As ‘KK’ was fast learning, having ‘Queenie’ around was extremely good for the Kaunda brand. That evening, however, as he rose to address the state banquet at the Intercontinental Hotel, there was considerable nervousness on the British side when the President began to speak. With much waving of the white handkerchief that he always carried in his right hand, he proceeded to deliver a rambling address on the Queen’s ‘humanity’, on the ‘dignity, freedom and equality’ embodied in the Commonwealth and on his hopes for peace and democracy in Rhodesia. However, all the incendiary passages from his original text had miraculously disappeared. The Queen, in reply, saluted Zambia’s position and influence in the world as ‘a tremendous tribute both to your leadership and to the people of Zambia’. In wishing President Kaunda well in his chairmanship of the Commonwealth summit, there was a clear message to the (still predominantly white) Rhodesian leadership over the border: ‘Never has it been so forcibly impressed on us that we all belong to one human race.’
Both sides would regard the evening as a great success, although Prince Philip was later heard to remark of Kaunda’s meanderings that he had a ‘ragbag’ for a mind. Instead of the pan-continental meltdown that would have occurred if Kaunda had said what he was originally planning to say, the scene was now set for a harmonious Commonwealth summit.
So what had happened to bring about this dramatic change of mood? Allinson’s official despatch to London once the visit was over would record simply that President Kaunda had been planning to ‘include some highly unacceptable passages’ in his speech but, after being ‘confronted’, he had ‘backed down’. This provoked an extraordinary response from the Queen’s Private Secretary, Philip Moore. It is one that reveals exactly what did take place. Writing to Roger du Boulay at the Foreign Office from Balmoral, Moore insisted that Allinson’s despatch should be rewritten to make it very clear that the Queen had actually pulled off a political triumph of her own. There was no question in his mind (and therefore the Queen’s) that this was ‘the most important and successful overseas tour from a political point of view that the Queen has made for many years’. And key to its success had been one factor that was being overlooked: ‘The Queen intervened personally with the President.’ Moore outlined what had gone on between the two heads of state. ‘When we arrived at Lusaka, Len Allinson reported to me that he thought that the only way in which he could get the offending passages removed from Kaunda’s speech was for the Queen to speak to him personally. This the Queen did in the motor car and later that evening Mark Chona came to see me to say that the President had agreed to make all the amendments for which we asked.’ As a result, Moore formally requested that the despatch should state that the Queen had made ‘a personal intervention’. In fact, she had saved the day. It seems unthinkable that Moore would have made this intervention on his own without the authority of the Queen herself. Perhaps, in this instance, she wanted future diplomats to know that if they ever found themselves confronted with some impending diplomatic disaster of this sort in the future, she might be the person to sort it out.
The official Foreign Despatch, newly-released after an FOI request, states: ‘The Zambians backed down, although the necessary amendments to the speech were only made as a result of a personal intervention by The Queen with President Kaunda.’ What it was that she actually said to him is anyone’s guess.
DING DONG
By now, all the other Commonwealth leaders were on their way to Lusaka. Having finished the first part of her tour of Zambia, the Queen had now morphed from UK head of state into Head of the Commonwealth. After a twenty-four-hour break at the Luangwa Game Park, she returned to Lusaka to begin her audiences with all the politicians, while Prince Philip took Prince Andrew to visit copper mines, schools and wildlife conservation projects. Such was the size of the Commonwealth by 1979 that the Queen’s audiences would take four full days. One leader after another would quietly break away from the summit chamber for that precious one-on-one meeting. Rather than drag them all across Lusaka to her State Lodge quarters, the Queen had taken over a small villa in the summit complex, just like those occupied by the leaders. Sir William Heseltine recalls that the Queen’s page, Ernest Bennett, had done his best to give the place a regal feel, though the ambience was more suburban than palatial. The buzzer installed for the beginning and end of the Queen’s audiences turned out to be a standard ‘ding-dong’ house doorbell. A lucky few would be invited to lunch in the villa next door, and the Queen insisted that the guest list should include the leaders of some of the Commonwealth’s smallest nations as well as the biggest. Day One saw the Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka and Tonga come to lunch. ‘She saw everyone,’ Lord Carrington said afterwards. ‘They all had a hut and she had a grand hut and it was quite clear how they felt about her.’
Back in the conference chamber, tension was building ahead of the crunch debate on Rhodesia. Right up to the last moment, President Kaunda could not resist antagonising Mrs Thatcher. On the eve of her arrival, he gave a newspaper interview in which he accused her of being so obsessed with Russian influence in the region that she was losing her ‘reason’. As Len Allinson later recorded, Kaunda was still suffering from ‘paranoia’ that the British would try to ‘sidestep’ the issue of Rhodesia at the very last moment. There was added drama when Mrs Thatcher attempted a discreet arrival shortly before midnight on 30th July– wearing her protective sunglasses – only to find herself ambushed by an unscheduled press conference orchestrated by the Chona brothers. Kaunda’s tactics were still in danger of scuppering the summit. However, the wily Sonny Ramphal was doing his best to soothe tempers in the conference room. The Queen was doing the same in her audiences at her little villa. Nigeria, she suggested, might like to tone down the combative language; Australia’s Malcolm Fraser was encouraged to help Zambia find a solution, and so on. There were more royal manoeuvres at the Queen’s banquet for all the heads of government on opening night. She was on fine form with all the leaders, of course. ‘You’re the same generation as my mother,’ she teased Hastings Banda at one point. ‘And there’s no stopping her!’
Chief Emeka Anyaoku well remembers her broader strategy. The Queen ensured that she did not just make time for the leaders, but for all the ministers, officials and fixers, too. ‘Usually, the Queen would give a banquet for heads and, after the banquet, she’d have a reception for foreign ministers and leave by 10.30. But on this occasion, she was there until midnight making sure she talked to everyone,’ Anyaoku recalls. ‘Her calming and restraining influence was very much at work. That was what encouraged them to agree how they should work out their formula for dealing with the Rhodesian crisis.’ The Queen could not be in the conference chamber. But she could still set the tone.
Two days later, in the first discussion of Rhodesia, there was no ‘ganging up’ on Mrs Thatcher, as the British had feared, and no ranting by Kaunda either. Instead, the President invited ‘Mwalimu’, the revered Julius Nyerere, to speak on the subject of Rhodesia. The donnish Tanzanian leader carefully outlined his belief that only Britain had the ‘responsibility, the experience and the political will’ to create a lasting constitution for its war-torn colony, one that could command unanimous Commonwealth support. His words were supported by the Kenyan President, Daniel arap Moi, whereupon it was Mrs Thatcher’s turn. Would she seek a new start for Rhodesia or would she insist on endorsing white rule and the status quo? The entire future of the Commonwealth hung in the balance at this point. If she argued that Rhodesia and the puppet regime of Bishop Muzorewa constituted a legitimate example of majority rule, then many African leaders would have stood up and walked out. But if the British Prime Minister declared that it was time for constitutional change, Rhodesia would know the game was up.
Mrs Thatcher began by arguing that so much had changed in Rhodesia, that Bishop Muzorewa was an African president who had been elected by an ‘African majority’, that there was no further need to use ‘the bomb and the gun to kill and maim men, women and chi
ldren’. The Commonwealth held its breath. Her own consultations, she went on, had nonetheless convinced her that the existing Rhodesian constitution was ‘defective’. On hearing that one word, Ramphal and all the other leaders realised that history had been made. Mrs Thatcher was not going to recognise the Smith/Muzorewa regime. Old Rhodesia was doomed. ‘The debate was over,’ he wrote in his memoirs. Mrs Thatcher had more. It would be Britain, she said, that would now get all the parties together as quickly as possible to deliver ‘genuine black majority rule’.
As the leaders set off on their ‘retreat’ – a day-trip to the Victoria Falls – the following day, six key players, including Mrs Thatcher, Kaunda and Nyerere, stayed behind to iron out the final details. The whole deal nearly came unstuck when the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, leaked everything to the Australian press before the key conditions could be formally agreed and signed. Disaster loomed. The whole deal might be off, if the British press and the right wing of the Conservative Party urged Mrs Thatcher to think again before doing a deal with people whom she herself had called ‘terrorists’. Knowing that a lot of Conservatives – including her husband, Denis – had deep sympathy for and personal ties with white Rhodesia, she had made sure to invite an influential member of that very section of the party to accompany her. However, Ian Gow, her parliamentary Private Secretary, was of little use at the crucial moment. As Mrs Thatcher’s biographer, Charles Moore, has revealed, Gow had taken what he thought were anti-malaria pills with a glass of alcohol over lunch. They were in fact sleeping pills and he had passed out.
Given the urgency of securing the deal before news could break in the UK, Ramphal hauled all the leaders back from their retreat and, in a matter of hours, a final agreement was hurriedly signed by every Commonwealth nation. At that very moment, the Head of the Commonwealth was on her way home, perhaps raising a glass to her own handiwork on board her chartered British Caledonian Boeing 707. Back in Lusaka, Mrs Thatcher was in reflective mood as she discussed the future of Rhodesia with Sonny Ramphal. ‘You realise, of course, that we have given it to the communist,’ she told him over lunch.
Before it was all over, there would be one more extraordinary moment. On the advice of her officials, Mrs Thatcher had accepted President Kaunda’s invitation to address the annual dinner of the Zambian Press Club. She had much to say on journalistic integrity and on the ‘perilously thin’ line ‘between honest revelation and disingenuous sensationalism’. But she began on a personal note. Turning to Kaunda, she said: ‘You may not know, Mr President, you and I have something in common which is a mark of good fortune. We are both the parents of twins.’ At the end of her speech, she received an ovation, a chorus of ‘For she’s a jolly good fellow’ and an invitation from President Kaunda to join him on the dance floor. The band had even composed a new tune in their honour: ‘Now come and dance, nice Maggie, You have nothing to fear. Maggie’s a good lady. KK’s a good man . . .’ The moment would be captured in one of the most famous photographs of the Iron Lady’s premiership. What it does not reveal is that Mrs Thatcher was suffering from a violent stomach bug and had not eaten for the previous twenty-four hours.
The Lusaka Commonwealth conference had, indeed, made history. It would lead to the Lancaster House peace conference in London, which would ensure the end of the long and brutal Rhodesian bush war, free elections and the creation of Zimbabwe – all in less than a year. That would, in turn, give the Commonwealth the impetus to seek the greatest prize within its grasp – the end of apartheid in South Africa. ‘At the crucial time, the Queen exercised her stabilising influence,’ Ramphal reflected afterwards. ‘She was diplomatically brilliant. The Queen brought to Lusaka a healing touch of rather special significance.’
She had also done her British Prime Minister a great favour. Having arrived in fear of an acid attack, Mrs Thatcher had departed on a high. Her official biographer, Charles Moore, is in no doubt that, despite earlier tensions with the Palace, the Queen’s presence had ‘actually made life easier for Mrs Thatcher’. As the Iron Lady later reflected in an interview with William Shawcross: ‘If the Queen wanted to go, then the Queen had to go and all the necessary security had to be put in place. It was a very successful conference and I was glad she was there. She knew everyone.’ Less than three months into the new job, the Prime Minister had made a good impression, too.
The banner headline in the state-controlled Zambian Weekend World summed it all up as follows: ‘Queen like Jesus – Visit like Second Coming.’ Not, perhaps, a sentiment with which the modest Supreme Governor of the Church of England would agree. Even the Queen might concede though, that after all the doom and gloom just weeks earlier, something miraculous had occurred. Her Commonwealth was not just in one piece, but reinvigorated and as strong as ever. She would never experience another meeting quite like that at Lusaka.
* According to America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation, the SA-7 was responsible for bringing down twenty-nine civilian aircraft between 1978 and 1998, accounting for 550 lives.
† Within a few years, all of them, like Sir Philip, would be knighted.
Chapter 9
THE YACHT
‘I had to be carried off kicking and screaming’
HOME AT LAST
On the evening of 11th December 1997, the Prince of Wales rose to make the shortest after-dinner speech of his life. ‘I just want to get blindly, madly drunk,’ he declared and sat down again, to thunderous applause. His audience knew exactly how he felt. Having been the very first royal passenger in the Royal Yacht in 1954, it was appropriate that the Prince should be the principal guest of honour at Britannia’s farewell dinner more than four decades and more than one million miles later. Hours earlier, Britannia had been decommissioned in front of the Queen and the Royal Family at a ceremony on the Portsmouth quayside. It had been faultless, just like all those parades and displays that Britannia had produced on royal duty all over the world. On that final day, however, the Band of the Royal Marines had one surprise that was not on the order of service. As they marched off parade, they burst into ‘Auld Lang Syne’. For many old salts in the windswept grandstands it was the moment when even the tungsten reserve of the Senior Service finally gave way.
The Queen was seen to shed a tear that day, as was the Princess Royal. They were not alone. As former Chief Petty Officer Dick Field told Britannia’s official biographer, Richard Johnstone-Bryden: ‘If the press had swung their cameras around, they would have caught another 2,000 former Royal Yacht officers and Yachtsmen doing exactly the same thing. It was the worst day of our lives.’
No study of the international role of the Queen and the Royal Family is complete without looking at how they got there and back. During a reign that began with seaplanes and steam trains, the Queen has far surpassed the travel records of all previous monarchs combined. She has reigned right through the age of civilian supersonic travel, from beginning to end, trying it a few times herself along the way. Concorde was never a favourite, although she used it occasionally and it did make a spectacular appearance at landmark royal occasions, such as the 2002 Golden Jubilee. Helicopters, as we know, are not greatly loved. There have been a few notable workhorses during the reign, particularly that Vickers VC10 for longer flights, and both the Hawker Siddeley Andover and the British Aerospace BAe 146 for shorter hops. On the ground, the Royal Train has barely changed in decades, the decor of its rolling stock still firmly and fondly rooted in the 1970s, with its plastic avocado-coloured baths, Formica surfaces and brown furniture. Much overseas travel was also undertaken by train in the early years. For most of the 1947 tour of southern Africa, the 1951 tour of Canada and the 1965 tour of West Germany, the Queen lived aboard a train. When a lack of suitable airfields prohibited air travel for the long-distance part of the 1981 state visit to Sri Lanka, the Queen’s hosts decided to rebuild the royal train in which she had travelled during her 1954 visit. While many enjoyed the nostalgic sight of the monarch’s stately progress in the orig
inal royal rolling stock, it was a much longer journey than in 1954. The top speed had been reduced to 25 mph.
At home, the Royal Mews maintains the State Bentley plus a fleet of Rolls-Royces of varying vintages, assorted saloons and various models of the Land Rover Discovery. For state occasions there are coaches, carriages and landaus, ranging from the famously slow and uncomfortable Gold State Coach, built for George III, to the Diamond Jubilee State Coach, incorporating twenty-first-century hydraulic stabilisers.
Yet there has never been the slightest doubt about the favourite mode of royal travel. Over more than forty years the Royal Yacht Britannia would be so much more than a dignified means of transporting the head of state of a famous maritime nation overseas. It would serve as a secure, ocean-going palace-cum-embassy-cum-trade-platform. Above and beyond that, Britannia was the nearest the Queen has ever had to her ‘own’ home. All the other palaces and castles were inherited. All had been furnished and equipped by her predecessors over forty reigns. It was in Britannia that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh could experiment with their own ideas and, choose everything from the light fittings to the carpet. It was in Britannia that the monarch could get as near to being off-duty as a head of sixteen states could be. All the Royal Family would feel much the same way. When Princess Anne was asked whether she wanted her twenty-first-birthday party in London, Windsor or Scotland, she replied that she wanted none of the above. She would like it in Portsmouth, please, on board the Yacht. As a result, for the first (and last time) in Britannia’s history, the royal carpet was rolled up to make way for a dance floor.
Queen of the World: Elizabeth II: Sovereign and Stateswoman Page 43