by Penny Junor
A high percentage of the Award Groups are operated at schools and youth organizations but they are also run in prisons where, according to Arengo-Jones, there have been extraordinary results:
In South Africa they conducted a survey to see how many of the seven thousand young people who had been through the President’s Award programme – as it is called there – had re-offended and found that seven had. That figure would normally have been 86 per cent. It’s incredible and a bit risky because they sometimes change their name. But even if that figure is wrong by 100 per cent or 200 per cent, it is still so substantially below the normal as to be unbelievable. But every time I go there I get another set of figures which is the same. It stops them re-offending, and the prison service makes it available to all young people who go through the system.
In Britain the figures are also good. In one area in the southeast the re-offending rate of young people engaged in the Award Scheme was 2.5 per cent compared with 32 per cent of young people on final warnings and 85 per cent on probation orders who were not in the Award.
The Duke has handed over much of the practical day-to-day running of the International Award Association to Prince Edward; but Prince Philip is still Patron, and although the 50th anniversary in 2006, when he will be eighty-five, might seem the ideal moment to step down from the entire operation, he shows no inclination to do so. He is still involved, still influential and still participating in the triennial International Forums, last held in 2003 in Barbados. Father and son were there together, both staying in the same unglamorous holiday block as everyone else, in simple rooms with a double bed and bathroom, no valets, just protection officers. Prince Philip doesn’t enjoy the fuss that so often goes with the territory. At a conference in Auckland one year he was irritated by the convoy of cars with flashing blue lights that the local police had laid on to escort him. When he arrived at the event he walked down the line of policemen and said, ‘When we leave I want three or four cars; no more.’ Five cars were waiting for him when he came out of the conference; he counted them. ‘Come on,’ he said to his companions, ‘we’re walking’, and they walked the mile or so back to the hotel. It caused total confusion but it was the last time there were too many cars in the convoy. He hates the use of sirens, hates driving through red traffic lights. ‘Why can’t we stop?’ he will ask.
Paul Arengo-Jones, twenty years his junior, is in awe of the Duke’s stamina.
He works incredibly hard for us. We did a tour of the West Indies; seven countries in five days. He was seventy-nine or eighty at the time and I had managed to borrow a private jet and met him in the Bahamas and had crammed the programme. There’s a rule with his programme: never leave empty spaces. What’s the point in being there if you’re not going to work? is his attitude. So when we were planning it I drew up this horrendous programme. I sent it up to him saying, ‘This is the maximum we can fit in. I hope Your Royal Highness will draw some lines.’ It came back, tick. At the end of it I was absolutely on my chin strap, exhausted; private aircraft, chauffeurs, it didn’t make any difference. He was utterly unfazed by the whole thing, striding forward, ‘What do I have to say now? Where am I going? What do I have to do?’
He is also impressed by how hard the Duke works. He can write to him 365 days of the year and no matter where the Duke is, whether at Balmoral, on a foreign tour or on holiday, he will get a response within three or four days, and often will have typed it himself. If he has asked for a message, for example, the Duke will draft something and send it, saying, ‘Is this okay, do please just scribble on the paper so I can make the changes on my computer.’ Says Arengo-Jones, ‘I’ve given up writing notes for speeches, I just provide bullet points that I’d like included or names he might mention, and he will do it all himself. I believe every evening before he goes to bed he clears his desk. I’ve certainly been phoned at 11.00 at night by a Private Secretary saying, “We need that brief, could you get it delivered to Government House at 6.30 a.m. so he can read and absorb it before breakfast?”’
He always comes to everything very well briefed, he’s always on time, knows when to be there and when to leave; both him and the Earl. You say you’d like them to come to a cocktail party from 6.00 to 7.00. They say, ‘Okay, how many people?’ You say, ‘About a hundred and twenty’, and they say, ‘Okay, forty minutes’. They know exactly how long it takes to work a room and come out the other side without having to go round twice or feeling spare at the end. They will talk to everybody. Once in South Africa they were going round meeting everyone and one group moved because they thought they were going to be missed and the Duke got to the end and I said, ‘Right, I think that’s the lot’ and he said, ‘No, there’s one missing’, and looked round and spotted them and was off, had a chat with them, then said, ‘Now we go’. He had noticed when he went in who the groups were; he’s an utter professional. You go back into the room and everyone says ‘Wow’ because he’s talked to them all and he’s interested and he’s very knowledgeable.
Another well-known charity with which the Duke’s name has long been associated is the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature as it’s now called). He agreed to be President for five years and is just clocking up his 33rd year and still going strong. Making conversation over lunch with girls and staff from the Cheltenham Ladies’ College in March 2004, during a visit with the Queen to mark the school’s 150th anniversary, he asked the chairman of the Council how long he had been in post. Having originally taken the job on for five years, the answer was very many more. ‘I did exactly the same thing with WWF,’ said the Duke. ‘Goodness,’ said one of the girls, ‘I didn’t know you had an interest in wrestling.’
Dr Claude Martin who has worked with him at WWF for many of those years says he has been a very good Chair. He’s been on hundreds of trips to see wildlife and endangered species, and opened doors all over the world to the most influential people. ‘We were once on a trip into the Congo basin and on into forest. Prince Philip complained he never saw any wild animals because there were so many bloody policemen hiding in bushes they scared everything away. So we took him into forest with no one and saw masses of wildlife. He loved it.’
Like everyone who works with the Duke of Edinburgh, Arengo-Jones believes sixty-six-year-old Brigadier Miles Hunt-Davis is the key. They joined within a year of each other, had military backgrounds – Paul was a colonel – and had mutual friends.
The relationship with the Duke was also helped by a shared military background. Arengo-Jones viewed Prince Philip as his divisional commander.
To me he would have been a four-star general or admiral, regardless of whether he married Her Majesty. He has the intellect and the bearing and the strength of character to have reached that rank, no doubt. I get so annoyed when the press picks up on his comments. Remember the Indian fuse box? He went up to Scotland, looked at a fuse box, it was a mass of wires, said ‘That looks like an Indian fuse box’, the press reported it and the Asian community went through the roof. My Indian counterpart wrote to me a few days later and sent the leading article from their equivalent of the Sunday Times, and it said, ‘At last someone speaks the truth.’ It was a long article extolling the virtues of what the Duke said. ‘He’s absolutely right, our electrical systems in India are appalling, every Indian has to have about six transformers and seven circuit breakers between the grid and their computer because of the surges and the blackouts and so on. We really have got to get a grip.’ Two days later he sent me the letters that the newspaper had had in response; about two disagreeing and ninety saying quite right; so I said don’t send them to me, send them to the Duke, which he did and he got a nice letter back.
But not everyone can cope with the Duke of Edinburgh’s challenging manner. One former director of the Award couldn’t. He was so intimidated he broke out into a sweat whenever he saw the Duke; his shirt would be wringing wet. He couldn’t and didn’t stay. Yet the young people who have done the Award seem to thrive on his provocation. Put him with a group of r
ough, tough teenagers and he is in his element. ‘What did you do for your Award?’ he’ll ask. ‘That’s not very challenging, couldn’t you do better than that?’ ‘They respond wonderfully,’ says Mike Gretton.
They come straight back at him, they’re not overawed at all. They think, ‘Who is this gaffer?’ His technique at Gold Award presentations is to head for the prettiest girl in the front row because he knows she will be fun to talk to and she’ll be confident and vocal, so it starts the conversation which quickly spreads out to the shyer boys and girls. It’s brilliant. He was a superb chairman to me, he remains a superb patron, and just to see him wandering around St James’s Palace or Buckingham Palace or Holyroodhouse when he’s awarding the Golds … he hasn’t missed a Gold Award presentation in forty-eight years. He’s passionate about it, utterly dedicated, it’s his baby, his thing, and I’m quite convinced that when we cut him in half after he moves to a better place we’ll find a rock running through his insides saying The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award.
Nevertheless, those who work for him have to be prepared for the whole package, to take the rough with the smooth. The Duke is punctilious about time and anyone greeting him is wise to be in position five or ten minutes early. On one occasion he was late, by five or ten minutes, for a UK Award General Council at the Barbican. Finally the car arrived – his personal black cab – he leapt out, growled at Mike Gretton about terrible traffic and it all being his fault, and, as they walked to the Green Room backstage at the Barbican, said, ‘And your bloody brief was absolute nonsense.’ He then went on to the stage and conducted the meeting perfectly and in total accordance with the brief. ‘He loves having a little poke to see how you stand up and as long as you don’t burst into floods of tears it’s all fine.’
Apart from such rare exceptions, meetings he chairs always start and end on time and it is a brave committee member who turns up late. He will walk into the room with no ceremony and start chatting, and then he’ll look at his watch and the meeting begins. Prince Edward, however, is a favourite and, some say, indulged son. He once arrived five minutes late for a trustees’ meeting after the chairman had begun. Edward said, ‘I’m frightfully sorry, sir’, and Prince Philip stood up, kissed him warmly on both cheeks and welcomed him with open arms. His skill at conducting meetings, like that of his daughter, is legendary. He allows everyone their democratic say but is very skilled and enough of a diplomat to end up with a consensus view which leaves everyone thinking they have the answer they were looking for.
Nothing has been confirmed but Edward, who will inherit his father’s title in due course, is almost certain to take over the Award, too. He is just as passionate about it as his father and, having done it himself – which his father never could because he was over age for the Award when it was launched – he is the best possible ambassador for the organization. Since giving up Ardent, his production company, in 2002, the Award has become his main interest; he is a trustee of both the UK and International Awards and also chairman of the International Council of the International Awards Association and when he is not swapping stories with current participants – who I suspect he gets on with better than adults – he goes all over the world making presentations and raising funds. ‘People say, “What shall we do with him?”’ says Paul Arengo-Jones. ‘I say, “Put him in a room full of young people and close the door.”’ Next year he is lead trustee for the Award’s 50th anniversary celebrations – and some of his riskier ideas are already resurrecting nightmares from the past.
TWENTY-SIX
A Moment of Madness
Many people date the beginning of the monarchy’s recent troubles to that fateful television spectacular, It’s A Royal Knockout. Everyone at Buckingham Palace, including the Queen’s Private Secretary, Bill Heseltine, was against the idea. He had tried to get it stopped but Prince Edward was too far down the road with the negotiations, adamant that he should be allowed to do it, and the Queen, never good at confrontations, was unable to say no to her youngest son, even though she too had misgivings. Nearly twenty years on, Edward is older and wiser having not been allowed to forget the disaster. It’s A Knockout is the benchmark for every idea that is floated at the Award. ‘As long as it’s not like It’s A Knockout’ the cry goes up and he will be on a short leash this time around.
Bad publicity and royal scandals appear to have surprisingly little impact on the charities with which members of the Royal Family have links. The Duke of Edinburgh’s remark about Indian fuse boxes had one Award field worker saying he was not prepared to continue, but there has been no evidence of donors pulling out. Mike Gretton admits he worries about it but says that scandals reverberate very little.
Big corporate donors are usually ensnared over lunch at either Buckingham Palace or Bagshot Park, invitations to which – with the promise of Edward, usually Sophie, and occasionally the Duke for company – have chairmen and chief executives responding by return of post. Edward gives a presentation, there is a discussion, lunch and the suggestion that they might like to give £20,000 per annum for five years. In the last six months they have had a 50 per cent strike rate and are purring.
‘It’s partly altruism – the corporate world would like to support young people in their development across the board – but, secondly, they can mix with other captains of industry and, by the way, it’s in St James’s Palace or Buckingham Palace and you can bring your clients along and you introduce them; the royals have a strong cachet, that counts for one hell of a lot,’ says Gretton.
We’ve done a lot of research on corporate giving, and people say they’ve done it entirely for altruistic reasons, but you scratch a little bit harder and actually there is bound to be some self-interest. If I’m a shareholder or a private company owner, I want to know that my donation is doing something for me. It might be called corporate social responsibility – fine, but they’re doing it because there might be something in it for them and I don’t blame them, they’re hard-nosed businessmen. We do think about that quite a lot – the debasing of the monarchy or a bicycling monarchy would have a huge effect on us on the fundraising side – and we have our thoughts and are building other planks to our fundraising which will be less dependent on the royal scene because that makes sense in itself and as a back-up – but it would be very damaging if the royals disengaged.
There’s no question about the value of having a royal around – other charities would bite my arm off to have what we have. Whatever criticism there is of the Royal Family there are enough people around who want to meet a royal and be associated with something royal, for good reasons and bad, but that makes it a very, very positive advantage.
Privately he worries about what will happen when the Duke of Edinburgh goes because he is a stronger brand than Edward, but he has absolutely no doubts that in fundraising terms, and also operationally, having the royal connection is very important to the organization.
As Arengo-Jones says, royal patronage is a priceless commodity. It allows charities to offer their donors access to the most exclusive address in the country and the chance to shake the hand of a member of the British Royal Family. That is something that money simply cannot buy.
‘It doesn’t matter how much money you’ve got; unless you know the person with the key to the door, you won’t get through.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
The Key to the Door
The member of The Firm who has perfected the art of using his position – in the interests not just of charity but of issues – is the Prince of Wales. He discovered many years ago that an invitation to Highgrove or Kensington Palace would be accepted before it hit the doormat. This enabled him to bring together disparate collections of people with a common thread, who without his intervention would never normally have met. He put them round his dining-room table, posed searching questions and coerced them into finding answers. What could have been read as impertinence had chairmen and chief executives twice his age returning to their desks and working for their lunch. The r
esult, to cite but one example from twenty years ago, was that after listening to the needs of the disabled, at least one of the major builders of modern housing estates was persuaded to add an extra fifty millimetres to standard door frames, to lower the sills and build ramps instead of steps into the landscaping so that their houses could accommodate wheelchairs; and the disabled, who were so badly served by society, could feel less alienated.
Since 2003 the government has made it statutory for all public buildings to be wheelchair-friendly but that was long after the Prince of Wales first put heads together and effected a change, albeit small, via less draconian methods.
He discovered he could do the same internationally, too. In the early nineties he convened a two-day meeting in Charleston, South Carolina, for 120 senior executives from the United States, Britain, Europe, Japan and Australia. Declaring himself merely a ‘catalyst’, he posed one question after another to which he wanted written answers. With the Prince as their guide they wandered through the old streets of Charleston to try to capture the romantic essence of a traditional community and to admire the local architecture. ‘How are we going to tackle the huge challenges facing us,’ he asked them; ‘vast population-growth rates, poverty, hunger, mass migrations, environmental degradation, potential conflict over diminishing natural resources – unless business, with its presence in these crucial areas and with so many people, their children and families, revolving around such business, takes a long-term view?’
As the businessmen there commented, no one else in the world, not even the President of the United States, could have got so many top people together at such short notice.