Queen of the World: Elizabeth II: Sovereign and Stateswoman

by Robert Hardman

  THE CARIBBEAN

  Most of the Queen’s realms, like much of her Commonwealth, consist of smaller island nations. These former colonies or protectorates have only achieved independence from Britain during her reign. As such, their ties with the Crown tend to be more practical and less sentimental than those of the ‘old’ realms, although their affection for the Queen herself is genuine and straightforward. She is religious, above politics, inexpensive, very famous and someone whom other countries do not, on the whole, want to offend. There is also the fact that having her as head of state affords them a degree of extra influence over the former colonial power. As that Windrush scandal exploded days before Theresa May’s Commonwealth summit in London in 2018, many aggrieved Caribbean leaders were about to have one-on-one audiences with the Queen and members of her family. The British Prime Minister was well aware that they would bend royal ears.

  The British public might like the idea of the Queen being embraced as head of state elsewhere, but, as Philip Murphy has pointed out, the Foreign Office has regarded these multiple monarchies as a potential conflict of interest. He has shown that it was covert British government policy to dissuade some soon-to-be-independent states from becoming realms. One or two, like Trinidad and Tobago, duly obliged, seeking independence in 1962 and then becoming a republic fourteen years later.

  But most of the Caribbean ex-colonies – formerly known as the British West Indies – have chosen to retain the sovereign. The most significant of them, Jamaica, was still a colony when the Queen first visited at the start of her great post-Coronation tour. Within five years it would be at the heart of moves to turn the West Indies into an independent federal nation, a move followed closely by the Queen herself. Patsy Robertson, who would go on to become head of Commonwealth communications, was a young Jamaican diplomat working on the discussions. She remembers that the delegates were most impressed when the Queen invited the negotiating teams round to the Palace for drinks. ‘She was lovely,’ says Robertson. ‘She had been to Jamaica already and they had a love affair with her.’

  When plans for a federation foundered, Jamaica wasted no time in seeking independence for itself, but there was no great appetite for a republican constitution. The country preferred to keep the Queen as head of state and guarantor of this fledgling democracy. Because she had never presided over an independence ceremony, Princess Margaret was despatched to lower the flag and open the new parliament. Plans to send her on a scheduled flight were dropped, in favour of a special BOAC aircraft – not to spare the Princess’s blushes, the Palace insisted, but Jamaica’s. From the outset, most Jamaicans drew a clear distinction between Britain and its Queen, and continue to do so, despite routine calls for a republic.

  Most of the smaller Caribbean colonies would take a similar view, working on the basis that if the British government was not going to pay them the attention they deserved, they would rather have backdoor access to the most important person in Britain.

  Jamaica was keen to emphasise its status as a front-rank Commonwealth nation and launched a bid to host the 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games. These had never taken place outside the old white dominions, but Jamaica easily beat rival bids from Scotland and Rhodesia. In 1973, the Jamaican Prime Minister, Michael Manley, reiterated the point when he agreed to host the 1975 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kingston, the first in the Caribbean. In the same year that he was hosting the Queen and her Commonwealth, Manley would also set up a constitutional commission to explore the creation of a Jamaican republic. His radicalism only went so far, however. As Sir Sonny Ramphal notes in his memoirs: ‘ I think he rather enjoyed escorting the Queen about Kingston to rapturous crowds.’

  One newly elected Jamaican prime minister after another would voice a desire for a locally born head of state, only to find that the public had more pressing issues. As the Queen arrived during a Caribbean tour in 1994, a parliamentary constitutional reform committee had just recommended her replacement with a president. ‘Government ministers took no interest at all in the preparations for the visit,’ the British High Commissioner, Derek Milton, wrote to his superiors in London. ‘Many Jamaicans were virtually unaware of the visit.’ Yet police reinforcements were needed to hold back the crowds trying to welcome the Queen to National Heroes Park. ‘As people realised that Her Majesty was on the island,’ Milton wrote, ‘she once again captured the public imagination and proved to be a crowd puller (even though information about the programme remained sketchy) . . . People were genuinely glad to see “Missis Queen” again.’

  Opinion polls, he noted, were evenly divided on the idea of a republic. ‘Some may see Her Majesty as an anachronism (a white, faraway figure who visits only infrequently) but many black Jamaicans have had a special affection for the British Crown ever since Queen Victoria abolished slavery.’ He added that many still regarded the Crown as a ‘final court of appeal against their local leaders’. The latest proposal for a presidency was shelved, with all the others.

  In 2012, Portia Simpson Miller became the next Prime Minister to make the near-mandatory pledge to usher in a republic. Later in the year, she was hosting Prince Harry as he came to Jamaica as the Queen’s emissary during her Diamond Jubilee. On the eve of the visit, she told the BBC that Britain should consider apologising for its role in the slave trade and that she was seeking a referendum on the Crown. The following day, a very public and genuine hug with Prince Harry highlighted the difficulties in separating the constitutional from the personal. She was out of office before she could hold her referendum. Her successor duly made the same pledge to deliver a republic, and duly found that the electorate had other priorities.

  Other Caribbean leaders would find themselves in a similar situation, torn between a largely middle-class preoccupation with replacing the Queen and genuine popular support for a monarchy that was regarded as an old-fashioned but unbribable roadblock against parliamentary wrongdoing. Some republicans have argued that the monarchy is not a bulwark against anything, pointing to the Queen’s impotence in preventing the American invasion of Grenada, one of her independent Commonwealth realms. In October 1983, President Ronald Reagan had ordered US forces to seize control of the island, citing fears for several hundred US nationals after a coup by revolutionary forces and the execution of the (pro-Marxist) Prime Minister. The British Government was not given prior warning and the US had not informed Grenada’s head of state either. However, it later emerged that the Queen’s representative, her Governor-General, was being kept in the loop. A locally-born ex-teacher who had been appointed on the advice of the country’s Prime Minister, he had been quietly supporting the US plan all along. He just hadn’t mentioned it to the Queen, who was said to be furious with everyone involved. At least it showed Grenadans that she cared. Besides, in the aftermath of the short-lived revolution that had led to the invasion, people yearned for stability and had no desire to sever links with the Crown.

  Talk of republicanism is irrelevant among the British overseas territories in the region. As long as they remain attached to Britain, the Queen is non-negotiable. To periodic accusations of ‘colonialism’, the British government will merely point out that these are places that have chosen to remain colonies, albeit with their own legislatures for local matters. The Foreign Office view is that they are welcome to seek independence at any time. For now, Westminster serves a useful multiple role as cash-cow, dartboard and seal of approval for offshore financial services. The royal connection confers added prestige and a lucrative line in commemorative stamps and coins. The run of independence ceremonies across the region during the Sixties and Seventies petered out in the early Eighties. In places like the Turks and Caicos or the British Virgin Islands, there is little popular appetite for independence and all the uncertainty that would come with it. Yet, the Queen of all people knows that nothing can be taken for granted.

  During her 1994 tour of the region, she arrived in Anguilla for the first time and visited its tiny parliament
, the House of Assembly. Departing from the general carnival atmosphere, the leader of the opposition, Hubert Hughes, used his speech of welcome to attack the ‘discriminatory’ British Nationality Act, accusing the UK of reducing Caribbean migrants to the status of ‘indigents’. The ruling party was furious. In his subsequent despatch to London, the Governor, Alan Shave, castigated Hughes for his ‘ill-considered remarks about FCO meddling which will have cost him future election support.’ Not quite. The following month, he was elected Chief Minister, a post he would occupy for eleven years. His remarks about the British Nationality Act were merely a foretaste of the Windrush scandal a generation later.

  As the Queen’s tour moved on to Bermuda, there was a similar incident in Hamilton. The Governor, Lord Waddington, informed London of an awkward moment during the social centrepiece of the trip: ‘The Speaker’s dinner went without a hitch but the Premier could not resist the opportunity to make a speech which ruffled some feathers by its indirect reference to the independence issue. Many Bermudians felt that it was an inappropriate speech for such an occasion.’ It might have ‘ruffled feathers’, but it was not wholly inappropriate, given that the premier, Sir John Swan, would indeed hold a referendum on independence the following year. He resigned when the proposal was defeated by three to one.

  Separatist noises could be heard across the region again two decades later as a series of grievances coalesced. Britain was accused of a slow and inadequate response in helping those islands hit by Hurricane Irma in 2017. Locals would point to the disparity between UK spending on ‘white’ overseas territories like the Falkland Islands and St Helena (recent recipient of £250 million for a failed airport scheme) versus ‘black’ territories in the Caribbean (which received a combined pot of £32 million to deal with the devastation from Irma). The Windrush scandal of 2018 had coincided with proposals to impose strict new disclosure rules on Caribbean tax havens. Westminster insisted it was in the interests of transparency and financial probity. The islands called it a ‘colonial’ threat to their chief source of income. A few politicians have since revived the case for independence. Even so, it seems likely to be some time before another member of the Royal Family has to watch a Union flag coming down at midnight.

  Creating a new country is much harder than creating a new head of state. For now, another Caribbean republic is more feasible than a new independent Caribbean nation. The most active standard-bearer for republicanism in the region has been the long-serving socialist Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, ‘Comrade’ Ralph Gonsalves. Although his nation includes the famous royal holiday destination of Mustique, he decided to hold a referendum on the Crown in 2009. There was more than a whiff of attention-seeking about the timing. The Queen was due in the Caribbean that very week to attend the Commonwealth summit in Port of Spain, Trinidad. It would certainly have been a story if she had arrived in the region to find herself minus a throne. Her subjects had other ideas, however, and rejected the idea by that same 55:45 margin as the Australians had done a decade before. Since it would have required a two-thirds majority to amend the constitution, the referendum was barely discussed at the summit. Mr Gonsalves was all smiles at the Queen’s banquet later in the week and gladly accepted an invitation to Prince William’s wedding eighteen months later. Around the Caribbean the view seemed to be that Comrade Ralph was simply being Comrade Ralph. ‘He’s a good friend,’ says Sir Sonny Ramphal, ‘but he’s always been a Marxist undergraduate!’

  Ramphal points out that one left-wing Caribbean leader – he will not say which one – told him of an intriguing meeting with the Cuban communist dictator, Fidel Castro. ‘It was very important to be in the good graces of Fidel at that time,’ Ramphal recalls. ‘In the course of the conversation, this prime minister explained: “I was thinking we ought to become a republic”. He thought it would go down well with Fidel. But Fidel said: “Why? Does the Queen interfere?”

  Prime Minister: “No.”

  Castro: “Then why would you do that? You want to be a big tourist island and she’s good for showing off your stability. Why are you doing that?” ’

  So, those who still find it hard to understand why so many young nations born from colonial oppression and imperial bondage should still want the British sovereign as head of state might care to ponder this unlikely fact: Fidel Castro was a fan.

  ‘Fidel was a pragmatist,’ says Ramphal. ‘That’s why he lasted.’ Pragmatism is probably why Elizabeth II – Queen of Antigua & Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica, St Kitts & Nevis, St Lucia and St Vincent & the Grenadines, plus mainland Belize – has lasted even longer.

  THE PACIFIC

  If the loyalty of the Caribbean realms can be baffling for republican rationalists, then the island realms of the Pacific must seem even more confusing. The Queen did not become Queen of Papua New Guinea (PNG) because its people decided to retain her. She is their sovereign because they actually invited her to become their head of state. As such, it is the one part of the world where the Queen is, effectively, an elected monarch.

  Nearly twice the size of Britain and with more than 800 languages, PNG is one of the most diverse nations on Earth. Following periods of German and British control, it was administered by Australia until becoming self-governing in 1973. Full independence would follow shortly, and Australia’s Labour government, led by Gough Whitlam, was pushing PNG in the direction of a republican constitution. The new government of PNG had another idea, though. The Queen’s Private Secretary, Martin Charteris, recalled a visit from the Australian High Commissioner in London, Sir John Bunting. ‘You’re not going to believe this but they want the Queen to be their Queen,’ he told the startled Charteris. The reasons were threefold: the Queen had visited PNG and the people liked her; they wanted someone ‘above the fight’ who could remain impeccably neutral; and they wanted to retain all the traditional knighthoods and decorations. There was vague talk about the possibility of reviewing the situation after ten years, but the main thing was that they did not want a president. They wanted a monarch – and not just any monarch.

  Charteris informed the Queen who was both ‘tickled’ and touched. ‘She accepted straight away,’ he said. In September 1975, the Prince of Wales was present for the independence celebrations as the new nation of PNG became the Queen’s latest crown. He has returned several times, most recently for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and speaks a smattering of PNG’s unique pidgin English, Tok Pisin. Its official term for the Prince of Wales is ‘Number One Piccaninny Belong Missus Queen’. If any thought had been given to removing the Queen after those ten years were up, it was soon forgotten when the time came. More than forty years after independence, a car pulls up at the Grand Entrance to Buckingham Palace. Sir Robert Dadae, the Queen’s tenth Governor-General of Papua New Guinea, has come to see her and receive his knighthood. ‘It was necessary to have the Queen as head of state,’ he explains on the way out. ‘She has a very special place in our system of government.’ It is quite a special system.

  At the other end of the spectrum are the Solomon Islands, a Pacific archipelago of 900 islands east of Papua New Guinea, and perhaps the Queen’s most amorphous realm. Several uninhabited islands have already been swallowed up by rising sea levels during the course of her reign, and a few of the inhabited ones have been evacuated before they follow suit. At the same time, one or two new islets have sprouted above the waves, due to volcanic eruptions in the area.

  Though remote, the Solomons are not as lonely as the Queen’s smallest realm. Midway between Australia and Hawaii sits Tuvalu, the fourth-smallest nation in the world. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, it also has the distinction of being the least-visited. On average, just 2,000 tourists arrive in any given year. One might imagine Tuvalu would want all the friends and influence it could get and yet, even here, there have been republican murmurings. In 2008, this cluster of Pacific reefs and atolls held a referendum on dispensing with the Queen, at the behest of a
former prime minister with presidential ambitions. Most people did not bother to vote in a plebiscite which showed that less than one-tenth of Tuvalu’s 9,000-strong electorate supported the idea of a republic.

  Given the lack of visitors, it was not surprising that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh received an exuberant welcome when the Royal Yacht dropped anchor there in 1982. Indeed, it turned out to be one of the most memorable arrivals in royal history. The visitors were ferried ashore in a pair of war canoes, which were then lifted out of the water and carried up the main street by teams of ‘warriors’ with the Queen and Duke still aboard. It was, perhaps, the only time the monarch has been held aloft by one of her own Cabinet ministers, in the form of Henry Naisali, Tuvalu’s Finance Minister. Dressed in a ceremonial grass skirt, he was among those carrying the Queen’s canoe. When introduced to him later, she joked that it was the first time she had seen a haystack wearing dark glasses.

  A less happy royal ‘first’ occurred in this part of the Pacific in 1987 – the Queen’s one and only abdication. Fiji had become part of the British Empire in 1874 at its own request (it actually asked twice before being accepted) and became independent in 1970, while retaining the Queen as head of state. Her visits – six in all – are remembered with great fondness both by the Fijians and by the Queen’s staff. Sir William Heseltine says that the only people who were less than enthusiastic were the crew of the Royal Yacht. It was an important ritual, before each arrival, for the Fijian chiefs to come aboard to present the Queen with a tabua, a whale tooth, as a sign of peace, respect and permission to land. However, the chiefs would always come drenched in coconut oil, which left terrible marks on the royal deck. Sir William remembers that the programme would always involve a rich blend of British ceremony and Fijian tradition, most memorably when torch-bearing warriors would run alongside the royal car all through the capital, Suva, to the state banquet.