As Britain mourns, America’s “special relationship” with its former colonial master completes another cycle of its enduring life.
US President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden arrived in Britain on Saturday, visiting the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II as she lay in Old Westminster Hall the following day. They then attended a reception at Buckingham Palace hosted by King Charles III and the Queen Consort.
Paying tribute to the Queen earlier last week, Biden told King Charles III that his mother helped strengthen their nation’s bonds, her ‘dignity and constancy deepened the enduring friendship and special relationship between the states United States and the United Kingdom”.
It’s perhaps no surprise that she did; his reign was born at the height of this “special relationship”.
It was the insistent transatlantic diplomacy of British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill that helped win American support for Britain during World War II.
In his famous “Special Relations” speech in Missouri on March 5, 1946, six years before Princess Elizabeth became queen, Churchill suggested a creed for the nations: “This is the message of the British and American peoples to the humanity. Let us preach what we practice — practice what we preach.
The Queen would live Churchill’s words to the letter and, significantly, he would be her first and first formative Prime Minister. She would later see into 14 others, though none had a reputation as fearsome as hers.
In 1946, Churchill arguably laid the foundation for decades of close cooperation, whether it was trying Nazi war criminals, performing peacekeeping duties around the world, or standing by America’s side. after the September 11 attacks of al-Qaeda.
The relationship worked both ways; President Bill Clinton helped the Queen’s government establish peace in Northern Ireland in 1998, a peace that Queen Elizabeth worked tirelessly to strengthen.
In his phone call last week, President Biden “expressed his desire to continue a close relationship with the King.”
