Sexism was another red herring thrown into the mix to useful purpose. By this time, the press had discovered that Meghan was indeed personally responsible for content on The Tig. In it, she regularly beat the twin drums of racism and sexism. In the context of the blog, sexism might have made sense when it prevented women from achieving their full potential, but in the context of the British press reporting on the relationship between one of its princes and a love interest, there was no sexism when they tried to garner further information about her past. They had been merely trying to substantiate the rumours swirling around about her activities. Bringing up sexism not only muzzled the press but also diverted them away from the knowledge that Meghan will have known they would alight upon sooner or later: How appropriate is it for any member of a royal family in a constitutional monarchy, which has to remain politically neutral and respectful of the opinions of all its citizens, to take up with an aggressive, proactive, ambitious, opinionated, left-wing political activist? The Tig was visible proof that her beliefs and personality were incompatible with the royal role which she would inevitably have to fulfill if her relationship with Harry should end in marriage. The valid question which she and Harry managed to divert the press away from was a simple one: How will someone as vociferous as Meghan Markle, whose posture is that she needs to use her voice, fit into a role that requires the silent acceptance of viewpoints which do not accord with her own? It is interesting to speculate upon whether much trouble would not have been avoided if such issues had been addressed from the outset. But, by issuing the statement that Harry did, he and Meghan avoided the inherent problems until after they had married and it had become apparent to her that she preferred utilising her voice to a life of silent service.
By buying themselves time the way they did, Harry and Meghan were actually only postponing the inevitable. They actually believed that they had successfully silenced all those organs of the press which might have been gearing up to shut their romance down. Each of them clearly failed to understand the importance of immutables: in his case, her; in her case, the role the press plays in Britain.
By incorrectly assessing the extent of their success in seeing off negative publicity, Harry and Meghan were opening themselves up to a host of misconceptions regarding their control over the press. It is a pity Harry was too young when his mother was alive, to appreciate how utterly her attempts to influence the press had rebounded to her detriment. As for Meghan, she was utterly ignorant of the way the British press works. She was confusing American and Canadian publications which had given her publicity, with an entirely more subversive, inquisitorial, irreverent, and chippy lot. She was like a child whose beloved pet is a docile and loving Cavalier King Charles Spaniel walking into a lion’s den thinking that she can train it. She tweaks its nose, pulls its cheeks, threatens it with her fists and orders it to sit still. She walks away confident that she has it under her control, little realising that it simply can’t be bothered to show her who’s boss. But the next time will be different.
No public figure in Britain can function without an in-depth understanding of how the British press works. It is unique. There is no other press like it in the world. It is so radically different from the North American press that Meghan was used to, that she was totally unprepared for what living with its attentions would mean to her life. Had she and Harry not bought themselves the respite they did by issuing that statement, she might have understood before her marriage that she was like a swimmer used to a well heated door pool being plunged into the icy chill of the North Sea in winter.
The press worldwide is tame compared with the British. This is as true of the American and Canadian as it is of the European, Middle Eastern, Asian, or Sub-Continental. The only press that has faint echoes of the British is the Australian, but even so, it is a very muted affair compared with Fleet Street. This is largely because in Britain we have a tradition of robust iconoclasm dating back to the eighteenth century. At a time when monarchies in Europe were both secure and autocratic, with the press rigidly controlled and public opinion shaped by the Crown, the British monarch was a usurper, invited by Parliament, to sit upon the throne while the real king stewed in exile across the water. This inevitably led to instability and the possibility of regime change, causing divided loyalties which drove dissent and gave a voice to those who would not otherwise have had one. The world’s freest press was born. No one thereafter would be impervious to the reach of journalists: no king, prince, aristocrat, government, official, public figure or even private individual who caught the attention of scribes.
By 1714, the first club of satirists had been formed. The Scriblerus Club’s members included two of the age’s most powerful writers, Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. They paved the way later in the century for William Hogarth, the social critic, pictorial satirist and editorial cartoonist whose best known works are A Rake’s Progress and A Harlot’s Progress.
By the end of the century, satirists such as James Gillray were so well established as social commentators that they could get away with poking the most outrageous fun at all public figures, including King George III and his family, especially his heir the future George IV. To his credit, the Prince Regent had enough of a sense of humour to frame some of the cartoons which mocked him, and Farmer George, as his father was known, also embraced the affectionate ribbing.
It was against this bedrock of satire that the British tabloids (so called because they were the popular press, despite some being of broadsheet size) were born in the twentieth century. My sister-in-law’s grandfather Lord Beaverbrook and his competitors Lords Northcliffe and Rothermere were the titans of the popular press. Through their efforts, the satirical tradition was converted into something equally populistic and insouciant, but more palatable to a vast reading public. They were soon joined by other newspaper magnates such as Cecil Harmsworth King, maternal nephew of both Northcliffe and Rothermere, and Sir William Emsley Carr, who edited the News of the World for fifty years. To them, no story should be written exactly as told by the subject of an interview. A journalist’s role was not to report uncritically what the subject of an interview said or did, but to portray the subject without deference and with enough sensationalism to bring the story alive while bringing the subject down a peg or two. It was taken for granted that public figures always take themselves more seriously than others are willing to take them, so a dose of irreverence was healthy. Even when these publications were writing flatteringly, they managed to include just enough pokes to make the point that everyone and everything was imperfect and it was their duty to balance the positive with the negative. Their message was: we are no respecter of persons. This has remained true till now.
Despite this, the more upmarket broadsheets such as the rightist Times and Telegraph, or the leftist Guardian and its sister paper, the Observer (the oldest Sunday paper in the world), were not iconoclastic. They did not seek to reduce everyone or everything in the self-conscious way their more populistic peers did. When writing their articles, they did not puncture people’s balloons for the mere sake of it. If denigration was beside the point, they did not gratuitously include it the way the popular press did. This remained true even after the arrival of Rupert Murdoch in England in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Although he altered the tone and content of the most august broadsheet in the country, making the Times’s content akin to what you could read in middlebrow papers such as the Mail and the Express, one fundamental difference remained. The Times was still not iconoclastic. It remained like the other upmarket broadsheets, each of whose coverage was free of the snide tone of the tabloids. In 1977 when I was the Private Secretary to the Libyan Ambassador, I always placed stories with broadsheets, because only they could be trusted not to twist and turn what you told them. In that, they were like the North American press Meghan was so used to.
Her failure to appreciate these important differences would lead her down a very slippery slope. Had she tried to understand what
she was dealing with, and why it functioned as it did, she might have stood a chance. But in her ignorance she lost the ability to cope.
Britain has more national newspapers than any other country on earth. There are too many to enumerate, but aside from the ones listed above, the most popular are the Sun, the People, the Star, and the Mirror. No other country has a freer or more vigorous press, and none has as many titles fighting for a share of the available readership. The result is that competition is fiercer than it is in any other territory in the rest of the world. In the United States, for instance, there really is not one significant daily newspaper that is read by the broad mass of people nationwide. There is the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and their more downmarket brethren such as the New York Post, all of which are locals. Nowhere is there a major national publication to compete with them. In any given area, therefore, the competition is less intense than in England, where each paper has to fight its corner against the incursions of its competitors.
The combination of competitiveness and iconoclasm is exacerbated by another feature unique to Britain. The United States, Canada and most of the European nations long ago acknowledged the levelling of their societies, either because they became republics, or, if they remained monarchies, their royal families were perceived as being powerless and purely ceremonial representatives of the state. Despite the fact that Britain is at least as egalitarian and meritocratic a society as any other Western democracy, and is more so than many others, the fallacy persists in many segments of British society that the old hierarchy remains in place, powerful and obstructionistic as ever. This misconception gives added bite to many a transaction in daily life, because several organs of the press, whether popular or broadsheet, pander to outdated prejudices as if they were still relevant today. In doing so, they perpetuate damaging and misleading myths about the structure of British society.
Of course, there are sound commercial reasons why various publications behave as they do. By playing upon the prejudices, envy, fears, hopes and dreams of their readers, they sell their papers to readerships whose opinions they shape as well as reflect. A more dispassionate take would result in commercial failure, so they justify their actions and sometimes even convince themselves that they believe the fantasies they purvey.
Beyond the infighting, there is also the courtesy one shark has for another. Like many politicians and lawyers, they recognise that, irrespective of which side they’re on, they’re all in the game together. I have seen many a journalist best of friends with an adversary whose every principle is antithetical to his own. I know of cases where they’ve knowingly destroyed the lives of innocent people to achieve what they regard as a more important objective, such as the unseemly display in 2016 when certain publications set out to ruin the reputation of someone I know in the hope of bringing down the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth. When I intervened on this individual’s behalf with one of the publications, I was told that they had nothing against him personally, but the destruction of his life would be a small price to pay if they got rid of Baroness Scotland.
Harry, of course, knew only too well what a viper’s nest the British press can be. He had a real hatred of it born of his belief that they had killed his mother. In fairness to them, they had done no such thing. Diana would have survived that car crash had she been wearing a seat belt. She was also responsible for the press following her that night. She had telephoned journalists before leaving Sardinia to tip them off about her arrival in Paris. She continued tipping them off once she arrived in that city. If you are being chased by people you have encouraged to chase you, you surely bear responsibility for creating the chase.
Of course, Harry was only twelve when his mother died. He was too young to have a mature judgement about her as an individual. By his own account, when he met Meghan he had still not worked through the trauma of her death. This was not necessarily a failing on his part. There have been reams written on the emotional impact, to children below the age of fourteen, when a parent dies. Failure to Mourn, and Melancholia by Jonathan R. Pedder (1982) carried on from Sigmund Freud‘s Mourning and Melancholia (1917) and Erna Furman’s A Child’s Parent Dies (1974) which was informed by her own experiences at Theresienstadt Concentration Camp when her mother died there. Harry’s failure to grieve was therefore a natural part of the phenomenon of a child losing its parent. But that does not mean the press were to blame.
Most people in Britain with positions that warrant press attention have a healthy suspicion of the media. Sadly, most of them also have an exaggerated fear that triggers hysterical and irrational responses at the very moment level-headedness is called for. In this regard, I speak from a lifetime of experience. I was fortunate enough to spend the first twenty four years of my life cosseted by the attentions of a tame press. For the next forty six years, I have had to endure the unwelcome attentions of the British tabloids. I therefore understand where both Meghan and Harry have come from as few others can, if only because most people have never experienced the full horror of British media intrusion, while I have.
If you look at how open Meghan was in her two blogs, it is obvious that she committed the most cardinal of all errors for anyone in public life. She revealed too much of herself. While she thought she was gaining admirers through her openness and honesty, she was also giving potential detractors information that they would ultimately be able to use against her. I can think of few people in public life who have exposed themselves to the extent that she did. One of the cardinal rules is that you batten down the hatches when journalists or servants are present. You dole out information about yourself, about your feelings and activities, as if you are a miser being forced to make a donation to a cause for which you have no regard. If you need publicity for a valid reason, such as for a charitable or commercial purpose, you put on your glad rags and monitor every word you say. You do not tell reporters what are your greatest hopes, fears, desires, ambitions, or any of the myriad of things Meghan revealed on her two blogs. You do not write articles that are so revelatory you might as well be talking to a psychiatrist. In interviews, you project an open personality while keeping your trap shut about all but the subject you are speaking about. When you see reporters out and about, you are pleasant, anodyne, uninformative, and discreet. You do not leak stories about yourself or anyone else you know. There are, of course, such things as ethical journalists, but it does not behove you to test the water unless you are sure it’s not going to chill you to your bones. Princess Grace of Monaco, for instance, was such a close personal friend of the former women’s editor of the Evening News, Gwen Robyns, that she used to stay with her at her flat in London when she wanted to escape from palace life in Monaco. I have enjoyed personal friendships with journalists like Sue Douglas, former editor of the Sunday Express, and freelancer Catherine Olsen (Lady Mancham in private life). Nevertheless, these are the exceptions, not the rule, which was best laid down by Sir John Falstaff in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part I: The better part of valour is discretion.
Many celebrities and royals have good working relationships, as opposed to friendships, with select journalists. Before meeting Meghan, Harry was chummy with Rebecca English of the Mail and one or two others, establishing human links with them which benefited both him and them. In that regard, he was following in the footsteps of his mother. Diana used to cultivate relationships with journalists such as Richard Kay and Sir David English, Editor of the Daily Mail. These were not personal friendships, but expediencies through which she would manage her public profile. The fact that Harry was doing the same suggested a level of maturity which was commendable. Nothing is more uncivilised than a public figure who cannot treat a pleasant journalist in a friendly manner.
In the week between the Sunday Express revealing Meghan’s presence in Harry’s life, and his issuing the statement which effectively warned the press off, she woke up to the difference between the tame press she was used to in the US and Canada, and the Bri
tish. Up to then, she had managed her profile with admirable dexterity. She had never had negative publicity, notwithstanding the fact that the landscape traversed by her was littered with the remnants of former relationships. The reason why was simple. Up to then, she had simply not been famous enough to warrant negative attention. This comes about only when someone has a sufficiently high profile to attract unsolicited publicity. Until the 30th October 2016, however, all Meghan’s media coverage had been solicited either by herself or through the studios. She had in reality been a column filler, the sort of semi-celebrity that journalists use to pad out the pages when there’s nothing worth reporting upon, or when they have to pay back film companies in a quid pro quo way.
Now Meghan had arrived and the press were eager to flesh out the picture. The first wave of stories had been so positive that the tabloids wanted to redress the balance with a touch of sensationalism. Their first port of call was anyone from her past who could inform them of what she was really like. To their credit, none of her formerly close friends, boyfriends, ex-husband or even family went on the record spilling secrets. They all maintained a dignified silence when they had nothing positive to say. And when they did not, they were so measured in their statements that they could not be accused of rubbishing her. In large measure, that was because Meghan has always had the good sense to associate with decent people, or, as she put it to Violet von Westenholz, ‘Is he nice?’
Even so, there was deafening silence from some of the people journalists would have expected to comment positively. This was unmistakable evidence that something was afoot. So they tried people she had known less well, people who would have less loyalty. Sure enough, there was less reticence. The picture that emerged was a mixed one. Some people, like her neighbours, had nothing negative to say, while others confided that she was ‘a piece of work’ and ‘an operator’ who was ‘ruthless’, ‘ambitious’, and practised at ‘dumping people past their sell-by date.’
Meghan and Harry Page 15