’s this wonderful lady who has been through so many trials and tribulations herself and coped and put on a smile — just as mothers do.”

In the nearby St Columb’s Cathedral, a single bell tolls for Queen Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Fielding has laid a bunch of flowers by the cathedral doorway and now sits on a bench outside listening to the sounds, her emotions evident on her face. “I feel very sad.”

More than 70 years ago, the then princess Elizabeth visited the cathedral along with her parents, George VI and Queen Elizabeth; inside the cathedral, the guest book bearing her signature and a photograph of the royal visitors in 1945 has pride of place in an exhibition marking the queen’s Platinum Jubilee.

“We all feel that we have lost someone who has been part of our lives,” says Rt Rev Andrew Forster, the Church of Ireland Bishop of Derry and Raphoe.

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On Friday morning, the mood in the cathedral is sombre, and Rev Forster speaks of conflicting emotions. “There is deep sadness at the loss of someone who has been a constant, who has in many ways helped the nation and the world navigate some of the incredible changes over her long reign … but also a real sense of thankfulness of the longevity of her reign, for her dignity, for her sense of duty and, for me particularly, her Christian faith.”

Yet, he also emphasises that “whether we’re Irish nationalists or Ulster unionists, whatever, at the moment there’s a huge degree of respect because we look back to a couple of seminal moments.

“Whenever she shook hands with Martin McGuinness — and this was a woman whose family had experienced great trauma — that was leadership, that was remarkable leadership at the time, and who can forget the state visit in 2011.

“All of us can clearly acknowledge that the queen made, I would say, a gargantuan effort to bring peace, to allow people to pursue peace, and to give an example of what it means at times to realise that we have to step out of our own comfort zones to cross a bridge, to stretch out the hand, to make a difference.”

He is the first to sign the book of condolence in the cathedral. In the city’s Guildhall another book is being opened by Derry’s mayor, the Sinn Féin councillor Sandra Duffy, who also talks of “respect” among the nationalist and republican community and the impact of that 2012 handshake.

“She did do a lot for reconciliation and building on the peace that we had and building those relationships we had,” she says. “It’s very important we acknowledge the hurt and loss that people are feeling, especially our unionist neighbours and people who are British … at the end of the day the queen was a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother and somebody who was much loved by her family and by a lot of people,” she says.

This is echoed in the nearby Bogside. “Politics should be left out of it,” says Sadie. “She had enough to deal with, and at the end of the day she was a 96-year-old woman who deserved her rest, and God rest her. It’s as simple as that.”

For Peter Sheridan — formerly the most senior Catholic police officer in the RUC and now the head of Co-operation Ireland, which facilitated the event in Belfast where the famous handshake took place — the way the queen dealt with the “complexity of the history of this place … opened up huge possibilities in terms of how we build reconciliation on this island.

“Her contribution made this place better, and we’re going to miss that.”

Now 82, Ruby McNaught will miss much about the queen. She recalls how, as a Catholic growing up in a nationalist part of the city, people stood on the pavement outside a television shop to watch the queen’s coronation, and how all the gossip on the street ahead of the queen’s visit was about whether Prince Philip might accompany her “because he was so handsome: a big, tall naval officer”.

She “admired” the queen for coming to Ireland in 2011 — and for learning a few words of Irish — and had “great respect for her as a woman, particularly with all she had to deal with from her family, but she did a fantastic job, right up until the very end”.

She will miss her sense of humour and her humanity. “I enjoyed her at the Jubilee with Paddington Bear, and on the balcony with her wee grandchildren watching the planes. She looked like a granny — not a queen, just a granny. To me it made her very human.”