Queen Elizabeth II broke through the sexist attitudes of the 1950s, when she came to the throne, to become “matriarch” of the nation, Harriet Harman has said.
Ms Harman, who has the title Mother of the House as the longest-serving female MP, said that she marvelled at the monarch’s ability to “make her way as a woman in a man’s world”.
And she hailed the Queen for the “determination and courage” with which she established her position as a 25-year-old woman surrounded by men steeped in assumptions of male superiority.
Paying tribute to Her Majesty in the House of Commons, the former Labour deputy leader said that the Queen had fulfilled her duties “flawlessly” as “a woman starting her reign in what was emphatically then a man’s world”.
The leading feminist said: “We have to remember what attitudes were at the time. The order of the day was that men were in charge and women were subservient.
“The man was head of the household and the role of the woman was to marry, have children and support him.
“In the 1950s, when she was crowned, I was a child and I remember my mother warning me that people though men knew more than women, that men’s views were valuable where women’s were to be disregarded.
“It was in that atmosphere that she stepped up as a 25-year-old married woman with two children to take her place at the head of the nation and play a huge role on the world stage.
“What determination and courage that must have taken. The prime ministers she dealt with were mostly men and mostly twice her age.”
Ms Harman said the Queen had played a role in ushering in “huge change” in the positions of the sexes over the 70 years of her reign.
Borrowing a phrase from former PM Tony Blair, she said: “She was the matriarch of the nation, a matriarch for us on the world stage and a matriarch too at home in her own family.”
Ms Harman revealed how the Queen’s thoughtfulness had softened the blow when Blair sacked her as social security secretary and the first-ever minister for women in 1998.
She said: “My diary was empty and my phone stopped ringing. My office was astonished to get a call from Buckingham Palace.
“No-one else wanted to have anything to do with me but the Queen wanted to see me.
“I was invited to tea with the Queen for her to thank me for my service as secretary of state.”
Ms Harman said: “The relationship between our Queen and parliament and our Queen and government was never just on paper, but was always active and always encouraging.
“She radiated British values of duty, patriotism, internationalism, charity and service. But while she embodied British values, she never intervened in politics. That is constitutional alchemy, no less.”
