Following a minute's silence, Camden councillors and residents at Monday's council meeting paid tribute to the Queen.

A debate on the cost-of-living crisis was postponed until November to allow the chamber to pay their respects to Queen Elizabeth II who died on September 8, aged 96.

Councillors across the political spectrum spoke of their sadness, their memories, and of the Queen's duty and service.

%image(15318779, type="article-full", alt="Camden's council chamber stand for a minute's silence to honour Queen Elizabeth II who died")

Camden Council leader Cllr Georgia Gould began the tributes offering "profound condolences to the family".

She said: "The Queen was still working till the day she died, ensuring the transition of power, welcoming a new prime minister. She gave every last breath to the service of the people she loved and for that, I think, tonight we will honour her."

Belsize Park councillor and leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition Tom Simon said the Queen was "the rock in our national psyche that has been taken from us".

%image(15318780, type="article-full", alt="Cllr Tom Simon (Belsize, Lib Dem opposition leader) paying tribute to Queen Elizabeth II")

"For whether or not we had the privilege of meeting her, whether or not we can point to some direct impact she had on our lives, she was there as the foundation on which the edifice that is our nation has rested for so many years," he said.

"She was for many people the tie that bound us together, across generations, faiths and cultures.

"She will be sorely missed and a lot of us will be pinching ourselves for some time to come, to realise that ‘yes, she has gone’."

Cllr Gio Spinella, leader of the Conservatives and Frognal and Fitzohns ward representative, said: "In gathering here today, we in Camden share our collective grief in our collective loss and in our love for her."

He said: "Anyone who has lost a parent or a partner, a child, a loved one, will know the feeling of helplessness, of being cast adrift from one of the central pillars of life.

"The passing of her royal majesty is an unmooring from such a pillar for all of us in the United Kingdom, and in Camden especially. It is felt infinitely more deeply by the royal family, who have lost a mother, a grandmother, a great grandmother but felt by all of us in different degrees."

%image(15318782, type="article-full", alt="Cllr Sian Berry (Highgate, Green) pays tribute to Queen Elizabeth II saying she made us all "look better, shinier and friendlier"")

Highgate Green Party representative Cllr Sian Berry said: "She often made us look better, shinier and friendlier than we often have been. Like the majority of people alive today I've only ever known a world with Elizabeth II as the face of our country and it feels like a profound moment of change today."

Camden alderman Flick Rea, "almost the oldest person in the room", said she was born in 1938 and that Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret "were icons" when she was young.

"We had pictures of them, we had stories about them in women's magazines, we knew about the little princesses."

She spoke of the "sadness" and shock of when King George VI died and then "suddenly we were told we were in the great new Elizabethan age".

She said the Queen had become a "constant" in her life.

"It's a bit like now looking up at the evening sky and not seeing the pole star. There's something missing and it will remain missing probably for the rest of my life."

Cllr Esther Fajoye, who received her MBE for services to children and young people at Buckingham Palace from Prince William, now Prince of Wales, in 2020, said: "The Queen embodied public service and myself, as a social worker, she was a role model."

Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliam, was a virtual guest speaker at the meeting and told the chamber that her service "was truly remarkable". Quoting Shakespeare he said she was "a lass unparalleled".

"She was unique and someone not likely we will ever see again."

Camden resident Rukban Nessa Rouf told how her father had come to the UK in the 1960s with the "Queen's Voucher" to "rebuild Great Britain" after the Second World War.

"Two years later I came with my siblings," she said.

"In 1977 school organised a trip to central London. I came to the main road and I was waving. It was amazing I saw her, she was wearing a crown with her white gloves with the Duke of Edinburgh sitting beside her.

"When I went home I shared my story with my dad and I said I saw the queen and he said: 'I'm very proud that you saw her. The queen has invited me to this country to build a life.'

"So we are very grateful to the royal family."