Oriental Network Longitudinal News Reporter Zhou Anna
At 15:00 local time on April 17 (22:00 Beijing time on April 17), the funeral of Prince Philip will be held at St George's Church in Windsor, west London. Buckingham Palace issued a statement saying it would be a "funeral of royal ceremonies" rather than a state funeral.
After Prince Philip died on Friday (9th), the United Kingdom immediately launched the "Forth Bridge" operation to arrange the prince's posthumous affairs.
Since Queen Elizabeth II ascended the throne, the British royal family has had a tradition of using the name of the bridge as a royal funeral code to inform the death of royal family members. The purpose of the code is to prevent the Buckingham Palace telephone switchboard operator from knowing and leaking the news prematurely.
Prior to this, the queen's father, George VI, was code-named not Bridge Life, but "Hyde Park Corner". Such a change is considered by British society to be a symbol of dynastic transition.
(Pictured: The funeral procession of George VI in 1952)
A confidential but "public" funeral code name
Built in 1890, the Forth Bridge spans the Forth River in Scotland and is the second longest multi-span cantilever bridge in the world. In 2011, the Forth Bridge was also inscribed on the World Heritage List.
The reason for choosing "Forth Bridge" as the funeral code name is because Prince Philip's title is Duke of Edinburgh, and the Forth Bridge is located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, so it is very appropriate to use this bridge as his funeral code name.
In fact, although the purpose of setting up the code was originally to keep secrets, Prince Philip was old, and the authorities had long begun to prepare in case there was an "unexpected storm in the sky". Therefore, the "Forth Bridge" operation has been discussed by the British media for many years and has long become an open secret.
In the British royal family, the first to use a bridge as a funeral code name was Queen Elizabeth II's mother, Queen Elizabeth. The Queen's hometown is in Scotland, so the River Tay Bridge over the River Tay in Scotland became her funeral code name.
The British royal family and government had a plan to exercise the "River Tay Bridge" once a year. But unexpectedly, after 22 years of continuous exercises, Empress Wang was still alive. On the contrary, the death of Princess Diana in a car accident in France in 1997 gave the "Bridge to the Tay River" operation a chance to be put into practice.
(Pictured: Princess Diana's coffin passes through London on September 6, 1997)
According to the British newspaper The Independent, the "public" funeral code name as of now also belongs to the British Crown Prince Charles's "Menai Bridge" operation. The Menai Strait is located in North Wales, and Charles's title is prince of Wales.
As for Prince William and Princess Kate, as well as Harry and Meghan, although they are still young and do not have funeral code names, they also have their own code names for security reasons for day-to-day operations.
William and Kate were code-named Danny Collins and Daphne Clark, respectively, which coincided with the initial "DC" of their title Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
Harry and Meghan were previously Duke and Duchess of Sussex with the initials "DS," so their code names were David Stevens and Davina Scott, respectively.
The British royal family has stated that Charles, William and Harry have set their own funeral plans, including a list of attendees, the types of music used and the style of service. Although the style of the funeral was not stated, it was mentioned that the arrangements for the funeral by the two young princes were "more modern than those of some older relatives".
The London Bridge program was prepared for about 60 years
Although Operation Forthbridge has been in the works for many years, the Uk was the earliest and most thoroughly prepared for the Queen's funeral.
Queen Elizabeth II's funeral code name is "Operation London Bridge", taken from the famous British nursery rhyme "London Bridge is falling down".
In 2017, the Guardian delves into the mysterious London Bridge operation in an article titled "London Bridge is down." Buckingham Palace, the British government and BBC television have spent nearly 60 years preparing countless sets of responses to the Queen's death.
The report states that once the Queen dies, her private secretary will be the first official to receive the news. The private secretary will first contact the British Prime Minister, and civil servants will use secure telephone lines to convey the message that London Bridge has collapsed.
Subsequently, the Prime Minister would immediately gather the two houses of Parliament to prepare for the Queen's funeral, and they would also wear a black armband of about 8.25 centimeters long that had been designed long ago on their left arm.
The report was followed by the British Foreign Office, which was responsible for communicating the message to the governments of the 15 countries headed by the Queen. Leaders of the other 36 Commonwealth countries were subsequently informed.
(Pictured: In 2012, the Queen and Johnson, who was then mayor of London, visited London's Olympic Stadium.) ）
Media working with the royal family will also receive the news at the first time, not by phone or text message, but by a blue light hanging above the studio.
Designed during the Cold War, the blue light was originally intended to be the first to report on the Soviet Union's nuclear war and race against time to get people into the asylum program. However, because the expected war did not happen in the end, the blue light was shelved. Once the blue "obituary light" is lit one day, it indicates that it has entered a "national disaster moment".
In addition, at the BBC, the Radio Alarm Transmission System, a complex and mysterious system set up by the BBC in the 1930s specifically designed to announce the death of royals, will be activated.
Major media have also prepared commemorative articles.
The Guardian said it would pick out pre-written eulogies from a large pile of manuscripts; Time magazine would prepare 11 days of commemorative articles; Sky News and Independent Television News, code-named "Miss Robinson," would continue to rehearse how the show would be conducted after the Queen's death over the years; and some royal analysis experts had signed up to tv stations to provide exclusive interviews for them when things happened.
During this period, major television stations will broadcast long-produced documentaries about the Queen, and the BBC will limit the playback of entertainment content before funerals.
However, london bridge had a terrorist attack in 2017, when people once talked about "something happened at London Bridge", so the British people speculated that the security services may have changed the code name to avoid misinformation of the queen's death.
(Pictured: After the 2017 London Bridge terrorist attack, people laid flowers near Tower Bridge and City Hall to mourn, hoping that "London Bridge will never fall")
The "frightened" British
In 2018, the UK experienced a large-scale London Bridge simulation. In June of that year, the Queen cancelled an important event at St. Paul's Cathedral due to "feeling unwell".
The abrupt cancellation of the trip on the day "frightened" the whole of Britain.
On the same day, a number of ministers in the British government cabinet secretly held the "largest in history" Queen's "death" rehearsal in Whitehall, the government office building, and conducted a secret drill to simulate the ten-day national day of mourning after the Queen's death. The TV station also prepared a list of sad songs in advance to play in mourning.
Many of britain's cabinet ministers at the time reportedly participated in such exercises for the first time.
(Pictured: Queen Elizabeth II at the coronation of Westminster Abbey in 1953.) ）
Elizabeth II, who has reigned for 69 years, has a self-evident significance for Britain.
The Independent believes that if the Queen dies one day, it will be the most destructive event in the UK in nearly 70 years: from her death, the UK will be at least 12 days into a state of stagnation (funerals will be held within 10 to 12 days of the Queen's death, and the funeral day will also become a national statutory holiday), and bank and business closures and stock market closures will also bring billions of pounds in losses.
The Queen's death also meant the arrival of another great event: the succession of Prince Charles. After the new king ascends the throne, the British currency, stamps, passports, and military clothing will be replaced, all Elizabeth's head or logo will be replaced by portraits of the new king, and the existing pound sterling with the queen will gradually stop circulating. In addition, the British national anthem will also change from "Heavenly Blessing Queen" to "Heavenly Blessing King".
The vast majority of Britons could not imagine life without a queen, and they thought that Britain would enter a strange and uncertain period.
The Guardian also pointed out that although the current Britain is not at the top of the world as it was when Queen Victoria died in 1901, Elizabeth II is the link between contemporary Britain and the "empire of the sun never sets" in the past, and if this bond is broken, it is a difficult problem that no one can predict.