Ceausescu was getting some favourable reviews, however, in the left-wing media. Just before leaving Romania, he rambled on at great length in an exclusive interview with the Guardian’s Hella Pick. There was a cursory discussion of human rights. ‘How do you feel about criticism that has been voiced in the West?’ he was asked. Ceausescu replied that Romania took a ‘democratic humanistic’ approach to human rights and that ‘the entire people fully support the policies of our country’. The following day the Guardian carried a ‘Letter from Bucharest’ about Britain’s next state visitor: ‘He and more so his wife appear to have won genuine popular affection. Mr Ceausescu is a small, taut man who always seems to hold himself under tight control. He has shown immense courage in asserting Romania’s independence from the Russians and encouraging Romania’s nationalism. They appear to accept Romania’s stringent austerity with good humour and believe that deliverance will come.’ It would indeed come, eleven years later – via a firing squad.
On the same day, writing in The Times, Bernard Levin delivered a scathing attack on Ceausescu’s persecution of Christians, in which he added: ‘Before you finish this column, there will be a Foreign Office official telling his opposite number in President Ceausescu’s entourage that “the Times is getting frightfully unreliable these days”.’ His prediction would also prove correct.
On that bright June day in 1978 the Ceausescus flew into London’s Gatwick airport to be greeted by the Duke and Duchess of Kent, who escorted them to the Royal Train for their journey to Victoria Station. The Queen and Prince Philip, with Prince Charles and Princess Anne, were waiting to greet them, along with the Prime Minister, the Foreign and Home Secretaries, the chiefs of the Armed Forces and a guard of honour from the 1st Battalion, Grenadier Guards. Seven carriages lined up to bring the honoured guests to Buckingham Palace, with the Queen and the President leading the way and the combative Nicolae Ecobescu, director of protocol, bringing up the rear in carriage number seven, with the Queen’s equerry.
There were just two small, silent demonstrations outside Victoria Station. One was formed by a group with a banner saying, ‘Human rights for Romanian Christians’. The other was made up of members and supporters of Romania’s persecuted Hungarian minority – two million people, who could be imprisoned or even executed merely for celebrating their Hungarian cultural identity.
At Buckingham Palace the Royal Household staff were already discovering that they were looking after a very odd guest, when the presidential luggage was delivered. The Ceausescus had brought all their clothes in hermetically sealed containers, to prevent secret British agents posing as footmen from impregnating their clothes with poison or bugging devices. There were the usual rituals of the welcome lunch at the Palace, followed by the exchange of gifts. Ceausescu, by all accounts, was thrilled with his rifle and personalised gun case; ditto Elena with the gold brooch that the Queen gave her. In return, the Ceausescus presented two hand-made rugs. There was the laying of the state visitor’s wreath at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, followed by tea with the Queen Mother and an address from the Lord Mayor and councillors of the City of Westminster.
Ostensibly, everything was exactly the same as for any other state visit, although beady-eyed veterans of these gatherings will have detected a few nods and winks in the preparations for the state banquet. Most state visitors could expect to be served the best claret from the Palace cellars – a first-growth (premier cru) or similar – to go with their dinner. For President de Gaulle in 1960 the Queen had produced a Château Lafite 1949, while Presidents of Germany have been served, variously, Château Lafite and Château La Fleur-Petrus. For Ceausescu, however, the Queen started with a perfectly respectable if unexciting white, an Ockfener Bockstein Spätlese 1971, to go with the fish, followed by a decidedly pedestrian (in state-banquet terms) claret: a fifth-growth Château Croizet-Bages 1966. There was some mischievous code in the menu, too. Despite the Foreign Office ban on all references to Romanian royalty, the Queen was not going to let timid diplomats airbrush altogether her own Romanian/Hungarian ancestry from the proceedings. Coming between the pea soup and the ‘Selle d’Agneau Windsor’, the fish course was called ‘Paupiettes de Sole Claudine’. The Queen would regularly name dishes in honour of her guests – ‘Aiguilette de Sole Tehran’ for the Shah of Iran; that ‘Soufflé Glacé Louise’ for the King and Queen of Sweden; and so on. The only nod to Romania at this banquet was this reference to the Transylvanian-born Countess Claudine Rhédey, who also happened to be the Queen’s great-great-grandmother.¶ Neither Ceausescu nor his abrasive head of protocol, Ecobescu, appeared to notice that the Queen was committing a capital offence by thus celebrating her own Hungarian cultural identity. Even if they did, they were not going to cause a scene. For once, Ceausescu was cowed, as the Foreign Office had hoped he would be all along. ‘We wanted to overawe him and make it very clear this was a very special, incredible privilege,’ says Sir Roger du Boulay, then Ecobescu’s opposite number. ‘He did exactly what he was told to do. We would say: “Now, sir, you need to spend a penny because we don’t want you caught short during dinner” and he would. He had a whole load of us around him.’
The banquet would be a somewhat lopsided affair. The British guests wore white tie – the Queen was wearing Queen Alexandra’s Russian Fringe Tiara – while the Romanians chose to remain in their lounge suits. The President wore the badge of the GCB (Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath), which the Queen had given him earlier, while she wore the sash of the Order of Socialist Romania (First Class), which he had given her. It fell to the Royal Family to do the hard work over dinner, with Ceausescu sandwiched between the Queen and the Queen Mother, and Mrs Ceausescu sitting between the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales.
Once the lamb and the ‘Bombe Glacée aux Mangoes’ had been cleared, the Queen rose to begin the speeches. They would prove as unexceptional as the wine. Reading words prepared by her ministers, she noted that she was glad to be offering the President a full state visit. Her main themes were the fact that Ceausescu was something of a free spirit within the Soviet orbit and was about to buy a lot of planes. Praising Romania’s ‘heroic struggle’ for independence, she admired ‘the resolute stand you have taken to sustain that independence’. Stretching this flimsiest of bilateral relationships to the extreme, she added: ‘We have enjoyed excellent co-operation with your country for many years, particularly in the field of aviation.’ Ceausescu’s formulaic, five-paragraph reply noted that he looked forward to further bilateral collaboration.
THE DEAL
The press coverage in Romania was, predictably, effusive. The following day, Ceausescu had his talks with Jim Callaghan at Downing Street. The highlight of the day, however, was the acclamation for Mrs Ceausescu as one of the greatest scientific brains of the age. At the Royal Institute of Chemistry, Professor Richard Norman could almost have been welcoming a Nobel laureate as he saluted this ‘distinguished’ expert in ‘the stereospecific polymerisation of isoprene’, for ‘work which has the dual merit both of increasing our fundamental understanding of chemical processes and of increasing our effectiveness in exploiting chemistry for the benefit of mankind’. Norman told her that she was joining the world’s oldest professional body for chemistry and that he looked forward to working with her in the future. Curiously, within five years, Norman would be chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence and closely involved in Ronald Reagan’s anti-Soviet ‘Star Wars’ programme. Yet here he was eulogising a ruthless and corrupt non-scientist from the wrong side of the Iron Curtain.
If the Royal Institute of Chemistry was being naïve, the Polytechnic of Central London appeared to have taken leave of its senses. Among the trio of speeches hymning the brilliance of the guest of honour was that of the rector, Colin Adamson, who saluted the ‘renowned Romanian skills in international relationships and diplomacy’. Nothing could match the presentation address of the senior prorector, Professor Terence Burlin, who herald
ed Mrs Ceausescu as ‘a fine example of Heisenberg’s epigram: “Science clears the field on which technology can build”.’ Burlin charted the first lady’s meteoric rise through Romanian academe. ‘From the National Council for Scientific Research, it was a short step to the Central Commission on Socio-Economic Forecasting,’ he declared, without a hint of irony. Here was ‘a woman of discernment’, he concluded, adding: ‘Did she not discern the calibre of Mr Ceausescu long before the other Romanians?’
Back at Buckingham Palace, another woman of discernment had seen quite enough of the state visitors already. While out walking her dogs in the Buckingham Palace garden, the Queen spotted the Ceausescus coming the other way (they preferred to talk outdoors, fearing secret bugging devices inside the Palace). As the Queen later revealed to the writer, Sir Antony Jay, she hid behind a bush in her own garden to avoid them.
There was no avoiding them later that day as she attended the mandatory return banquet that Ceausescu had arranged in her honour at Claridge’s. It was there that the British government’s behaviour reached its lowest point. When a small demonstration gathered outside the hotel, led by the British-based Romanian dissident Ion Ratiu, the police not only parked a coach between the demonstrators and the building, but arrested Ratiu for ‘obstructing the police’. He was taken away in a van and was not released until the banquet was over. Though Ratiu received an absolute discharge at Marlborough Street magistrates’ court the following day, the case would later be singled out by the New Law Journal as a ‘deplorable’ example of ‘political policing’.
That the government was nervous was understandable. Ceausescu had yet to sign the contract for the aircraft. In his despatch on the visit, Reggie Secondé, the British Ambassador to Romania, admitted that the contracts with BAC and Rolls-Royce ‘were cliff-hangers until the last moment’. The British had taken Ceausescu down to the BAC factory at Filton near Bristol for a celebratory lunch and a formal signing in front of the television cameras. As Secondé put it, there was so much last-minute haggling on all sides that the lunch ‘looked like an anthill that had been poked with a stick’. The visit would conclude with the signing of various pointless communiqués that were every bit as ‘turgid’ as expected. Ceausescu grandly informed Jim Callaghan that trade with Britain would rise from £133 million in 1977 to £1 billion by 1985. ‘You have set a very ambitious target,’ Callaghan replied politely. Foreign Office papers show that, privately, the British government thought he was talking rubbish – as indeed he was. At the time, however, British diplomats felt extremely pleased with themselves. ‘The President’s satisfaction at his visit has been reflected in Romania by a colossal and quite unprecedented amount of publicity,’ Secondé noted in his despatch. ‘President Ceausescu was a tricky customer,’ he admitted, noting with ‘relief’ that ‘there were very few anti-Romanian placard-bearers and no embarrassing demonstrations’. The chief villains – as ever, in the eyes of the Foreign Office – were the British press. In this case, Bernard Levin was singled out in particular for his ‘unbalanced and offensive articles’ about Ceausescu’s persecution of Romanian Christians.
That the visit went so well, Secondé went on, was down to the fact that the Romanians had been so well looked after by the Queen: ‘On the British side, no corners were cut in either dress or formality. The Romanians wore dark lounge suits throughout. But any misgivings they may have had about being high-hatted by their hosts must have been immediately dispelled by the unmistakeable wish of Her Majesty, the Duke of Edinburgh and all the Royal Family that their guests should feel welcome. Our star rides high and it is conceded all round that, when it comes to State Visits, Britain has a secret weapon that no one else can match.’
The warm afterglow continued long after the Ceausescus had returned home. Four months later, the leader of the Liberal Party, David Steel, visited Romania and presented the President with an album of photographs from the state visit. He was invited shooting with Ceausescu and so enjoyed himself that he sent him a black Labrador puppy called ‘Gladstone’. The dictator adored the dog, which was renamed ‘Corbu’ (meaning ‘raven’) and given the honorary rank of colonel.
The Queen, however, wanted nothing more to do with a visitor she would often refer to as ‘that frightful little man’. Ceausescu may not have ransacked the Palace’s Belgian Suite, as President Giscard d’Estaing had predicted, but the Queen had not remotely enjoyed being her government’s ‘secret weapon’. ‘She made it very clear that she intensely disliked having Ceausescu to stay. He was just a dreadful guest,’ says David Owen. Despite being Foreign Secretary through it all, Lord Owen’s memoirs fail to make any mention of the state visit whatsoever. When asked why, this veteran of half a century of international politics shakes his head, laughs and replies: ‘I try to pretend it never happened!’
It would remain engraved on the Queen’s mind, however. When she finally made her first state visit to Eastern Europe fifteen years later, touring Hungary in 1993, she learned that the British Ambassador, John Birch, had previously served in Bucharest. ‘She talked about the dreadful experience of having Ceausescu to stay,’ he told the British Diplomatic Oral History Programme. ‘She was interested in what had gone on in Romania after the War and she knew all about King Michael.’#
All her efforts, however – not to mention those of so many staff in the Eastern European department of the Foreign Office – would come to nothing. Despite those great hopes of building a new British-backed aerospace industry in Eastern Europe, the ‘ROMBAC’ alliance between BAC and Romania was a dismal failure. More than a decade after the grand signing of the contracts, just nine aircraft had been built, instead of the projected eighty-two. When, in 1989, the Queen’s former house guests were put up against a wall and shot, they took ROMBAC with them. By then, Ceausescu had already been stripped of his GCB, following a campaign by the Conservative peer and human-rights campaigner Lord Bethell.** Some months later, the Polytechnic of Central London got round to stripping Mrs Ceausescu of her professorship, as ‘a mark of revulsion’. To this day the Ceausescu visit is still regarded as the most regrettable entry in the Queen’s visitors’ book. It also shows how far public and social attitudes have changed in the intervening years. No wonder the Queen is entirely unfazed by public mood-swings. She really has seen it all before.
* During private visits to London, Queen Louise, who was Lord Mountbatten’s sister, would carry a note in her handbag, just in case she was hit by a bus. It stated, quite correctly: ‘I am the Queen of Sweden.’
† The Queen does not mince her words when she senses disrespect towards those serving in her name. During the chaotic 1980 royal tour of the Maghreb, the King of Morocco loftily ignored the schedule, repeatedly kept the Queen waiting and then informed her that it was the fault of her assistant Private Secretary, Robert Fellowes. ‘I’ll thank you not to speak about my staff like that,’ she replied firmly.
‡ A former professional dancer and member of the Tiller Girls troupe, Betty Boothroyd was elected as Labour MP for West Bromwich in 1973 and became the first female Speaker of the House of Commons in 1992. Following her retirement in 2000, she joined the House of Lords as Baroness Boothroyd.
§ Introduced in 1965, the BAC 1-11 was a short-haul passenger jet that was soon superseded by the Boeing 737.
¶ Claudia Rhédey, known as Claudine, was born into Hungarian nobility and married Duke Alexander of Württemberg. Their son, Francis, was Queen Mary’s father. Aged just twenty-nine, Claudine was trampled to death watching a military parade in Austria.
# The Queen’s interest is shared by her eldest son. Following his 1998 tour of Romania, the Prince of Wales was so enchanted by the Saxon villages of Transylvania, and so concerned about their plight, that he bought two farmhouses as holiday homes and now rents them out to the public.
** Lord Bethell continued his quest to retrieve the gold-and-silver collar that comes with each GCB and is the property of the monarch in perpetuity, to be returned on death. In 1994 i
t was found in a drawer in Bucharest and returned to the Queen.
Chapter 3
SETTING SAIL
‘A touch of healing’.
YOUNG LEADERS
The state apartments at Buckingham Palace are packed once more. The Queen will shake every hand in a 300-strong greeting line, which takes thirty minutes to file past her, and then she will work her way through her drawing rooms and picture gallery. When the events to mark the sixtieth anniversary of her accession to the Throne generated a £100 million pot of money from across the Commonwealth, she created the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust. It would not be a long-term endowment. Rather, the idea was to distribute all the money in a few years on two priorities: eliminating avoidable blindness across the Commonwealth and identifying exceptional Commonwealth leaders of the future. Younger members of the family would get stuck in, too. Overall, the impact has been swift and impressive. In October 2017, for example, it was announced that every child in Botswana would receive an eye test for the first time.
At the same time, the scheme to unearth the ‘Queen’s Young Leaders’ has identified hundreds of outstanding young people, all of whom have been flown to London for a week of mentoring, a meeting with the Queen and an awards ceremony. All come with stories and CVs that never fail to move the organisers. ‘I’ll be very surprised if some are not leaders of their countries in twenty or thirty years,’ says Sir John Major, chairman of the trustees. ‘Some of their stories almost defy belief. In a world that is very displeased with itself, these young people are a beacon of hope.’ They range from the young man running a rescue programme for child soldiers in Sierra Leone, to Elizabeth Kite, twenty-six, from Tonga. She runs courses for the disabled and a radio programme educating Tongan girls about women’s health. It is an emotional moment for her as she prepares to meet the Queen. Her mother has sent her to London with a bark-cloth dress that has been passed down through female members of the family for generations. Elizabeth (who is named after the Queen) says that her mother wore it when the Queen visited Tonga in 1953. Now it is coming out again for the Queen, a generation later.
Queen of the World: Elizabeth II: Sovereign and Stateswoman Page 13
