ROBERT HARDMAN: Give our volunteers their crowning glory at King Charles’s coronation

Most of those present at the time remember the dazzling young Queen in her Gold State Coach. For some, the abiding memory of June 2, 1953 would be the terrible weather.

Hence the universal affection for another monarch, Queen Salote of Tonga, who famously refused to raise the folding roof over her horse-drawn carriage so that she could see – and be seen by – the rain-soaked crowds.

Millions more – former prime minister Sir John Major among them – would always remember that day because it was the occasion when countless British families acquired their first television set.

Britain was, in many ways, another country at the time of the last Coronation. There was still wartime rationing on meat, few people owned a car, everyone owned a hat and the majority of people still went to church each week wearing their ‘Sunday best’.

Sir Winston Churchill’s government saw the Coronation as a catalyst for national rejuvenation, helping a war-weary nation to get back on its feet and feel proud of itself once more. It did so by focusing everything on a 27-year-old mother-of-two on one magical day.

Seventy years on, times have changed and the new monarch wants to spread the Coronation celebrations over several days. The King and the Queen Consort also want to use the occasion to reflect the spotlight back on what they regard as the backbone of the nation – its volunteers.

After all, the latest census data shows that 41 per cent of the population now take part in some sort of volunteering for what equates to at least an hour and a half each week. And one of the monarchy’s stated aims – as it declares on the royal website – is to ‘support the ideal of voluntary service’.

The story of royalty and volunteering can be traced from the present day back as far as King John dispensing alms to the poor at Easter (hence the Royal Maundy service) via all those institutions from the Royal Hospital Chelsea to the RSPCA with some sort of royal connection.

It is why the King has decided that the Coronation long weekend will be a celebration of the voluntary sector, too.

Day One (May 6) will feature the ceremony itself at Westminster Abbey followed by a procession around central London. Day Two (May 7) will see street parties or Big Lunches (for those without a street at their disposal) and the great Coronation evening concert at Windsor Castle. Day Three (May 8) will be dedicated to The Big Help Out, a day dedicated to bringing communities together through volunteering.

With that in mind, the Queen Consort, as president of the Royal Voluntary Service (RVS), has devised a plan to single out and celebrate some of the country’s top volunteers. A total of 500 of them, from all over the UK, are to be recognised as Coronation Champions – with the help of Daily Mail readers.

In addition to receiving an award and a commemorative pin, they will also be invited to one of a number of official Coronation celebrations. Some might be given tickets to the Windsor Castle concert. Others might receive invitations to join members of the Royal Family at a Coronation garden party at either Buckingham Palace or the Palace of Holyroodhouse.

In recognising what she calls their ‘Herculean’ efforts, the Queen Consort hopes that all the Coronation Champions will inspire others to give volunteering a go. 

And this is where Mail readers – and everyone else for that matter – can get involved. For we need to identify as many likely candidates as possible in the next few weeks and we need you to nominate them.

The sort of people we are looking for tend to be those who never blow their own trumpets. So, we need others to blow those trumpets for them. Anyone can do so by filling in the form linked to the website.

A special panel led by social policy expert Dr Eddy Hogg will then produce a long list of 600 from which a panel of judges will select the final 500. They will be announced in mid-April and be spread across eight categories.

So, for example, some will be those who volunteer to help the elderly, perhaps through charities such as Age UK or the Alzheimer’s Society. Others might help out in a welfare capacity, perhaps with an outfit like the Samaritans or Refuge. Given the King’s passion for the environment, there will also be a category for those who dedicate themselves to helping on that front through charities such as the Woodland Trust or the National Trust.

However, Coronation Champions don’t have to be linked to a specific charity at all. Some might be a stalwart of a local community scheme or a much-loved neighbourhood project. Others might volunteer across a range of different activities.

They merely have to be over 14 and to have been involved in volunteering within the past five years, meaning that a dedicated teenager has just as much of a chance as someone who has been rattling a tin for decades.

Several spaces will be specifically earmarked for ‘Young Coronation Champions’ who are under 18. The two criteria which the judges are looking for, above all, are impact and commitment.

Ultimately, the Queen Consort and the RVS hope that, in making a great fuss of these 500 local heroes, a whole new army of volunteers will be inspired to have a go in any number of ways.

‘One of the changes in recent years, compared to the past, is that people no longer view volunteering as some sort of sacrifice and they are much more accepting that it brings its own sense of reward,’ says Cathy Nightingale, from the RVS.

‘And whereas in the past, people might dedicate a set amount of time to a specific charity year after year, people are now more flexible. They fit in what they can do around busy lives. So you might volunteer to drive people home from hospital on a Monday afternoon every few weeks but then you might also pick up a few prescriptions or make calls to isolated people in between.’

The RVS embodies the changing face of volunteering over the years. It was founded just before the Second World War by Stella Isaacs, Marchioness of Reading, as the Women’s Voluntary Services for Air Raid Precautions and would prove invaluable as soon as the bombs started falling. Though perhaps best known for its tireless capacity to dispense tea, hot food and essential supplies amid the smoke and the wreckage, it was also a phenomenal logistical operation

Lady Reading was a formidable administrator (having trained as a secretary, she became the indispensable chief of staff to the Viceroy of India, went on to marry him and ended up a life peer in her own right). Her vision for the WVS was that it should not be ‘a voluntary organisation financed by the State, but a State service furnished by volunteers’.

The WVS helped to organise housing and clothing for those who had suddenly lost everything, with depots and transport hubs all over Britain. It proved instrumental in dealing with the immense but sensitive task of evacuating urban children to a place of safety in the countryside. By 1944, it also had a network of 50,000 salvage volunteers dedicated to sourcing rubber tubing and all forms of scrap metal for aircraft production.

A quick look through its records shows the calibre of those volunteers. Take Winifred Alliker of Thurrock, Essex. She was so determined to complete an urgent bundle of sewing repairs for her local hospital on April 9, 1941, that she ignored the air raid siren and paid with her life.

Sara Jane Moss, part of the WVS Housewives’ Service, was looking after an elderly blind woman and her daughter in Stoke Newington on January 6, 1941, when a parachute mine killed them all. Six weeks after D-Day, in the summer of 1944, sisters Ethel and Winifred Hayward were on duty in a clothing depot, issuing clothes for evacuees, when they were killed by a V1 flying bomb.

One WVS volunteer, Grace Rattenbury, won the George Medal at the height of the London Blitz in September 1940 after driving her van back and forth through blazing docks to evacuate local families.

All through the war, the WVS also prided itself on offering support and a friendly face for servicemen and women far from home. That is something it continues to do to this day with a network of independent welfare officers in barracks across the country.

Come the end of the war, the women of the WVS continued to turn up at scenes of chaos and tragedy. In Coronation year, for example, they were closely involved in helping those who had been caught up in the dreadful flooding that killed hundreds across East Anglia.

Over time, the WVS took on more of a social services role, pioneering meals-on-wheels and volunteer services in NHS hospitals. Today, these continue to make life that little bit easier and calmer for medical staff and for patients.

vIn 1966 its patron, the Queen, gave it ‘Royal’ status in recognition of its achievements and it has been the WRVS and latterly the RVS ever since (it’s very much a unisex operation these days). Today, its vast network of helpers make their mark in any number of ways. Take someone like Jonathan Willis, 34, who has been volunteering with the RVS at the Cornhill Centre in Banbury, Oxfordshire, for more than 15 years. Every Monday, he helps out with the Cornhill Companions Dance Club for the elderly, putting out the chairs, serving refreshments, washing up and occasionally offering his services as a dance partner.

He even met the royal president three years ago when the then Duchess of Cornwall dropped in (he still keeps a photograph of the encounter in pride of place). Jonathan, who has Down’s syndrome, devotes each Wednesday to serving in the cafe at a local church, while on Thursdays, he works at a charity shop for the Katharine House Hospice.

‘Jonathan’s volunteering gives him a great sense of purpose and motivation,’ says his father Stephen, 66. ‘His presence always makes everyone else feel a bit better. That gives him an immense sense of satisfaction.’

Jonathan actually used to have two further weekly volunteering shifts until Covid put a halt to those. However, the pandemic also served to illustrate the way in which the country is not merely assisted by our voluntary sector but depends on it.

Just think back to that exemplary rollout of the Covid vaccine. It would have been a very different story without the tens of thousands of volunteers who staffed pop-up vaccination centres – and, in the case of St John Ambulance, actually administered jabs in millions of arms.

We all know someone who has gone the extra mile in helping us or others, expecting nothing in return. So, as the Coronation approaches, let’s ensure that some of them have a very special reason to remember it.

Of course, no one enjoys filling in forms but this one is not especially onerous. Nor do you have to fill in every box. Candidates do not need to shine in every regard (for example, while the form may ask for examples of ‘creativity’, not every volunteer will have given any thought to being ‘creative’; some will have been far too busy getting on with the task in hand).

Just as all these unsung local champions derive great pride and pleasure in what they do, you could also enjoy the quiet satisfaction of sending them on their way to a historic Coronation weekend at Windsor or a cup of tea on a Palace lawn with the Queen Consort.

And, this time, they won’t be the ones doing the pouring, serving the cake and helping with the washing up.