Charles at Seventy

by Robert Jobson

  The prince also admires the Orthodox Church, and has made regular spiritual retreats to stay in the monasteries of Mount Athos, the Greek republic run by two thousand monks. Officially, he goes there because he is interested in the architecture and spirituality of Athos. Of course, there is a family connection, too: his grandmother, Princess Alice (the Duke of Edinburgh’s mother) was an Orthodox nun. He has also incorporated Byzantine icons in the Sanctuary, a simple chapel in the grounds at Highgrove. It is a very important place for him, where he goes to pray and to meditate.

  His embrace of Orthodoxy has even led to wild speculation in some quarters. After one of his visits to Mount Athos, an Athonite monk was quoted in one newspaper declaring that there is no question that the British royal is Orthodox in his heart. Those close to the prince dismiss claims that he is a convert, insisting that he remains a practising Anglican. Indeed, those close to him say it is because he has read and thought so deeply about his own Christian heritage and is firmly rooted in it that he is able to engage with other religions.

  During his visits around the country he makes sure he is balanced, visiting Sikh, Muslim, Hindu and Christian communities. He has studied the Koran in depth and has been a student of the Arabic language for years. He has also studied Judaism in depth and is close to Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi. He believes that both faiths have ‘a great deal in common’ with Christianity. ‘The future surely lies in rediscovering the universal truths that dwell at the heart of these religions,’ he has said.

  The prince’s belief in interfaith dialogue has long been on his agenda. He believes wholeheartedly that talking openly and honestly can only help strengthen communities and understanding. He told his biographer Jonathan Dimbleby in 1994, ‘When you begin to look at what…[they] are saying you find that so much of the wisdom that is represented within these religions coincides.’

  Clearly, our next Supreme Governor of the Church of England plans to do the job a little differently. ‘He is an individual who wants to chart new territory, and that will be very interesting indeed,’ says Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. ‘He is very outspoken.’ Over the last four decades, this has become obvious. The prince has tested the boundaries of his public role by attending Catholic masses, and his private spiritual enquiry has been frequent fodder for satirists, forcing him to deny using ouija boards and ‘dabbling in the occult’.

  Such caricatures only serve to distort the prince and his position. ‘All I have ever wanted to do is build bridges that span these chasms,’ the prince explained. But his bid to build bridges has left some confused and his critics to point an accusatory finger, wrongly, suggesting a lack of commitment to being a Christian and to the Church of England. They could not be further from the truth.

  Much of the doubt stems from Charles’s admission of adultery during his marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales, and the bitter divorce that followed. His detractors even to this day seem hell-bent on ignoring the fact that he remained ‘faithful and honourable’ in the marriage until, in his view, it had ‘irretrievably broken down, us both having tried’. There was wrongdoing on both sides.

  It is also driven by his apparently telling biographer Dimbleby in the 1994 book Prince of Wales that he wanted to be seen as a ‘Defender of Faith’ rather than ‘Defender of the Faith’ when he ascends the throne. Dimbleby said that Charles was planning this symbolic change when he became king to reflect Britain’s multicultural society. Understandably, it caused a furore at the time, particularly amongst senior Anglicans and politicians.

  Changing years of established tradition over the title would, after all, mean Charles overcoming huge obstacles, including getting Parliament to agree to amend the 1953 Royal Titles Act, which came into law after changes were made for the Queen’s coronation in the same year. While laudable, the coronation is an Anglican ceremony and any change would require legislation. One of Britain’s foremost constitutional experts, Professor Vernon Bogdanor, Emeritus Professor of Politics and Government at Oxford University, speculated that after the coronation, which would take place at Westminster Abbey, it was plausible that a second service would be held for other denominations and faiths, such as the Muslims and Hindus. ‘It would be a way of the new king showing their importance in the country,’ said the professor, who is also Research Professor at the Institute for Contemporary British History at King’s College London and Professor of Politics at the New College of the Humanities.

  As sovereign, Charles will want to demonstrate that he can set an example for the entire country to follow and the coronation – which would follow his ascension within a few months rather than the usual year or even longer – would be a perfect vehicle to do that. But such a dramatic change to the service, with Charles revising nearly five hundred years of tradition when Dimbleby published, led to a predictable backlash from so-called ‘outraged’ MPs publicly reminding the future king that he would be playing a dangerous game, as Britain was a Christian country. ‘It’s our heritage and we should defend it,’ came the message from parliamentarians. The directive to the tinkering prince was clear: ‘Don’t tinker with a state occasion without clearing it with us, the eyes, ears and voice of the people and your future subjects – first.’

  Since then, Charles’s position on the wording to be used at his coronation has categorically changed. It has been made clear to this author that Charles will ‘absolutely 100 per cent’ be named as ‘Defender of the Faith’ when he is crowned king. But he will also demonstrate in his reign that he believes wholeheartedly in the importance of his connecting with all faiths of the subjects he will reign over.

  There is no doubt that Charles’s faith is all encompassing. His appreciation of other religions comes from his wealth of study and reading over many years of interest. He makes all British citizens feel they are part of the grand historical narrative. As a result, he is the one Western statesman who is still held in a high standing in the Muslim world. This is why he has been asked to represent the Queen in the Middle East and Gulf States on numerous occasions. He is seen as an envoy who understands and respects both sides.

  Views about his faith are typical of the issues that still swirl around the prince. The truth is, however, far from disturbing him, most of the time he actually enjoys controversy. It, after all, encourages debate. He has always seen himself as a freethinker working against an established consensus.

  Chapter Twelve

  DISSIDENT AT HEART

  ‘He [Prince Charles] would readily embrace the political aspects of any contentious issue he was interested in… He carried it out in a very considered, thoughtful and researched way. He often referred to himself as a dissident working against the prevailing political consensus.’

  MARK BOLLAND, DEPUTY PRIVATE SECRETARY TO THE PRINCE OF WALES BETWEEN 1997 AND 2002

  If Charles and not his mother had been monarch at the time of the second Iraq War, when Tony Blair sent UK troops to die for their country, his weekly Wednesday meeting with the king would indubitably have been a verbal battle ground. Would Blair have been so hawkish if his monarch and commander-in-chief of the British armed forces, Charles, demanded he disclose and discuss the so-called irrefutable intelligence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? After all, it is a prime minister’s constitutional responsibility to tell the monarch what is happening and the monarch’s constitutional to probe and to ask questions about what they are told.

  It is of course supposition, and we do not know what stance the Queen took with Blair. Like her, ultimately a King Charles would have had to remain politically neutral. That said, I cannot imagine that the prince, given his breadth of knowledge and contacts in the Gulf region and Arab world, would have remained silent. He was, after all, not alone in his grave reservations at the time. The United Nations secretary-general, Kofi Annan, said at the time he believed the US-led, UK-backed invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN Charter and the decision to take action in Iraq should
have been made by the Security Council, not unilaterally. Blair’s government responded by saying the attorney-general made the ‘legal basis…clear at the time’.

  Many close to the prince, however, believe in private that, while he might well, as monarch, feel he would have no choice but to acquiesce, he would undoubtedly have voiced ‘his strongest possible objections’ on the war. He most certainly would have ‘advised and warned’ against British military intervention. His advice to Blair would have been to heed the warnings of Arab leaders in the region, men with whom Charles had built up good working relations over the years.

  Charles, after all, was diametrically opposed to the Blair–Bush Iraq War strategy, along with Labour’s former foreign secretary, Robin Cook, who had tried to pursue an ethical foreign policy during his tenure, was demoted to Leader of the House in 2001 and quit the government in March two years later, saying nobly, ‘I cannot support a war without international agreement or domestic support.’ He went on to state that, because the public was unconvinced by the arguments for war, it was not the right step. Cook’s words in the House of Commons echoed what Charles was saying in private to friends in high places, including leading politicians.

  ‘There is no doubt Mr Blair would not have been given an easy ride from HRH over Iraq Two,’ an ex-household source reiterated. ‘I can say without any doubt that those weekly meetings would have been tough going for the PM. As king, he would have been given access to all the state papers and would have insisted on seeing the so-called proof that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction ready to use. Blair would not have had an easy ride.’

  A British monarch’s residual powers – the so-called royal prerogative – are mostly exercised through the government of the day. These include the power to enact legislation, to award honours (on the advice of the prime minister), to sign treaties and, crucially in this case, to declare war. But would the prince, given his deeply held conviction, simply have rubberstamped a decision to invade Iraq as the Queen did? I think it is at best doubtful.

  Over the years, Charles has established close working and personal ties with royal Arab leaders. He is well respected in the Gulf States and Middle East, not least for his sympathetic speeches about Islam. Like Blair, he studied the Koran in depth and has even over years learned Arabic. When corresponding with Arab leaders he always signs his name in Arabic, another small nod to respecting the other culture. Indeed, he believes Islam can teach us all a way of understanding and living in the world, which, sadly, Christianity, he believes, is poorer for having lost.

  Prince Charles believes that, by shackling Britain to the flawed Bush administration, Tony Blair missed a golden opportunity to forge an alternative consensus, one that both secured the crucial support of Arab leaders and embraced their unique perspective and understanding of the often troubled region.

  Among friends Charles was less diplomatic about the premier. Privately, he castigated both President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Blair’s combative role in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the 2003 military invasion of Iraq. His views did not come with hindsight. Charles made his no-nonsense position clear to those in power at the time. He told political figures and those in his trusted circle that he regarded the Bush Administration as ‘terrifying’ and pilloried what he believes was Blair’s lack of perspicacity. He believed Blair had behaved like Bush’s ‘poodle’ and said so.

  One of his circle put it, ‘Whenever he followed in the wake of the Prime Minister on an overseas visit he would quote a phrase dryly, “Thou shalt go behind the rear of the Lord to declare his song.” It would always get a laugh.’

  Long before the BBC report in May 2003 the Prince of Wales cast serious doubt on the government’s 2002 SIS intelligence ‘dossier’ (that it had been ‘sexed-up’ by Blair’s spin doctor Alastair Campbell, and stated that Saddam’s Iraq had weapons of mass destruction capable of being deployed within forty-five minutes). He believed the president ‘lacked intelligence’. He said Bush would always remain a ‘mystery’ to him.

  On Blair, the prince was even more condemnatory. With a heavy dollop of irony, he scornfully dubbed the premier ‘our magnificent leader’ whenever talking about him in private and derided him for ignoring the wealth of sound intelligence available to him at the time that contradicted the American view. The prince believed Blair’s decision to send in our troops, thus endorsing the Americans’ stance, had simply ‘stirred up a hornets’ nest’ in the Gulf region. He repeatedly told friends that Blair should have listened to Arab leaders about how to act over Iraq. After all, Western style democracy in Iraq, the prince felt, was and always will be a ‘pipe dream’.

  But, at the time of this second invasion of Iraq, Charles was deeply concerned as the Arab rulers had repeatedly told him how uneasy they were about Blair becoming so closely aligned with Bush and how ‘bewildered and saddened’ they were by the UK’s position in being ‘tied to the USA’s coattails’ over Iraq.

  Charles asked one high-level source damningly, ‘Why did Mr Blair do it, despite what they must all have been telling him before the conflict about the dangers of stirring the hornets’ nest up in this part of the world?’

  ‘The prince,’ one senior source and former member of the Royal Household said, ‘had a very clear position on the West’s so-called democratisation of Iraq and the region based on years of study and conversations with leaders there. HRH did try very hard to engage senior figures on this, but nobody in government wanted to listen to a word he said. Their minds were made up.’

  When given the opportunity the prince would point out why the delicate differences in culture in the region were crucial to understand. It was a region dominated by tribal loyalties, and still is. So marching in carrying a banner for Western-style democracy was both foolhardy and futile. One of the prince’s circle, who was fully aware of his views at the time, said, ‘The prince was wise enough to foresee that. Why weren’t the politicians of the day? It was as if they had. Perhaps it didn’t suit their or the government’s hawkish agenda at the time.’ He never understood why politicians thought they had the monopoly on wisdom and, in his view, it was never more lacking than in the case of the second Gulf War.

  The 2003 invasion of Iraq lasted from 20 March to 1 May. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Charles found the United States and United Kingdom government ‘solutions’ to be both naïve and inept. The prince privately questioned the legitimacy of so-called ‘democratic elections’ that followed when it was happening in a background of intimidation, violence and intertribal feuding. The exclusion of Baathists would particularly infuriate him. It was ‘beyond’ him, he would say, how a sufficiently stable government would be able to unify all the disparate and opposing elements in a country that had been through such traumas. ‘How will it ever be formed, let alone succeed?’

  One impeccable source said, ‘Around this time the prince grew increasingly frustrated with the Iraq issue. It left him deeply depressed. Yes, there was a lot of talk about democracy, tolerance and people working together, but he felt this really lacked an appreciation for the people, their beliefs, and the innately tribal society we were dealing with meant these so-called solutions were incompetent.’

  Another informed source told the author, ‘I remember one evening when the Boss was particularly animated on this subject. He was animated and very critical of the Bush administration and the President in particular, saying that he felt our children’s futures appear to be in the hands of what he described as an “awful” administration and it absolutely terrified him. He just didn’t trust them one bit.

  ‘The prince had spent many, many years cultivating high-level contacts in the region and enjoys close and mutually respectful friendships with the ruling families.’ He ‘believed it exceedingly difficult to introduce democracy to such a society and which has such tensions between Sunni, Shia, Kurds, Turcoman and Assyrians,’ the source went on.

  The prince, according to sources, maintained it was ‘absolutely extraord
inary’ that neither the Americans nor those in authority in the UK ever seemed to listen to the Arab perspective or consider their knowledge of Iraq and its religious and tribal complexities when seeking postwar solutions there. Ignoring their perspective, the prince felt, was fatal and had led to what he described as ‘the bewildering mess we are facing now at home and abroad’.

  Charles believes such ‘dismissive unwillingness’ to pay any attention whatsoever to the advice of elders in the region was shown to be extremely costly and led to the influence of Al-Sayyid Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani (commonly known as the Grand Ayatollah Sistani in the West, born in 1930), the Spiritual Leader of Shia Muslims in Iraq and one of the most senior clerics in Shia Islam.

  In May 2007, hundreds of Shia Muslims demonstrated publicly in Basra and Najaf over comments made by Ahmed Mansour during a television broadcast of Al Jazeera. Mansour voiced scepticism about Sistani, suggesting he was not aware of contemporary problems in Iraq, and claimed Sistani’s edicts were, largely, written and disseminated by aides. Despite his great age, Sistani is one of the most influential figures in post-invasion Iraq. He issued a fatwa in June 2014. It called for ‘citizens to defend the country, its people, the honour of its citizens, and its sacred places’, and called on Iraqis to join the armed forces to fight the terror threat that at that time had taken over Mosul and Tikrit and was threatening Baghdad.

  A direct result of US and UK policy in the post-Saddam era would eventually lead to the kind of situation everyone wanted to avoid: an extremist, religious form of government. The prince felt that intelligent voices in the region, such as Jordan’s King Abdullah and before him his father King Hussein, were being muted, particularly by the Bush administration. The prince has a deep affection for ‘the dear old Jordanians’, who have always made him feel at home by their friendliness, courtesy and continuing regard for many things British, particularly at a time when so many of the British values and traditions viewed affectionately by the Jordanians are really no longer in existence in the UK as a result of ‘deliberate cynicism and ridicule’.