Kelly Tolhurst – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

The tribute made by Kelly Tolhurst, the Conservative MP for Rochester and Strood, in the House of Commons on 10 September 2022.

I rise on behalf of my constituents in Rochester and Strood to extend my deepest condolences to the royal family. Her late Majesty’s death is a terrible loss for us all and has touched every corner of the world. She was a constant reassuring presence. The world is unrecognisable from the start of her reign but, despite those changes, she was a steadying figure who led this country from the aftermath of the second world war to being the country that we are today.

Like many in the House, I had only lived under the Queen’s reign. As a female born in 1978, I was lucky to be born into a unique era for this country and grow up under both a female Head of State and a female Prime Minister for the first time in history. We had those powerful female figures at the top of our country, so for me it was absolutely normal to see women leading.

The Queen was a remarkable figure and an inspiration to many, whose influence has shaped generations as the values that she embodied of a sense of duty, public service and quiet dignity epitomised her reign.

She was a continuous figure, both in this country and around the world, who managed to exercise a calm and steadying influence over our country, even its toughest times.

Rochester and Strood was blessed by many visits from Her Majesty over the years. I am immensely proud of our royal history and the links we have with our late Queen. She made her first visit to Rochester with King George VI in 1938, when they visited the Short Brothers aircraft works. That was followed by a visit to the Historic Dockyard Chatham in 1942. I hope that I am right in saying that she liked what she saw in those early visits before her accession, inspiring many trips in the following years.

In her role as its Colonel-in-Chief, she inspected the Corps of Royal Engineers at Brompton barracks in 1968, during one of her many visits there. She also opened the Royal Engineers Museum in 1987. She made her final visit in 2016 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the corps, and it was the greatest honour of my life to meet her on that occasion.

I felt nervous, like everyone else meeting the Queen for the first time, and after overcoming the first hurdle of getting my curtsy right, I moved on to the next step of meeting her: the handshake. There I was, just over a year into being an MP, standing in front of Her Majesty, who had just turned 90, worrying about the damage that I could cause her hand should I grip too hard. I could not have been more wrong: I had failed to appreciate how years of experience had left Her Majesty skilled in administering a handshake. With her great smile and the twinkle in her eye that so many have spoken about, she took my hand firmly, and released it before I could even take a moment.

The barracks were not the only place that the Queen had visited in Rochester. She went to Rochester cathedral, and she even took a trip to our great Isle of Grain oil refinery in 1955. Following her 1942 visit to the Historic Dockyard Chatham in 1942, she returned to the site in 1984, when she was able to see the redevelopment proposal for the closed Chatham dockyards on St Mary’s island.

Those are a few examples highlighting how committed and dedicated the Queen was to her people. She was totally devoted to the British people throughout her reign, and the hundreds of thousands of people who met her felt at ease. Her absence will be felt around the world. My thoughts and prayers are with her family. I know that King Charles III has the support of Rochester and all the good people to lead this country into a new era. God save the King.