The Queen: Helping to celebrate when Newport became a city

And in June of that year the Monarch visited to help the residents celebrate.

Here's how we reported the visit at the time:

THE newest city in Her Majesty's realm burst into a sea of red, white and blue yesterday as the Queen's visit to Newport fanned a patriotism and warmth which was first kindled almost 60 years ago.

It was a changed Newport which, in 2002, dressed itself in a blaze of Union Flags and Welsh dragons and poured from homes and workplaces under a threatening sky to meet its monarch.

But, if there were many things she recognised since she first visited Newport in 1944, one must have been the fervent open-heartedness of the welcome.

In 1944, when as the Princess Elizabeth Her Majesty first came to Newport, a suppressed hum of excitement and apprehension was the mood as the town's factories turned out the munitions and weapons which within a dozen weeks would be used for the massive Anglo-American invasion of occupied Europe.

Since then there have been bright days, such as the opening of Spencer Works in 1962 and dark ones, such as that which came almost 40 years later when a combination of world trade conditions and a management disinclination to save Welsh jobs at the expense of Dutch ones had all but laid the steelworks low.

But, Newport, like the institution of the monarchy itself, is a survivor. Harsh economic winds may have buffeted the city but just as they were in 1944 her citizens remain determined to see things through.

At the point where the Queen was due to enter the city centre from the Harlequin roundabout a helicopter hovered for a while, camera scanning. It was the first intimation of her impending arrival.

And then ... the flash of blue lights as a dozen motorcycle policemen swept by with a languid but perfectly co-ordinated movement.

"She looked at US!" a little girl shouted and the flags began to wave and some older men took their hats off and as their monarch passed. She was wrong. The Queen was looking in the opposite direction. Actually, it didn't matter all that much. It was one of those moments when the normal standards of belief and reality are suspended. In 60 years time the little girl will be able to say to her own grandchildren and say "The Queen looked at ME".

That a Queen can in some sense bring the nation together is a platitude - it is something we all say without examining the contents of our words all that much. But here - on June 13, 2002 - half a century into the Queen's reign it was literally true.

Young men with their baseball caps on back to front who normally would sneer at the idea that they might be part of a nation waved their Union Flags along with ex-soldiers and other older people who have known all along that the monarchy is a social cement that defies rational explanation.

I saw a policewoman directing traffic with a Union Flag in one hand, and another policeman who had decided that under the special circumstances, the best job for the belt which also held his handcuffs, torch and other accoutrements was to hold a small bottle of Coca-Cola.

It was that sort of day.

Queen Elizabeth reigns. So does good humour and citizenship and an uncomplicated sense of loyalty and affection.

But we always knew that. It's very nice though, every couple of decades or so, to be able to express it.