Sixty years further on, the Queen now talks of the Commonwealth simply as ‘family’. In 2017, she dwelt on the theme of family as she reflected on the dark moments of that year – including terror attacks in Britain and hurricanes in the Caribbean. The tone became lighter, almost jaunty, as she looked forward to a new royal baby, a royal wedding and another family gathering, the 2018 CHOGM. Her wide-eyed, almost evangelical regard for the Commonwealth as a young woman has long since mellowed. In the early years of her reign the Queen had called it ‘one of the most hopeful and imaginative experiments in international affairs that the world has ever seen’. Proclaiming the need to ‘advance concord and understanding’ among its members, she solemnly stated: ‘No purpose comes nearer to my own desires.’
By 2017 she had lowered the volume considerably, describing the Commonwealth merely as ‘vibrant’. It was also ‘an inspiring way of bringing people together’. The Queen is a realist. The ‘new conception, built on the highest qualities of the spirit of man’, which she was describing in 1953, has become a more modest entity with more modest aspirations.
Just as the Prince of Wales has built his Prince’s Trust and the Duke of Edinburgh has created his Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, so this is the Queen’s equivalent. Both those organisations have undergone sensible restructuring in recent years, so that they can look to a prosperous future with someone else at the helm. It is why the Queen was so keen to resolve the question of her own successor as Head of the Commonwealth when the leaders gathered in London in 2018 – and to appoint Prince Harry as Commonwealth Youth Ambassador. So much for the claims of Nehru and the other founders of the modern Commonwealth that the monarch would have no powers whatsoever. In his first speech as Youth Ambassador, at the summit’s youth forum, Prince Harry repeated his grandmother’s twenty-first birthday pledge and then announced 150 new Commonwealth Scholarships for low-and middle-income countries. They would, he explained, be called The Queen Elizabeth Commonwealth Scholarships, in her honour. Along with all the Queen’s trusts, her Young Leaders, her Commonwealth Canopy and the rest, these are yet another example of the way in which she believes the Commonwealth does its best work – at the human level. A month later, as she watched Prince Harry and Meghan Markle step out into the world as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, there was one more accolade for the Queen. The Duchess had chosen to have the emblems of every Commonwealth nation sewn into her veil, a reprise of the Queen’s own decision to do the same with her Coronation gown.
In the aftermath of the wedding and the 2018 CHOGM, the Queen could reflect that the royal/Commonwealth connection had seldom been stronger. ‘The Commonwealth was one of the greatest acts of collective statesmanship of the last century,’ says former Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma. ‘But it is a bit of a nonsense, frankly, without the King or Queen as the nominal head. It would unravel very speedily if it was just another grouping buffeting around the world.’ Former Foreign Secretary David Owen has one word of caution for the Prince of Wales: ‘He must act very slowly and deliberately. That word, “Head” of the Commonwealth, should be used as sparingly as possible.’
It remains the case that no one has such a comprehensive personal knowledge of the Commonwealth and its leaders as the Queen or her eldest son. At her Silver Jubilee, she cracked a rare Commonwealth joke. ‘It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not,’ she said. ‘Indeed, this is quite a popular pastime.’ She went on to give her own definition of what it actually was. She compared it to an iceberg, with the politicians and summits operating above the surface and most of the activity going on, out of sight, below.
She was too modest to position herself on this iceberg, of course, but then she didn’t need to. Without her at the top of it, the whole thing would long since have disappeared beneath the waterline.
* At a meeting of the People’s Front of Judea, its leader, Reg, played by John Cleese, asks: ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’ To which comes a series of unhelpful replies: ‘sanitation’, ‘medicine’, ‘education’, ‘roads’ . . .
† Originally established in 1868 as the Colonial Society, the Royal Commonwealth Society was one of the first chartered institutes to welcome women as both speakers and members. It promotes Commonwealth ideals around the world, even in non-Commonwealth nations like the USA and Ireland.
‡ Cabinet Secretary 1988–98, he was Britain’s senior civil servant under Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair, before being elevated to the House of Lords as Lord Butler of Brockwell. The Queen made him a Knight of the Garter in 2004.
§ This would be short-lived. There was another military coup two years later.
¶ Despite his nickname of ‘Gore Blimey’, Sir David was a diplomat of the old school, joining the Foreign Office after Eton and Oxford. Pre-Delhi, he served as Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. His father, Sir Paul (later Lord Gore-Booth), had been High Commissioner during the Queen’s first state visit in 1961.
# The ‘British’ Commonwealth still had its adherents, as McKinnon discovered soon after his appointment in 2000. Having invited him to lunch, the Queen Mother implored him to ‘look after the family’. Did she mean the Royal Family, he wondered, or his own? ‘No, no, the old Commonwealth family,’ she explained.
Chapter 5
THE REALMS
‘My peoples’
THE DIVISIBLE CROWN
The young trainees are lined up at the Garden Door of Buckingham Palace in their uniforms. Some are in their chefs’ whites, some in housekeeping dresses. Three are in the scarlet-and-black livery of royal footmen. All are a little nervous. It looks like a very grand version of television’s job-hunting show, The Apprentice, and they are about to meet the boss. Except that these nine enterprising young people are all accomplished in their chosen professions already. Nor is there a contest. The fact that they are here at all means they have already won. The boss in question could not be less like Lord Sugar, Donald Trump or any other TV pantomime boss-from-hell. She is the Queen. And she is on her way.
The monarch wants to meet the winners of her first Royal Household Hospitality Scholarships. It’s a new scheme to provide on-the-job training in the hospitality industry at one of the world’s best-known hospitality venues – Buckingham Palace. Over six weeks they will be involved in every aspect of Royal Household life, above and below stairs. Some will learn about looking after Old Master paintings or running a vacuum cleaner over 200-year-old rugs or how to lay a table for a royal lunch. Some will be involved in preparing food for the Royal Family. Others will serve it, when not pouring the drinks.
Once they have learned the ropes at the Palace, they will do the same at Windsor Castle during one of the busiest periods of the year – Royal Ascot week. This, though, is not a royal recruitment exercise. At the end of six weeks of intensive training, all of these star pupils will then return home with a certificate and a new entry on their curriculum vitae, which will stand them in good stead for life. And they all have one thing in common. They are all drawn from the Queen’s Caribbean realms. In other words, she is their Queen, too.
It’s one more human thread in the latticework of connections between the Queen and all those parts of the world that have long since ceased to be British territory, but have retained her as their head of state.
Today, there are sixteen independent nations that have the Queen as their head of state. Once they would have been called ‘dominions’ or ‘kingdoms’, but are now known as ‘realms’. The Queen sometimes refers to them collectively as ‘the monarchies’. They are – in theory, at least – all equal in her eyes. Just like cricket, she is post-imperial adhesive-cum-balm. Whatever the current tensions between her British government and any of her other governments on any given issue, the Queen has to defuse, evade or rise above them. Sometimes, it can be difficult. In 2018, a fresh political scandal would expose British ministers to legitimate attacks from their Caribbean counterparts, bring down a British Cabinet minister, threaten the Prime Minister and over
shadow Theresa May’s first – and possibly last – international summit on British soil. The ‘Windrush scandal’ – named after the ship that brought the first Caribbean migrants to Britain in 1948 – united both the left and right of British politics. It revealed that thousands of Commonwealth citizens who had been working and raising families in Britain for decades had suddenly been threatened with deportation, due to the cack-handed implementation of a new immigration strategy. Many had lost their jobs. Others had been denied healthcare, for which they had paid taxes all their lives. And the first response of the British government had been to ignore all this. Finally, when the issue threatened to dominate the 2018 Commonwealth summit at Buckingham Palace, ministers began to engage seriously. It would conclude with the resignation of Home Secretary Amber Rudd. If it was a painful business for those on either side of the debate, it was particularly awkward for the one person inescapably caught in the middle: the Queen. The ‘divisible’ Crown* had not been this divided for a long time.
To many outsiders, it might seem incomprehensible that nations born out of the barbarism of the slave trade should want anything to do with the former oppressor, let alone retain the Crown as the ultimate authority. Why, for that matter, do the descendants of the convicts, exiles, migrants and pioneers who settled long ago in Australasia and Canada, along with the indigenous peoples whom they displaced, still embrace their connection with the Crown? That they do is, in no small part, down to its wearer. Yet for how much longer?
The Queen’s international role is a source of endless confusion, which is understandable given that it falls into five categories. It is as Queen of the United Kingdom that she is best known and most usually observed. She is also the Head of the Commonwealth, in which capacity she has no formal position within its fifty-three member states. Countries like India, Ghana or Malaysia went to considerable trouble to extricate themselves from the British Empire and its Crown. They now enjoy the benefits of belonging to the Commonwealth, but have no obligation to Elizabeth II beyond recognising her as its titular head.
Thirdly, she is Queen of Britain’s overseas territories (the modern term for colonies), which remain British sovereign territory. There are fourteen of these, ranging from Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands to more than 600,000 square miles of the British Antarctic Territory (a quarter of it in her name, following that 2012 decision to rename 170,000 square miles of snow ‘Queen Elizabeth Land’). Additionally, she is Queen of the Crown dependencies, which consist of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. These are self-governing ‘possessions’ of the Crown. They don’t belong to Britain, but ‘depend’ on Britain for their defence and international relations.
Finally, there are the realms, all those independent nations that choose to retain her as sovereign. In addition to Britain, there are fifteen others, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and much of the Caribbean. All told, it makes her head of state of between one eighth and one sixth of the Earth’s surface, more than any other leader by some distance.
Viewed from afar, this might seem like an outdated relationship in a twenty-first-century world. Except, as one generation of politicians after another tends to discover, there is little public appetite to replace Elizabeth II with a retired politician.
She cannot be in sixteen nations at once, which is why she is represented by a Governor-General in the fifteen nations where she is not permanently resident. Her bonds with her realms are lasting and familial. Aside from language and law, they include any number of historical, military and charitable ties. Most important is the personal dimension. The Queen has always known that this is an ongoing relationship and, like all friendships, needs to be nurtured. As with her Commonwealth trusts and initiatives, she likes to support projects as far removed from the orbit of her politicians as possible. It is why those nine young hopefuls from the Caribbean hotel trade are here at the Palace to join the royal team. It is the Queen’s small way of promoting the local economy in small island nations that are dependent on the tourist industry. She originally asked Prince Harry to announce the scheme when he was in the region a year earlier. He has been following its progress ever since and comes round to Buckingham Palace shortly before the scholars are due to be introduced to the Queen.
‘Nice rooms? Not all bunked in one room together?’ he asks them. ‘Not like one of those TV shows?’ They all laugh.
Some of these ‘apprentices’ are very well qualified already. Jared Forbes is chef to the Governor-General of the Bahamas and, when he’s not doing that, he is a part-time policeman. Prince Harry is impressed, though he is a little worried how the Governor-General is managing to get by without his cook. ‘He’s probably eating baked beans from a tin now!’ he jokes. The Prince is impressed by their tidiness: ‘You all look immaculate. You all look as though you’ve been here for years.’ And he gives them one word of advice that he learned in the Army: never be afraid to ask. ‘There’s no such thing as a stupid question,’ he tells them.
Before he goes, Prince Harry assures them that they won’t be the only ones a little in awe of his grandmother. ‘Met the Queen yet?’ he asks. ‘If you suddenly bump into her in the corridor, don’t panic!’ Then, with a big smile, he adds: ‘We all do.’
The big moment comes as the Queen returns to London after a weekend at Windsor. The scholars do their best to follow Prince Harry’s advice, as she asks them all how they are getting on. Like Prince Harry, she is delighted to meet Jared Forbes. ‘You’re the Governor-General’s chef, are you? And a policeman? That’s an interesting mixture,’ she says. As Queen of the Bahamas, she is well up to speed on news from Nassau. ‘You’ve just had an election,’ the Queen continues. ‘Has it calmed down?’ Talk turns to Jared’s favourite dishes. ‘You like cakes?’ says the Queen. ‘We’re rather fond of that, so that’s very good.’
Jonathan Alleyne, from Barbados, explains that he is learning hotel management at the Sandy Lane hotel resort on the island. It’s a busy place, he tells the Queen, who seems to know all about it. ‘I think Sandy Lane is always busy,’ she says. ‘A good place to start one’s career.’ Almost as good, perhaps, as Buckingham Palace. Wishing them all well, she heads inside, whereupon these scholars do what people so often do these days after they have met the Queen. They put their hand on their heart, open their mouth wide, take a sharp intake of breath and squeak: ‘Oh my God!’
Michelle Montejo, who works at the San Ignacio Resort Hotel in Belize, has been transfixed by the Queen’s face. ‘She has such beautiful skin. I need to ask who does her makeup. Flawless,’ she says. And she cannot wait to call her family back in Belize. ‘It was really a proud moment to talk about my country and my resort and to finally meet Her Majesty,’ she says dreamily. ‘Best day of my life.’
Just up the Mall, another group of royal staff are packing their bags before heading off to the largest realm of the lot. Canada is about to celebrate the 150th anniversary of confederation – and the creation of Canada itself. The Queen, who has visited Canada more than any other nation outside Britain, was there to celebrate the 100th. She will not make it this time, though, for the simple reason that having reached her tenth decade, she has followed doctors’ advice to avoid long-haul travel. The Duke of Edinburgh, five years her senior, has done the same. So the Prince of Wales will represent the Queen, accompanied by the Duchess of Cornwall, and will ride through Ottawa in a horse-drawn carriage. Nine months later, the Prince will be standing in for the Queen again in Australia, when he heads to Queensland to open those 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, before making his sixteenth tour of Australia, a place where he enjoyed some of his happiest school days and which he still regards as a home from home.
These visits will not command the sort of exuberance and downright hysteria that greeted the Queen in the early years of her reign – when two-thirds of the entire population of New Zealand and three-quarters of Australia turned out to see her in person. The crowds, which would continue to be immense for several decades, are no lon
ger what they were. Commentators have attributed the decline to familiarity, to the fact that it is easier to watch these things on television and to the downturn in royal fortunes during the Nineties. So has royalty lost its allure? Has the spell been broken? Republicans would like to think so. Yet neither the opinion polls nor the indicators from the political mainstream suggest there is any great appetite for constitutional upheaval at present. It is perhaps one of the most significant, if understated achievements of the Queen that she still sits on sixteen thrones, even if she would probably bridle at the word ‘achievement’. In her view it has not, in any sense, been a strategic or competitive process, but rather a simple case of doing one’s duty. If having done so, she one day finds that a majority nonetheless prefer an alternative constitutional settlement, then she would be the first to wish her replacement well. For now, it is an issue that remains off the mainstream agenda in her sixteen capitals, not to mention all her other possessions and territories, from Guernsey to Tristan da Cunha.
Like royalist fervour, the appetite for republicanism has ebbed and flowed in different places at different stages of the reign. In parts of Canada, the Crown seemed doomed throughout the Sixties, until a change of heart during the Seventies. After the Watergate scandal across the border in the USA, many Canadians felt grateful to have an apolitical dynasty rather than a politician as head of state. In Australia, by contrast, the Seventies were just the start of the republican movement. By the early Eighties the new Labour leader and future Prime Minister of Australia, Bob Hawke, confidently predicted the end of the Crown there. ‘The Queen is a decent hard-working lady doing a useful job,’ he told journalists in Melbourne, ‘but, by the end of the century, the monarchy will be phased out.’ Just weeks before that deadline had expired, the Australian people were given a referendum on the issue and rejected the idea.
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