by Joan Smith
Natural-born Tories
There is an ignoble tradition here which stretches at least as far back as the 1930s. In those days a new king, Edward VIII, courted popularity with ordinary people by visiting impoverished communities but managed, for the most part, to conceal his support for the Nazi regime in Germany. This was, to be fair, an enthusiasm shared by the owners and editors of some British newspapers, most notably the Daily Mail; its proprietor, Lord Rothermere, wrote an article for his own paper in 1934 entitled ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’. When Edward succeeded to the throne in 1936, diplomats at the German embassy in London cabled Hitler with an assurance that the new King urgently wanted an alliance between Britain and Germany.39 Edward’s reign was disastrous and thankfully short-lived, ending in his abdication after only eleven months so he could marry an American, Wallis Simpson; in 1937, shortly after their marriage, the couple ignored the advice of the British government and visited Germany. The new Duke and Duchess of Windsor met Hitler, had dinner with his deputy, Rudolf Hess, and visited a concentration camp. FBI documents released many years later appeared to suggest that Simpson’s pro-Nazi views had alarmed the British Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, and it was those connections – not her status as a divorced woman – that meant that the King could not marry her and remain on the throne.40 Despite all this, Edward VIII continues to be widely regarded as a misguided but tragic figure who gave up the throne because he fell in love with a divorced woman. His brother, George VI, has recently been eulogised in a sentimental film, The King’s Speech; the movie ends with the King overcoming his speech impediment in time to make a radio address to the nation after the government’s declaration of war on Germany, a patriotic gesture which neatly erases his elder brother’s dubious political sympathies.
In the twenty-first century, no one suspects members of the royal family of fascist sympathies, but the fact that they have partisan views is carefully spin-doctored out of public debate. In party terms, it is hard to believe that they are anything other than natural-born Tories, as an entry in the diaries of the former Labour MP Woodrow Wyatt, a close friend of the Queen Mother, appeared to confirm. In 1986, during a conversation with Wyatt about the following year, the Queen Mother suddenly asked whether it would ‘be all right’; she was asking for an assurance, he explained, that Margaret Thatcher would win the next general election.41 Wyatt recorded that the Queen Mother ‘adores Mrs Thatcher’, an admiration apparently shared by other members of the family who often drank ‘a toast at the end of dinner’ to the Conservative Prime Minister. Another person the Queen Mother admired was P. W. Botha, the leader of apartheid-era South Africa who refused to release Nelson Mandela and was later found responsible for gross violations of human rights; she thought it was ‘awful how the BBC and media misrepresent everything that Botha is trying to do’. She was less keen on the leaders of Commonwealth countries who argued for sanctions against South Africa, once describing President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia as ‘an idiot’. Wyatt also recorded that she liked Jews but thought they were a ‘separate’ and ‘strange’ people; he said she had ‘some reservations about Jews in her old-fashioned English way’.42 Such views would have been common among upper-middle-class women and indeed men of the Queen Mother’s generation, where anti-Semitism and racism were never far below the surface. But they are hard to square with the unblemished reputation she enjoyed in her lifetime, casting her in the role of a wise and kindly matriarch. Nor is it easy to imagine her grandchildren or great-grandchildren voting Labour, even if they were eligible to do so.
Something happened in the autumn of 2014, however, that finally exploded the myth of an apolitical monarchy. Thanks to the Scottish referendum on independence, we now have an unequivocal example of the Queen intervening in politics at a moment of constitutional crisis. Naturally, she did it in such a way that it was left to the media to ‘interpret’ her remarks; given that the Queen’s ‘neutrality’ is supposedly one of the strongest arguments for a constitutional monarchy, she is expert in letting her feelings be known without explicitly crossing the line into controversy. Here is what happened: just four days before the vote, when it was beginning to look as though the Scots might actually decide to break up the union, the Queen emerged from Crathie Kirk, the small parish church where members of the family worship when they are staying at Balmoral. Speaking to ‘well-wishers’ – that mysterious category of persons who only ever appear at royal events – she uttered these gnomic words to someone who asked about the imminent ballot: ‘Well, I hope people will think very carefully about the future.’
Sensation! Hold the front page! The Queen and her advisers knew perfectly well how this apparently anodyne remark would be interpreted by the press, which duly reported it as a gesture of support for the ‘no’ camp. At the time, her intervention was widely reported as unexpected, although the context – a sudden surge in popularity for the ‘yes’ vote, suggesting that Scotland might choose independence – strongly suggests otherwise. Indeed, the fact that the whole thing was carefully staged was confirmed by the Daily Telegraph, which reported as follows:
Although she usually walks between her car and the church without speaking to bystanders, she decided to do so after she left the church on the final Sunday before the referendum.
Unusually, a police sergeant invited members of the press waiting 200 yards away to come up to the church to see the royal party depart, enabling them to hear her exchanges [my italics].43
The same paper did the job it was supposed to do, spelling out what the Queen’s words meant in a strapline: ‘The monarch breaks her silence on Scottish independence four days before voters go to the polls, with her comments interpreted as support for a No vote.’
The Daily Mail went even further, describing the Queen’s observation as a ‘stark warning’44 about independence.
What actually happened behind the scenes emerged three months later, when The Guardian laid out the high-level planning that went into her apparently off-the-cuff remark.45 The paper reported that ‘senior figures in Whitehall’ were panicked by a YouGov poll published two weeks before the vote that showed a six-point drop in support for the ‘no’ campaign in the previous month; they approached Buckingham Palace, suggesting that an intervention from the Queen would be helpful. The situation became more critical during a subsequent visit to Balmoral by the Prime Minister, when the Sunday Times published the first opinion poll to show the ‘yes’ campaign ahead, if by the narrowest of margins (51 per cent). The shift in public opinion led to last-minute negotiations between the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, and the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Christopher Geidt; they came up with a ‘carefully worded intervention’ as No. 10 experienced what the paper described as a ‘meltdown’ over the prospect of a ‘yes’ vote. The Guardian then described precisely the process I outlined above:
The two men are understood to have initially discussed the wisdom of a public intervention by the monarch, who is scrupulously impartial. Once it became clear that the Queen was minded to speak out, Geidt and Heywood then needed to fashion language which, while broadly neutral, would leave nobody in any doubt about her support for the union [my italics].
Even The Guardian cannot quite shake off the habit of claiming that the monarch does not intervene in politics, despite the fact that evidence to the contrary is staring it in the face. What the paper’s scoop actually shows is this country’s head of state engaging in an exercise to influence the way people vote, while maintaining a façade of ‘neutrality’. Republic’s CEO, Graham Smith, took the unusual step of calling on MPs to censure the Queen, saying she had overstepped the boundaries of her position:
We would normally expect a head of state to take an active interest in such a momentous referendum, but the deal with the monarchy is that the monarch stays quiet and keeps out of these debates.
The real problem is the system. But that doesn’t excuse the Queen making her views known in such an underhand way while having her pre
ss office insist she is impartial.
Republic is right: this kind of behaviour is an affront to the democratic process, which rightly requires people who seek political outcomes to be open and transparent about their involvement. Anyone who genuinely supports democracy should be outraged by it.
And so they would be, were it not for the fact that the rise of a supposedly rambunctious press in the UK has made very little difference to the way the institution is scrutinised; the assumption that ‘everybody’ wants to know about the Queen and her relatives has spread through most of the media like mould in blue cheese, putting the royal soap opera on almost every front page. At the same time, the general public has very little knowledge of the royal family’s extensive lobbying activities, carried out for the most part behind closed doors. While the public might be aware that Prince Charles dislikes modern architecture and is keen on ‘alternative’ medicine, most ordinary people continue to know little about how he uses his status to get privileged access to elected politicians; even fewer know that he and his mother have extraordinary powers of veto over proposed legislation. How many people are aware, for instance, that in 1999 the Queen vetoed a Private Member’s Bill which would have transferred the power to authorise military strikes against Iraq from the monarch – herself, in other words – to Parliament?46 This species of interference is handled discreetly by royal aides and ministers’ private secretaries, placing members of the family at one remove and shielding them from awkward questions about their political views. Hence the existence of the popular myth, which has great resonance at a time when elected politicians are held in low esteem, that the family floats above vulgar political disputes. I never believed this was true for a moment, given that people who enjoy power and influence are usually keen to make the most of it. My suspicions were confirmed when I attended a Christmas party at Buckingham Palace where I was introduced to the Queen – I think I can safely say she didn’t take to me – and heard her talk about future membership of the EU in a way that clearly breached constitutional boundaries.
A Christmas turkey
The party was in a long gallery on the first floor of the palace, where some of the Queen’s impressive art collection is crammed onto the walls. I was with my then partner Denis MacShane, who had been Europe minister at the Foreign Office until 2005 and was still a backbench MP. The first thing that struck me was how nervous and overawed most of the guests appeared to be at the prospect of being in the same room as the monarch. Isn’t it a sine qua non that the head of state of a democratic country should make its citizens feel welcome and at ease? It is hard to see how that could happen at Buckingham Palace, where a suffocating atmosphere of protocol is reinforced by the presence of flunkies in antiquated court dress. One of the latter approached me and said that the Queen was about to arrive; was I prepared to be introduced to her? I said that I was and the courtier asked me and Denis to wait in a corner by the grand entrance doors. Several other couples joined us, including some Conservative MPs and their wives, and then the Queen walked into the room. She greeted Denis, whom she recognised, and he gestured towards me: ‘May I introduce my partner, Joan Smith, who is a novelist.’ I smiled and said ‘hello’. The Queen looked aghast.
A silence spread between us; as well as failing to curtsy, I had broken the unspoken rule of not speaking until addressed by the monarch. Finally, as though I didn’t exist, the Queen cut me dead and moved on to the Tory MP who was standing next to me. He introduced his wife, who curtsied, and the MP explained that she was Turkish. The Queen immediately looked brighter and said that she and her husband, Prince Philip, had been on a state visit to Turkey. The MP’s wife nodded enthusiastically, saying how pleased people in Turkey had been about the visit. At this point, the Queen turned back to Denis. ‘The EU is getting awfully big, twenty-eight countries,’ she observed. Denis gently corrected her, pointing out that it was actually twenty-seven, and added: ‘We’re hoping Turkey will come in soon.’ The Queen frowned. ‘Oh no, we don’t want Turkey to come in for a long time,’ she said.
I simply do not believe that this is the only time, in her entire reign, that the Queen has uttered a controversial – and, indeed, unconstitutional – political opinion. If that were the case, how likely is it that this supposedly out-of-character event would be witnessed by a committed republican? It seems more likely to me that most people who meet the monarch are royalists, and they would not dream of repeating unguarded remarks which might damage her or the institution. When I mentioned the exchange on the BBC’s Newsnight programme and published an account of it on my blog, it became a news story for the simple reason that it is so rare for anyone to tell the truth about such encounters. The Palace’s response to a Daily Telegraph reporter was both awkward and sneakily ad feminam:
Buckingham Palace declines to comment, but a courtier tells me: ‘While it is not beyond the realms of possibility that Her Majesty made such a comment, it may have been taken out of context. The Queen has a good relationship with Turkey and Miss Smith is, I believe, a prominent republican.’47
The last line is a very good illustration of how the Palace operates, not directly accusing me of lying – there were too many witnesses to take that risk – but trying to undermine me by mentioning my political views. At least I am open about them, unlike members of the royal family who habitually push pet causes behind the scenes.
The Queen sees the Prime Minister at weekly audiences but we know next to nothing about what is discussed on those occasions or about her meetings with other ministers; that would be acceptable in a system where the head of state had democratic legitimacy, but it is hard to justify when she is both unelected and unaccountable. A rare exception to this protective silence emerged when the BBC’s security correspondent, Frank Gardner, revealed in a live interview on the Today programme that the Queen had told him she raised concerns with the government about the Egyptian cleric, Abu Hamza al-Masri. Abu Hamza, as he is usually known, was a deeply unpleasant Islamist who preached at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London; he fought a long and ultimately unsuccessful battle to avoid extradition to the US, where he faced trial on terrorism charges.48 Gardner was talking about the case in 2012, just after the European Court of Human Rights refused to refer Abu Hamza’s case to the Grand Chamber, paving the way for his extradition. According to Gardner, the Queen told him she had raised the case with a former Home Secretary, asking why someone who incited hatred in his sermons had not been arrested earlier. ‘Like anybody, she was upset that her country and its subjects were being denigrated by this man,’ said Gardner.
There is no doubt that the cleric, who was accused of plotting to set up a terrorist camp in the US and involvement in abducting Western hostages in Yemen, was for a time the leading candidate for the title of ‘most hated man in Britain’. But the Queen’s intervention with the Cabinet minister responsible for the police, immigration and counter-terrorism was unwise to say the least; after the disclosure, which was unscripted, Gardner hurried on to say that this was not an instance of ‘lobbying’ and that the monarch was ‘merely voicing the views that many have’. Of course ‘many’ people do not have privileged access to ministers, who would feel obliged to respond to anyone else that they could not (and should not) get involved in a case which was currently before the British or European courts. And while on this occasion the Queen’s view was no doubt widely shared, that is unlikely to be the case every time she has direct access to a minister. What other subjects has she lobbied – sorry, voiced the views of many – on? We do not know, but the response to Gardner’s revelation was in itself instructive. Within hours of the interview being broadcast, the story was no longer what the monarch said to a former Home Secretary but what the BBC’s security correspondent had said to the presenter of the Today programme. In no time at all, the BBC was forced to make a grovelling apology to Buckingham Palace: ‘The conversation should have remained private and the BBC and Frank deeply regret this breach of confidence. It was wholly inapp
ropriate. Frank is extremely sorry for the embarrassment caused and has apologised to the Palace.’49 The effect of such a stinging public rebuke to a senior broadcaster was, no doubt, to make other people think twice about revealing controversial remarks by the Queen. Silence and the ability to maintain it is, as we have discovered, one of the monarchy’s greatest protections.
We do know that Prince Charles is an assiduous networker, endlessly demanding private meetings with senior members of the government. In the three years following the 2010 general election, he held thirty-six private meetings with Cabinet ministers; the number of private audiences rises to fifty-three if meetings with junior ministers are included.50 The election was held at the beginning of May and the Prince’s first meeting with the Prime Minister, David Cameron, took place just two months later; they met once in 2011, three times in 2012, and twice in 2013. Charles was particularly keen to press his views on ministers at the Department for Environment, meeting three different ministers (including the then Secretary of State, Caroline Spelman) on five occasions. He was, if anything, even keener to get access to the top people at the Departments of Energy and Climate Change, meeting two secretaries of state (Chris Huhne and Ed Davey) and two junior ministers over a series of seven meetings. In July 2013, Charles had an even more controversial meeting with the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt. The meeting came as critics complained that the NHS was wasting millions of pounds on homeopathy, an ‘alternative’ treatment dismissed by the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Mark Walport, as ‘nonsense’.51 Charles was unhappy with these science-based verdicts on one of his pet therapies and went to the top, knowing that Hunt shares his views on ‘alternative’ therapies.
The Independent reported that several Labour MPs had reacted ‘with fury’ when they heard that Charles had lobbied Hunt, and not long afterwards they found support from an unexpected quarter. In a move which almost certainly reflects anxiety among monarchy-supporting newspapers about the prospect of Prince Charles ascending the throne, the Daily Mail joined the fray. It described his meetings with ministers as an ‘extraordinary lobbying campaign’ and suggested that he was pushing favourite causes, including town planning and rural affairs. It described his views as ‘strident’ and even quoted a left-wing Labour MP, Paul Flynn, who accused the Prince of an ‘incontinence of lobbying’. The paper said: