Where has all the British bunting gone?

In 1977, they danced in the streets to celebrate the Queen's Silver Jubilee. A year out from her Golden Jubilee, COLE MORETON finds the people are consumed with apathy rather than excitement.

The sentiment expressed so forcibly by the Sex Pistols in 1977 seemed dangerous and daring then - "God save the Queen? She's not a human being ... " The BBC would not play their record in Silver Jubilee year, even though it reached No 2 in the charts.

Disgust at the Royal family was seen in Britain as a perversity, the sort of daft radical statement made only by those nasty punks wearing bin-liners and safety-pins.

Everyone else was dancing in the open air, wearing Union Jack hats as street parties broke out all over Britain. Buckingham Palace was amazed and gratified by the strength of emotion.

Looking back, the Queen must want to weep. The family has fallen a long way from that pinnacle of popular devotion. The past 12 months have been yet another annus horribilis.

The public relations gains made by sending pretty Prince William to rough it in the jungle were wiped out by the Countess of Wessex and her big mouth.

Before that, Prince Andrew had been seen out with a succession of not obviously suitable girlfriends, and Princess Anne had been rude to an old woman who tried to give her a floral arrangement for the Queen Mother.

These little things matter a lot when your job is to be loved by the public. Worse, the results of a secret poll were reported to the Way Ahead Group, a council of courtiers and senior royals formed to modernise the monarchy's image.

Less than half of the common people who were surveyed thought the royals "important to Britain."

One in three considered them out of touch. Fewer than one in four thought they were hard-working. Only one in 10 believed they represented value for money.

These findings were leaked in March. The reports were inaccurate, said the Buckingham Palace press office, but it did not release a truer picture.

Then the News of the World staged its poll, which found that three people in five were not planning to do anything at all to mark the Queen's Golden Jubilee.

This might not seem significant were it not for the fact that the Palace's strategy for restoring the royals to public favour is largely predicated on next year's series of celebrations being a big success.

The series of festive events starts in February, on the anniversary of the Queen's accession to the throne in 1952, running through to the end of the Commonwealth Games in August.

The focal celebrations happen on June 3 and 4, which will form an extended Jubilee bank holiday.

Prime Minister Tony Blair told the Commons he hoped it would be "a joyous occasion and a very special milestone."

It was Queen Victoria who invented the Jubilee procession in June 1887, when vast crowds turned out to watch her ride through London with 30 other monarchs. A decade later she did it again, accompanied by nearly 50,000 servicemen, marking 60 years on the throne with a Diamond Jubilee.

Comparisons with those events, or even with 1977, do the present sovereign no favours and her friends have already tried to play things down. This time around they know the programme has to be grand enough to retain royal dignity, but cheap enough not to upset the masses.

The Palace is grimly determined that whatever takes place should be a success. It has even pleaded with the Prime Minister not to hold the promised referendum on Europe before the celebrations are over.

Blair, for his part, has described the Queen's "express wish" that there should be "no undue expenditure from public funds." She will be expected to pay for her own shindigs, but will any Britons bother?

One Palace source said last month the Queen's advisers "will have their work cut out simply getting the nation in the mood to celebrate. In this day and age, I doubt we're going to see a repeat of the street parties that were a feature of the Silver Jubilee."

It is more realistic to expect, or fear, a repeat of the bungling and bickering that made the Millennium Dome such an object of cynical derision.

Already, with a year to go before the main bank holiday celebrations, the planning process shows signs of becoming confused. Details of the celebrations were to be announced at Christmas but the announcement was postponed, not least because the man responsible for it resigned.

Geoff Crawford, a 49-year-old former diplomat from Australia, had handled the family's press relations for more than a decade. He was promoted to assistant private secretary last July with a specific view to stage-managing Her Majesty's return to public favour. Unfortunately, Crawford then received a more lucrative offer from his home country and left the Palace after less than six months in the job. The Queen was said to be "annoyed."

Since then, indecision has ruled. A national day of prayer was considered but was rejected as "too fuddy duddy." A repeat of the popular charity appeal of 1977 is reported to have been ruled out in case it did not raise much money.

The Queen will tour Britain "as much as possible" next summer, it is said, but there is no chance of the 76-year-old monarch and her 80-year-old consort visiting every town and city as they did 25 years ago.

Public celebrations will definitely include a review of the armed forces, and at least two concerts in the grounds of royal palaces, paid for by the BBC.

The June bank holiday will start with a launch at the Guildhall and end with a thanksgiving service at St Paul's - although even that was in doubt for a while. The rest is up to the public.

Lord Levene of Portsoken is in charge of coordinating events. His most public contribution to the celebrations has been to ask Londoners for ideas.

Whoever you ask about the celebrations - the Palace, the Home Office, the armed forces - the answer is much the same: it is too early to say what might happen.

So we are drawn into the world of the "Palace source" and the "royal aide," shadowy figures on whom court correspondents traditionally depend.

But analysis of the rumours, suggestions, leaks and possible truths bring two inescapable conclusions - one is that the Windsors have already alienated or irritated quite a few people with their attitude to the preparations.

The other is that, however golden its aspirations, the family is in danger of turning every aspect it touches into a baser metal. If things carry on like this, the monarchy could find its festivities as popular as the Dome. Just as that "attraction" produced its running gags - the queues, the financial black hole, the malfunctioning lavatories - so embarrassing themes are already emerging from the Golden Jubilee preparations.

The missing navy

The Army made a remarkable exhibition of itself in 1977, sending out 573 armoured vehicles, 3000 soldiers and 24 bands to the parade ground at a Nato base in West Germany for the Queen to inspect. She also went to RAF Finningley, near Doncaster, for the fly-past of 137 aircraft. And the Naval review at Portsmouth featured 100 warships.

Three years ago the Navy began planning another full-scale review, to be carried out at Spithead near Portsmouth. Then it was cancelled, the official reason being the armed forces had decided to hold a joint display, in accordance with the Queen's desire to keep costs to a minimum.

But there are those who believe the Sovereign's modesty was not the reason the Navy backed down from holding its own review. The truth, they say, is that the over-stretched, under-funded "senior service" could have spared only six warships.

The undecorated footmen

Like many royal traditions, the idea of casting medals for loyal servants at Jubilee time goes back only as far as Queen Victoria.

There were 45,000 made in 1977 and given out to members of the "uniformed services" (the armed forces and the emergency services) and to leaders in industry, agriculture, sport and journalism in Britain and the Commonwealth.

Several members of the royal household are known to have put back their retirement to make it to this next Jubilee year, in the hope of getting a medal.

Last year, there was talk of 200,000 being made for 2002, to spread the royal favours even more widely than last time. Then, at Christmas, the Home Office Constitution Unit let it be known it had reservations.

At £30 ($101) a medal, the bill would come to £6 million ($20 million). Who was going to pay? And who would decide who got one anyway?

So in February, Home Secretary Jack Straw announced medals would be cast only for those members of the "uniformed armed services" and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary who had served for a minimum of five years up to February 6, 2002.

This, of course, annoyed those who would just miss the deadline and others who were due to finish long and distinguished military careers before then.

"We are absolutely gutted," says one royal servant. "I wouldn't be surprised if people leave in droves."

The simple limousine

When the Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders offered to present Her Majesty with a new limousine she asked for the car to be "as simple as possible."

The Palace clearly intends this modesty to be one of the themes of the Jubilee preparations, but the Queen seems to have an unusual definition of simplicity.

The custom-made £300,000 ($1 million) Bentley, with a V8 6.7-litre engine, will be bullet-, bomb- and poison-gas-proof, with its own sealable, recycling air supply.

It will have a satellite navigation and tracking system and a secure telephone link, as well as a cocktail bar and DVD-player.

The seats will be leather, the dashboard polished walnut and the carpet a Wilton shag-pile - all details that are reported to have been chosen by the Queen.

"The Queen does not mind what car she is seen in, as long as it is made in Britain," said a royal aide

Bentley is owned by the German company, Volkswagen. Its chief designer is the Dutchman Dirk Van Braeckel, who used to make Skodas.

Service without a smile

A cathedral service is supposed to be awesome and inspiring. The last thing those in charge want is a rumour that the Queen found their last effort "thin" and "without grandeur," particularly when the service in question was the thanksgiving for the long life of the Queen Mother, to mark her 100th birthday last August.

The financial controller of St Paul's Cathedral made just such an awkward situation worse by threatening publicly to send Her Majesty a bill after last year's service.

St Paul's had lost 80 per cent of its income from tourism that day, he told a reporter, so someone would have to find £15,000 ($50,000) to make up the balance.

At Westminster Abbey, where the Coronation had taken place, someone clearly fancied their chances of stealing the Golden Jubilee. Her Majesty also made noises of approval to the Archbishop of York after a rousing service at the Minster, leading to speculation that she might go north.

In the event, no bill was sent and St Paul's will host the service on June 4.

The Commonwealth Games

According to one government minister, "the jewels in the crown" of the Golden Jubilee celebrations will be the 17th Commonwealth Games, in Manchester in July and August next year.

They will be the biggest ever, with 5250 athletes from 72 countries, but they could also make a record loss, of anything up to £60 million ($202 million). Most of that would have to be found by the citizens of Manchester.

The Government has given £10.8 million ($36.4 million) for the opening and closing ceremonies, on July 25 and August 4, both of which will be led by the Queen.

But there has been a lack of interest from overseas broadcasters and major sponsors have also kept their distance.

The mischievous media

Those who report the problems of the celebrations will be accused of causing them. In this case, it is possible to feel some sympathy with the accusers, for, however the Palace chooses to mark the jubilee, the media will be certain to find fault.

The celebrations will be either too extravagant, or too parsimonious.

However hard the Palace tries, the only thing that will keep journalists happy will be a good cock-up. That isn't to say that genuine cock-ups will not take place.

But not everything about the Golden Jubilee will be a disaster. The mug-manufacturers are sure to make money - as will, probably, the beleaguered tourist industry.

But there will be less bunting than before, and fewer fish paste sandwiches. Die-hard republicans will no doubt see the handling of the Golden Jubilee as another stick with which to beat the monarchy, but most people simply won't care enough to get worked up about it.

The best prospect for a big street party is if the demonstrators against global capitalism decide to have one.

Sorry, Ma'am, but these days Ronald McDonald has more clout.

- INDEPENDENT