Her Majesty

by Robert Hardman

  So, sixty years on, we find the constitutional garden in an untidy but not an unruly state. But there is an important point to be made here. There is virtually nothing that the Queen could have done to alter any of these situations. Indeed, all that can be stated with any degree of certainty is that things would be worse if it were not for her. That is certainly the objective view from overseas.

  ‘The Commonwealth would certainly not exist in its present form without her,’ says President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives. Born in 1967, this Liverpool University graduate is one of the world’s youngest heads of state and the first elected leader of an Islamic archipelago republic which could disappear if sea temperatures rise by just a few degrees (he famously held the world’s first sub-aqua Cabinet meeting in 2009 to highlight the problem). A one-time political prisoner who supplanted a dictatorship with a vigorous democracy, Nasheed is a canny, hard-headed politician. And he is not being sentimental when he says that his country, like many other former colonies and protectorates, can feel rather proprietorial about our Queen. ‘She’s our Queen as well, in a way. In our minds, she’s not necessarily just English. She doesn’t really have a nationality,’ Nasheed explains. ‘She is very different from British monarchs in the past because she’s the first monarch to have engaged the world, not as an imperial ruler but someone who is out there to look after us in a sense.’ He is equally enthusiastic about the Prince of Wales, both as a future monarch and future Head of the Commonwealth.

  In Britain, it is certainly worthy of note that, even at its lowest ebb, the modern monarchy has not encountered anything resembling a coherent opposition. There has always been a republican lobby of some sort and it is possible – indeed, probable – that, given a personal choice, a majority of Labour MPs would prefer an elected head of state. In the fifties and sixties, republicans tended to rally around symbols – the Queen’s head on stamps, Scotland’s sacred Stone of Scone beneath the Coronation Chair and so on.

  Today, they prefer to focus on cost and lifestyle. The most visible manifestation of contemporary British republican thought is a pressure group called Republic which includes a small number of MPs, celebrities and public figures. A frequent complaint among its supporters is the absence of public debate on the issue but, in recent years, its public profile has risen considerably. Its efforts to present a constructive intellectual case for constitutional reform do not always chime with the class-war rhetoric of some of its supporters, but it offers some original perspectives. Contrary to the sour-grapes stance usually adopted by anti-monarchist groups at the first flutter of bunting, Republic’s leader issued a statement welcoming Prince William’s wedding on the grounds that it would kick-start fresh debate on the role of the Crown. On the wedding day itself, the organisation even staged a rather forlorn ‘Not The Royal Wedding’ party in London’s Red Lion Square. But it has its work cut out. The sense of national exhilaration as the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge walked out into the world on that April morning was ample proof of that.

  ‘People were worried about what was going to happen during those difficult times in the nineties,’ says Sir John Major, Prime Minister for much of that period. ‘But there’s a difference between the often grudging reception which parts of the media and the republican fringe give the Royal Family and the deep, instinctive roots that you find when you go around the country. The monarchy has re-established itself in a quite astonishing way. Its value is incalculable. It gives us a unique identity. And that is maximised by the Queen because she has been there for so long. I find it impossible to contemplate a Britain without a monarchy. I simply cannot picture it.’ He has noticed something else, too: ‘It’s regarded, these days, with much less awe and much more affection.’

  His old foe and successor agrees. Indeed, Tony Blair believes support for the monarchy is arguably now stronger than ever: ‘Whereas those who supported the monarchy in times gone past did so out of a very deferential respect for the institution, nowadays it’s a far more rational, sustainable calculation that, all things considered, it’s better for the country.’ David Cameron puts it more starkly: ‘There’s no republican debate in this country.’ Jack Straw, a former Labour Cabinet Minister and a critic of the monarchy in the early nineties, agrees.

  Certainly, the old republican argument that monarchy, equality and progress are somehow incompatible is wearing thin. The 2011 United Nations Human Development Index assesses 170 countries according to fundamental living standards. Of the top ten, seven are constitutional monarchies and the Queen reigns over three of them – Australia (second), New Zealand (third) and Canada, (eighth). In top spot is the kingdom of Norway.

  In Britain, a clear majority of people support the status quo. ‘The polls are always about 80 per cent in favour of the monarchy to various degrees,’ explains Sir Antony Jay. ‘And you have to remember that the fervour of the 20 per cent who are anti-monarchy has nothing like the intensity of feeling which exists among the keenest members of the 80 per cent.’ The Palace’s own private polling, as ever, puts the figure at a steady 70 per cent in favour with 15–20 per cent against and the rest undecided. Regardless, it’s a level of support beyond the dreams of politicians. As David Cameron puts it: ‘We’d all love a bit of that!’

  But the Queen, the Prince of Wales and their advisers are acutely aware that republicans don’t usually produce republics. The greatest threat to the monarchy is itself. As the Duke of Edinburgh himself has sagely observed: ‘Most of the monarchies in Europe were really destroyed by their greatest and most ardent supporters. It was the most reactionary people who tried to hold on to something without letting it develop and change.’ The Queen is not immune to criticism from the most fervent royalists who, from time to time, believe that she is not acting in her own best interests – by failing to block some fresh transfer of powers to the European Union, perhaps, or acquiescing in the loss of the Crown or the ‘royal’ prefix from the letterhead of a public institution. She is certainly not oblivious to these concerns. If they are filling her post bag, no one will hide them from her.

  But, standing back once more, it is her capacity to promote consensus which is a hallmark of her reign. ‘She is a great non-executive,’ says a very senior courtier. ‘We find it in families with aunts and uncles and godparents. They are the non-execs who provide the support, wisdom and guidance on the sidelines while the parents fight it out in hand-to-hand conflict with the children. The Queen is playing that role at the heart of our constitution.’

  As for the monarchy itself, it is now in robust health. We see an institution that is secure, solvent, confident and active. And she stands at the head of a Royal Household which is no longer dominated by a particular old school or regimental tie. Indeed, if there is one obvious ‘old-boy network’ at work inside the Palace today, it consists of alumni of the University of West London. Previously Thames Valley University (and West London Polytechnic before that), it now runs the Palace’s very own Butler Diploma course and has educated far more members of staff than, say, Eton or Oxford. And they are not all boys either.

  Presiding over all this is a sovereign whose level of experience has no equal among modern heads of state. In the mid-fifties, some talked excitedly of a ‘New Elizabethan Age’. Amid the austerity and the bomb craters, it seemed naively optimistic. Perhaps, though, future generations, will talk of ‘New Elizabethans’. Sir John Major certainly thinks so. ‘The phrase trips happily off the tongue!’ he argues. ‘And we have seen nothing like it, except for Victoria. When historians look back in five hundred years, they won’t find more than a handful of monarchs who will have served as long as our Queen.’

  Yet the span of her reign is now so vast that those ‘New Elizabethans’ will actually straddle three centuries. The term may be too broad to serve as any sort of useful social or historic categorisation. As a little girl, Princess Elizabeth talked kings and queens with George V who had himself sat on the knee of Lord Palmerston. Today, the Queen has a British Prime Min
ister younger than any of her own children. During that 1954 tour of Australia, she attended reunions of Boer War veterans in every state. In Sydney, she even met Harold Wearne, ninety-one, who had fought in the Sudan War of 1885. Today she pins decorations on soldiers who were in primary school at the start of the twenty-first century.

  As Prince William acknowledges, you have to be approaching seventy to be able to recall any other face on the banknotes and postage stamps. Sir John Major concurs: ‘There are 6.8 billion people in the world, and over six billion of them have known nothing but the Queen as the British Monarch all their lives.’

  It is precisely because of her long reign and the steady pace of her public duties that she is seen as someone whose world is shaped by tradition and convention. ‘As soon as she gets a new diary, her Private Secretary can more or less fill half of it up straight away just like her Private Secretary would have done in 1952,’ explains Ronald Allison, former Press Secretary to the Queen, pointing to the set-piece calendar of Easter Court at Windsor, Holyroodhouse every summer, the Cenotaph in November and so on. ‘So, in one sense, nothing has changed. And yet, everything has changed.’

  Certainly, when we see the famous East Front of Buckingham Palace or the Round Tower of Windsor Castle or a corgi or a sentry box or a Christmas broadcast, we sense continuity, permanence, dependability. That’s the whole idea. What we don’t see is an institution which has had to adapt just as much as the world beyond. It has managed to do so without us noticing – ever changing yet never changing. And that is all down to the shrewd leadership of an innately conservative woman who has also proved to be the very model of a modern monarch.

  * The Lord Mayor’s speech was restrained compared to Churchill’s Address of Welcome in the Commons two days earlier: ‘The gleaming episode of the Queen’s journey among her peoples, their joy in welcoming her … constitutes an event which stands forth without an equal in our records, and casts a light – clear, calm, gay and benignant upon the whole human scene.’

  * The very first medal she presented during her reign was the Victoria Cross, awarded to Private William Speakman of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. He fought off repeated enemy assaults with grenades, stones and even empty bottles during the Korean War.

  * A senior master at Eton College, Marten regularly visited Windsor Castle during the Second World War to teach Princess Elizabeth about the constitutional duties that lay ahead. Despite his disconcerting habit of addressing a solitary Princess as ‘Gentlemen’, Sir Henry’s lessons were much appreciated. In 1945, he was knighted by George VI in front of the entire school.

  * President Richard Nixon resigned from office in August 1974. It emerged that he had attempted to block investigations into the burglary of his political opponents’ offices in Washington’s Watergate building.

  * In 1956, after Egypt’s Colonel Nasser had nationalised the Suez Canal, Britain and France reached a secret arrangement to support an Israeli attack on Egypt. A global backlash forced a hasty and humiliating withdrawal.

  * In 1963, the War Minister, John Profumo, resigned from public life. He admitted lying to the Commons about his relationship with Christine Keeler, a model who had been sharing her affections with a Russian naval attaché.

  * Once again, more was spent on tobacco (£500) than on flowers (£430) or an orchestra (£195). And, once again, it was ‘beer and sandwiches’, at £I a head, for the BBC.

  2

  Herself

  ‘You make it up a lot as you go along.’

  The water is splish-sploshing over the sides of the swimming pool. Built in the thirties, it was designed with relaxation in mind rather than earnest distance swimming by multiple bathers. There are no marked-out lanes. Unlike swankier, funkier corporate keep-fit clubs, there is no music system, no sauna. It’s a bring-your-own-towel affair. The heavily tinted glass means that if you happened to walk past this corner of Buckingham Palace, you would not have a clue what lay within. But inside, privacy extends to little more than a couple of shower curtains.

  But there will be no complaints from the users. Who cares if a few mod cons are missing? All are conscious that they are enjoying what is unquestionably one of the most exclusive perks in London.

  For many years, this was royal-only territory. Diana, Princess of Wales, and Princess Margaret were keen users. The Duke of Edinburgh taught his children to swim in this pool. Today, the swimmers might be an entire cross section of Palace life – an equerry, a chauffeur, a secretary from ‘up the road’ at Clarence House or St James’s Palace. Sometimes, they are joined by the most senior non-royal figure in these parts, the Lord Chamberlain.

  It’s the same story next door. The corridor may be painted in an institutional green but there can be few offices in central London with an en suite squash court. The Duke was playing on this very court as he waited for the birth of his eldest son (in the days when expectant fathers had to stay out of the way). These days, anyone can play. The reigning Palace squash king is the retired Royal Naval officer who runs the Princess Royal’s office.

  How times have changed. Not so long ago, any staff found exercising in here would have been fired, if not court-martialled. Edward VII sent a courtier away in disgrace for using a comb instead of a hairbrush. His son, George V, refused to allow jazz, cocktails and ladies with painted fingernails to intrude upon his Court. A horse belonging to George VI was not allowed to breed with another horse on the grounds that its owner was a bookmaker. And yet, today, cleaners and peers of the realm might be splashing side by side in the Queen’s pool a few yards from where the Sovereign is discussing affairs of state with the Prime Minister. So how on earth was the Queen – and the Duke for that matter – persuaded to approve this below-stairs revolution? Very easily, it turns out.

  ‘I went to see her and explained why it might be a good idea for staff welfare and she just said: “Yes, try it,”’ says Air Vice-Marshal Sir David Walker, Master of the Household, and, as such, the man in charge of running all the royal residences. When a plan is well argued and well presented, the Queen’s response can be very straightforward. The Earl of Airlie, the former Lord Chamberlain, recalls a similar reaction when he submitted his proposals for the most far-reaching restructuring of the Royal Household since the Victorian era. He discussed them at great length with the Queen, at the end of which a decision was needed. ‘She just said: “Get on with it.”’ He finds that a slow response is a pretty reliable indicator that the Queen does not like an idea. ‘If you write a paper, it will be back in short order. If she doesn’t like what you’ve said, you might not get an answer so quickly,’ he explains. ‘But when you are talking to her about difficult subjects, somehow or other she makes you feel better when you leave the room.’

  Ask anyone who knows and works with the Queen to describe her and they will begin by emphasising how different she is from her public persona. She is ‘very funny’, ‘a great mimic’, ‘pin sharp’, ‘doesn’t miss a thing’, ‘very feminine’, ‘better with men’ … But the public persona – solemn, remote, inscrutable – is not so much a persona as a professional demeanour which has served her well. If she was known for her vivacity or exuberance, people would be disappointed and curious on the inevitable occasions when it was not there. Expect regal and you will always get regal. We know that there is a private Queen, just as there is an ordinary man beneath the bearskin and the red tunic. But if we think that this private Queen is simply a more relaxed, humorous, animal-loving, racing-mad country cousin to the public model, we are very much mistaken. As her prime ministers have learned, one should never make any assumptions.

  ‘There is a quite mistaken view of the Queen that she is just a small-c conservative. And that’s not true,’ says Tony Blair. ‘She’s just very protective of the monarchy. What I found to be her most surprising attribute is how streetwise she is. Frequently, throughout my time as Prime Minister, I was always stunned by her total ability to pick up the public mood and define it in the conversations I had
with her. She completely understood what was going on and had a very clear ability to analyse people and their strengths and weaknesses very quickly.’

  Sir John Major was also struck by the Queen’s quiet worldliness: ‘There’s very little she hasn’t seen. In my own experience, there is almost nothing that ruffles her. She’s a good student of human behaviour.’

  Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, believes that, for all the advisers dispensing wise counsel to the Queen throughout her life, much of her success has been down to following her own gut instincts. It is a strategy which she has passed on to the younger generation. ‘It’s very much the case that she won’t necessarily force advice on you,’ he says. ‘She’ll let you work it out for yourself. She’s always there for a question or two; for whatever it is you might need. But, just as she probably had to do, she feels that you have to work it out for yourself, that there are no set rules. You have to make it work. You have to do what you think is right. And she’s a prime example of that. She had to carve her own way and she’s done it fantastically for sixty years.’

  Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, learned the royal ropes the same way. ‘You have to find your way, develop your interests. There is never any direction,’ says the former Royal Navy Commander and former business ambassador. ‘But you’ve then got to be given the guidance and help to be successful. She’s always given hugely important consideration and advice. I don’t think any of us would have done anything in isolation.’ He also points out that the Queen treats her discussions with her children and grandchildren just like her audiences with her politicians. There will be no round-the-dinner-table discussion about what was discussed one-on-one during the afternoon. ‘It’s one of those odd things. It’s exactly the same as the conversation the Monarch has with the Prime Minister. That is a conversation between the two of them and only the two of them. The same thing is true with the other members of the family. None of us actually discuss the conversations that each of us has had.’