Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

The Boy Who Shot the Queen of England

Michael Dickinson | 18.06.2012 20:07 | Animal Liberation | Anti-militarism | History

“Your Majesty. Don’t go to the Trooping the Colour ceremony because there is an assassin set up to kill you, waiting just outside the palace.”



"I Will Become the Most Famous Teenager in the World!"

The Boy Who Shot the Queen of England

by MICHAEL DICKINSON


It’s difficult to believe that the British Queen, Elizabeth, is 136 years old. She was actually born in April 1926 and is physically only 86, but if you include the extra Official Royal Birthday she has celebrated every June since her Coronation in 1952, you’re looking at an extremely elderly senior citizen.

Of course she’s not really a ‘citizen’. She’s the Queen, the reigning monarch of Britain, and since 1748 the Trooping of the Colour Ceremony, held at Horse Guards Parade near Whitehall in central London, has also marked the Sovereign’s official second birthday – Saturday the sixteenth of June 2012 being no exception.

The Trooping the Colour ceremony originated from traditional preparations for battle, when flags, or colours were carried, or “trooped”, down the ranks of soldiers so that they could be seen and recognised. It’s now a lavish military spectacle with some 1,600 officers and men in the traditional uniforms of the Household Cavalry, Royal Horse Artillery and Foot Guards, with over 200 horses, and massed and mounted bands.

Being Head of the Armed Forces, it is fitting that the queen be there to inspect the troops, along with other members of her family dressed in military regalia and decorated with medals – husband Prince Phillip, Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, sons Prince Charles and Edward, Colonels of the Welsh Guards and of the Scots Guards respectively, daughter Princess Anne, Colonel of the Blues and Royals, and grandson William, Colonel of the Irish Guards. Other senior royals present at the ceremony this year included Prince Harry, Camilla the Duchess of Cornwall, and Prince Andrew the Duke of Kent with his daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie. Prime Minister David Cameron and the King of Jordan were also honoured guests.

The reptile-faced 91 year old Duke of Edinburgh, surprisingly frisky and chipper after his recent hospitalization for a urinary infection, wore a bearskin helmet identical to those worn by the hundreds of soldiers lined up for inspection in their bright red tunics. Just think how many poor bears were cruelly killed to provide this pompous and preposterous headgear! But that’s another story.

The Queen arrived in a glass coach, and took the royal salute wearing a primrose yellow coat and dress with matching hat – a far cry from the pre-1987 days when she used to arrive mounted side-saddle on her loyal steed ‘Burmese’ and inspect the troops dressed in the uniform of the regiment whose Colour was being trooped. She was thus accoutred on June 13th 1981 as she passed down the Mall towards Horseguards Parade, when a teenager armed with a gun stepped out of the cheering crowd which lined the route and fired six rapid shots at Her Majesty.

Alarmed at the disturbance, ‘Burmese’ shied and cantered a few steps but was quickly subdued by the equestrian-savvy queen. The young assailant was pounced upon by men in the crowd and disarmed before police quickly arrived to arrest him. The weapon turned out to be a Jackal Python starting pistol, and the shots were blanks.

The 17 year old would-be assassin, described as a shy loner haunted by failure, was named as Marcus Simon Sarjeant, a former Boy Scout from a small town near Dover. After finishing school he had applied to join the Royal Marines, but left after 3 months, unable to cope with the bullying of officers. Similar experience made him give up hopes of joining the Army after only two days on an induction course. After failed attempts to join the Police Force and the Fire Brigade, Sarjeant was unemployed and living with his mother, his father absent, working abroad. Friends said that he had joined an ‘Anti-Royalist’ group.

Questioned by police as to why he had pulled the stunt, Sarjeant told them that he was inspired by the assassination of John Lennon in 1980 and recent attempts at that time on the lives of US President Ronald Reagan and the Pope. Unable to get hold of a real gun, he had opted for the blank-firing revolver which he bought through mail order.

Police investigating his home found he had written in a diary: “I am going to stun and mystify the whole world with nothing more than a gun – I will become the most famous teenager in the world. ” In the run-up to the Trooping the Colour ceremony, Serjeant had sent letters to magazines, one of which included a picture of him with his father’s Webley revolver (which had no ammunition.) He had also sent a letter to Buckingham Palace which read:


“Your Majesty. Don’t go to the Trooping the Colour ceremony because there is an assassin set up to kill you, waiting just outside the palace.”

The letter arrived on June 16th, three days late.

Charged with an offence under the 1848 Treason Act in that he “wilfully discharged at or near Her Majesty the Queen a gun with the intent to alarm or distress Her Majesty,” Sarjeant was found guilty by Chief Justice Lord Lane, who sentenced him to five years’ imprisonment, saying that “the public sense of outrage must be marked. You must be punished for the wicked thing you did, not for what you might have done”. An appeal against the length of the sentence was refused, and a letter to the Queen apologizing for his action was ignored.

After 3 years in jail, mostly in psychiatric prison, Marcus Sarjeant was released in 1984 at the age of twenty. The boy who had wanted to be “the most famous teenager in the world” changed his name and disappeared without a trace.

The 1848 Treason Act makes it a crime ‘to produce a gun or other firearm near the Queen with the intention to use it, even though the person holding it may be stopped before firing.’ After inspecting the hundreds of soldiers with their rifles and bayonets at this year’s Trooping of the Colour, while the Queen was driven back to Buckingham Palace waving to the cheering crowds gathered along the Mall, the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery fired a gun salute in Green Park, and the Honourable Artillery Company fired a 62-round gun salute from the Tower of London to mark her official birthday.

Bang, bang! Ironic, eh?

Michael Dickinson
- Homepage: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/06/18/the-boy-who-shot-the-queen-of-england/

Comments

Display the following 8 comments

  1. you got the important point — facts of life buddy
  2. The Facts of Life? — Klamber
  3. not interested in what you think little man — The Royals
  4. The Facts of Life? — Klamber
  5. Coo-eeee! — Majong.
  6. boy oh boy — anarcho-fighter
  7. idiot — loser
  8. boy oh boy — Dreamer Awakes
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech