Battle Royal

by David Johnson

  Republican criticism of the royal family does not end with what they perceive to be the disgraceful and dishonourable status of the Prince of Wales. Far from it. Many other royals have provided ample ammunition for republicans to call into question the continued existence of the monarchy. If the royal family is supposed to be a model of exemplary family values, then the marital problems of Charles and Diana were just the first cracks in this edifice. Prince Andrew had gained the nickname “Randy Andy” in the British tabloids by 1985 for his reputation as a ladies’ man, and his wedding on July 23, 1986, to Sarah Ferguson, now Duchess of York, served only to increase media interest in their flamboyant lifestyle. News of lavish spending, boozy parties, nightclub hopping, and expensive vacations, all underwritten by the British taxpayer, filled the British tabloids in the late 1980s. By the early 1990s, there were also reports of marital infidelities, with the Duchess of York having a string of affairs. The couple separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996.[28] The collapse of this marriage, as well as that of Charles and Diana, however, was preceded by the divorce of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips in 1992. By the mid-1990s, the first marriages of three of the Queen’s four children had ended in divorce. Anne quickly remarried in 1992 to Timothy Laurence, and Prince Edward, the Queen’s youngest son, married Sophie Rhys-Jones, now Countess of Wessex, in 1999. Prince Charles finally married Camilla Parker Bowles, now Duchess of Cornwall, in a civil ceremony in the Windsor Guildhall on April 9, 2005. Many repub­licans, however, noted a delicious irony. Not so long ago, the royal family had been so opposed to the very idea of divorce that monarchs such as Victoria, Edward VII, and George V refused even to meet with divorced individuals. Edward VIII, in 1936, was compelled to abdicate the throne on account of his desire to marry the twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. And now, by the mid-1990s, this same family had become famous for its troubled marriages and divorces. While the royal family had simply come to experience the modern reality of family breakdowns, as various monarchist supporters argued, republican critics nonetheless piled on their criticism, proclaiming that the royal family had lost any claim to be seen as an example of good family values.

  The challenge to behave well has presented the royal family with no end of grief for at least the past half century. In popular mystique dating back to the reign of Victoria, the royals have been held up as paragons of proper manners and etiquette, good taste and sophisticated elegance. With so much expected of them, no wonder the media, the general public, and republicans in particular, are captivated by news of royals failing to live up to these high standards. Beyond prurient interest in the failed marriages of Charles and Diana, and Andrew and Sarah, the tabloid press in Britain has revelled in past decades in exposing examples of royal misbehaviour. Prince Philip was the first to feel the barbs of a much less deferential press when his questionable sense of humour would make national and international news. In 1965, for example, when presented to a blind girl he told her the joke of a blind man twirling his seeing-eye dog over his head so as to “have a look around.”[29] In 1986, during the first ever royal visit to the Chinese mainland by the Queen and her husband, Philip was introduced to a group of British students in Xi’an and proceeded to jokingly warn them that if they stayed in China too long they would acquire “slitty eyes.”[30] In 1995, when meeting a Scottish driving instructor, he asked, “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough for them to pass the test?” And in 2003, when meeting the pres­ident of Nigeria, who was wearing traditional dress, he laughed and said, “You look like you’re ready for bed.”[31] Indeed, Prince Philip provided endless fodder for his critics.

  The younger generation of royals have also felt the sting of critical media coverage, with Prince Harry especially being confronted with headlines raising the question, “What was he thinking?” On January 13, 2005, the twenty-year-old prince was photographed arriving at a friend’s costume party wearing a Nazi Afrika Korps uniform, complete with swastika. Once this photo was published, the prince was quickly compelled to issue a public apology for his poor judgment.[32] In August 2012, Prince Harry found himself in the midst of another media firestorm when photographs were published of him playing “strip billiards” in Las Vegas with six young women, all in various stages of undress. Quickly given the moniker of the “Party Prince,” Harry was again compelled to issue an apology for his unbecoming behaviour.[33]

  While the media inevitably play up these examples of royal indiscretions, much to the consternation of officials in Buckingham Palace, Jeremy Paxman is quick to remind us that the recent scandals that have beset the modern royal family pale in comparison to examples of earlier royal misbehaviour. Perhaps the greatest royal secret, one spawning a cover-up lasting decades, involved the scandalous behaviour of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson as Duke and Duchess of Windsor, following his abdication as king in December 1936. Edward always had strong right-wing and reactionary attitudes toward politics, while Wallis Simpson was known by British intelligence agencies as early as 1936 to be very sympathetic to Hitler and the Nazis, allegedly having been a lover of Joachim von Ribbentrop in 1935.[34] Within a year after his abdication and their marriage, the ducal couple travelled to Germany in October 1937, meeting such Nazi luminaries as Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Hess, and Joseph Goebbels, along with von Ribbentrop and Adolf Hitler himself. In all cases, they were able to communicate in fluent German. In the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Hitler saw a possible Nazi king and queen of Britain and its Empire, a couple who would relish being returned to Buckingham Palace following a German conquest of the British Isles and would loyally do his bidding.[35]

  In the summer of 1940, Britain was struggling in the Second World War, following the fall of France in June and the advent of the Battle of Britain in July, the latter of which witnessed the German air force bombing British targets in the prelude to invasion. At this time, the ducal couple were in Spain and then Portugal, having fled France. They were under orders from the British government to return to the United Kingdom and then move to the Bahamas, where the duke was posted as the new governor general. German diplomatic cables from their embassies in Madrid and Lisbon to Hitler throughout July reveal that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were meeting with influential pro-fascist Spanish aristocrats who were in direct communication with German officials.

  Unknown to either the Germans or the duke, however, British espionage agents were reporting the contents of these communications to the British government. Winston Churchill and George VI closely followed the duke’s dalliance with treason. On numerous occasions, Edward expressed his belief “that Great Britain faced a catastrophic military defeat which could only be avoided through a peace settlement with Germany.”[36] On July 10, 1940, the German ambassador to Portugal reported to Berlin that the Duke of Windsor saw himself as an emissary who could broker peace between Britain and Germany, but that he could only achieve this if and when Churchill was removed from power in London. “[The Duke] is convinced,” wrote the ambassador Hoyningen-Huene to von Ribbentrop, “that had he remained on the throne war could have been avoided and describes himself as a firm supporter of a peaceful compromise with Germany. The Duke believes with certainty that continued heavy bombing will make England ready for peace.”[37]

  Having delayed their return to Britain for weeks, providing time for diplomatic channels of communication to remain open between themselves and Berlin, the ducal couple finally boarded a ship for the Bahamas on August 1, 1940. But even as they left, Edward was informing the German ambassador in Portugal that he would look forward to remaining in “continuous communication” with their joint Portuguese friends and that he would gladly “co-operate at a suitable time in the establishment of peace.” The duke also wanted it to be known in Berlin that, with his “deepest sincerity,” he had “admiration and sympathy for the Führer.”[38]

  The Duke of Windsor’s treacherous behaviour did not escape disapproving eyes in Britain. It was inde
ed on account of the ducal couple’s misbehaviour that Churchill wanted Edward and his wife far away from Europe and out of communication with German agents. Once established in his vice-regal office in Nassau in the fall of 1940, Edward continued to harbour defeatist beliefs. In speaking to an American journalist, who was also an undercover FBI agent, in December 1940, the duke suggested that American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt could lead a peace initiative to stop the war between Germany and Great Britain. He added that this was the kind of effort he would join and support. After learning that his interviewer had never met Hitler, the duke said, “Hitler is the right and logical leader of the German people. It is a pity you never met Hitler, just as it is a pity I never met Mussolini. Hitler is a very great man.”[39]

  Had any ordinary British, Imperial, or Commonwealth subject uttered any of these words during the war and been proven to be in direct communication with the enemy, he or she would have been tried, convicted, and executed for treason. The only thing that kept the Duke and Duchess of Windsor alive during the war, long after Churchill and his senior intelligence officers knew of the duke’s disloyalty, was his royal blood. It would not look good for the British to have to execute their former king and his wife for seeking a Nazi victory.

  To those with republican sentiments, this sorry saga of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of hereditary leadership. While monarchists argue that the hereditary principle assures a clear line of succession, with the heir to the throne being well educated to assume the constitutional and social burdens of his or her office, republicans counter that the practice of hereditary leadership can just as easily result in someone utterly unfit for such a high office, assuming its status and influence. Edward VIII serves as their strongest example. Only his abdication in 1936 prevented a king with Nazi sympathies being on the throne at the outset of the Second World War.

  A final word on public interest in the private lives of the royals should go to the erstwhile champion of the republican movement in the United Kingdom, Polly Toynbee, a columnist for The Guardian. Perhaps her most damning indictment of the monarchy in Britain is that it “subjugates the national imagination, infantilizing us with false imaginings and a bogus heritage of our island story.” The relentless media focus on the lives of the royals, their comings and goings, their personal habits and foibles, and their wealth and lavish lifestyles has the effect of directing public attention to childish trivialities and a “majestic delusion,” which distracts from the real issues people should be concerned about in modern Britain: social inequality, poverty, racism and intolerance, a democratic deficit, and government that governs for the wealthy few at the expense of the needy. The “infantilization effect” is that the “pomp and circumstance” of royalty conditions Britons to see themselves as “obedient servants worshiping an ermine-wrapped fantasy” of greatness. Rather than seeing British history as the slow evolution of popular sovereignty by which the common people incrementally built a social and democratic state over the long-standing opposition of the British elite and the royal family, and rather than focusing as mature adults on the real problems facing their country, the British people are taught, from an early age, to have a childlike interest in the lives of the royals, their supposed superiors. Rather than focusing on the anti-democratic and elitist nature of royalty, Britons are encouraged to focus on such inane things as what the royals wear, where they go, who they are seen with, what they eat, and how they party and vacation. The public are spurred on to follow royal gossip and to be titillated by their misbehaviours. In reality, Toynbee points out, the regal elite in Britain are not in any way deserving of respect and admiration. Rather, they are “only ordinary like all the other dull and talentless plutocrats with nothing remarkable about them but their bank balance.” British society and politics is thus stunted. The monarchy trivializes life in Britain, extolling that which is “a grand vacuity” while ignoring the needs of the nation. “Beneath the splendour, the squalor.”[40]

  The Republican Solution

  The great debate on the future of the monarchy in Canada has always existed in this country. Sometimes it has been muted, as in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, at least in English Canada, but since the 1960s it has increased in intensity. By the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century, some opinion surveys suggested over half of Canadians wished to see Canada abolish the monarchy, severing this last constitutional and seemingly colonial link with the United Kingdom. In this scenario, Elizabeth II would be the last monarch to reign over Canada and, in future and for all time, a Canadian would finally rise to be this country’s head of state. Canada’s long progression to full national sovereignty would be complete. If Canadians really do want this, however, how can it be achieved? What political and administrative procedures need to be followed in order to terminate the monarchy in Canada? How difficult might this process be? Battle Royal continues as we enter the field of constitutional law and the politics of constitutional amendment.

  Chapter 9

  quests and quagmires: republicanism meets constitutionalism

  “It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to achieve than a new constitution. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.”

  — Niccolò Machiavelli, 1532.

  On November 6, 1999, more than 95 percent of Australian voters participated in a landmark national referendum. The question posed was, should Australia become a constitutional republic? This prospect was an exciting one for many Australians. Even more so than in Canada, the decades following the Second World War witnessed a growing republican movement in Australia. The Australian Labour Party had long championed the republican cause as a means of democratizing and “Australianizing” the constitution while eliminating the last remnants of Australia’s colonial connection to Britain.

  The gears for this 1999 referendum were put in motion in 1993, when Labour prime minister Paul Keating established a Republic Advisory Committee (RAC) with a mandate to assess the feasibility of Australia transforming into a republic. The RAC eventually recommended that Australians be asked whether they approved of their country becoming a republic with a president appointed by Parliament upon the recommendation of the prime minister. This new president would possess all the roles, responsibilities, and powers of past governors general. Keating, however, never got to call the referendum. That privilege went to his successor, Prime Minister John Howard, whose Liberal–National Party coalition won power in the federal election of 1996. Howard was a committed monarchist, but he agreed during the election campaign to honour Keating’s referendum commitment on the republican option during his first term in power.[1]

  As a monarchist facing a looming republic, Howard needed to be clever; and clever he was. Naturally, he campaigned on the No side. Additionally, he worked tirelessly to ensure the question his government had to pose would not automatically cause the monarchy in Australia to implode. As a leading architect of the referendum question, he ensured that Australians would be asked whether they wished to have a new president appointed by Parliament as had been suggested by the RAC. But by the late 1990s, times and moods had changed. To many republicans, a president appointed by politicians now smacked of elitism and cronyism. It pointed to a denial of the democratic will of the Australian people. In the time that elapsed between the 1996 election and the 1999 referendum, public opinion in Australia had evolved such that a clear majority of Australians now supported a republic with a president directly elected by the Australian people. But that was not the question being asked. In the campaign that followed, the republican vote was split, with a signifi­cant number of republican supporters voting No on the grounds that they wanted a better republican form of government than what was on offer. In the end, the referendum vote turne
d out the way Prime Minister Howard had wanted. The republican proposal was defeated with a 55 to 45 percent vote split.[2]

  While Australian republicans have faced great challenges in effecting the constitutional change they wish to see for their country, the picture is even grimmer for Canadian republicans, whose political environment is even less conducive to the republican option. The story of the failed Australian republican referendum serves as a warning. Constitutional change can be very difficult and convoluted, subject to changing public attitudes, human foibles, and devious, even Machiavellian, political gamesmanship. No one should ever think disestablishing the monarchy will be easy.

  The Canadian Republican Challenge and the Constitution Act, 1982

  Imagine that at some point in the not-too-distant future public opinion polls show a clear majority of Canadians are in favour of abolishing the monarchy in this country, replacing the queen, or more likely the new king, with a Canadian head of state.