Her Majesty

by Robert Hardman

  From here, everyone adjourns to Marlborough House for the more informal part of the celebrations. All the Commonwealth diplomats are at the party but there isn’t an ambassador in the room. Because Commonwealth countries do not regard each other as ‘foreign’, all ambassadors from one Commonwealth country to another are called High Commissioners. And the Queen ensures that her High Commissioners enjoy a few subtle perks like the best seats at her Birthday Parade. When new diplomats come to present their credentials at the Palace, the Queen always sends a carriage from the Royal Mews to collect them. Ordinary ambassadors are pulled by two horses, but High Commissioners get four. These are tiny but jealously guarded distinctions among the Diplomatic Corps.

  As the Queen progresses through her grandmother’s old house, it is easy to sense why she is so fond of this organisation, why it is allowed to live in London’s grandest non-royal residence (it’s much more palatial than Number Ten Downing Street) for a peppercorn rent. This reception is nothing like the usual run of diplomatic events. She discusses homesickness with a group of students from the Falkland Islands, meets the Speakers of the Namibian and Nova Scotian parliaments and recognises Gary Flather, a disabled guest who has recently lost a much-loved assistance dog. Flather is married to Baroness Flather, a Commonwealth stalwart who was the first Indian-born Mayor of Windsor. The Queen remembers his golden retriever, Gracie, from civic events in Windsor. ‘You’ve always been with your dog before, haven’t you,’ she says. ‘I had to put her down,’ Flather sighs. He gets as long a chat as any High Commissioner. Flather is immensely cheered. ‘I suddenly saw that look in her face that said she knew exactly the feelings I went through,’ he says (when they next meet, Flather has a new assistance dog with him and the Queen is thrilled).

  The Queen moves on to meet Professor Bhupinder Sandhu, the woman with arguably the smallest organisation and the longest title in the room – President of the Commonwealth Association of Paediatric Gastro-Enterologists. It is organisations like hers which are the bedrock of the Commonwealth.

  Much as many politicians (especially those from the smaller states) enjoy the summits and the ostentatious motorcades, the Commonwealth is never going to save the planet. It has an annual budget of £90 million which equates to, say, a third of the annual turnover of Manchester United Football Club. The Commonwealth’s power, like the Queen’s, is all about influence rather than coercion. It brings people together but cannot give them orders. It can embarrass bad regimes, endorse good ones and offer free and invaluable expertise through numerous civic societies just like Sandhu’s. That is why the second Monday in March, just like the second Sunday in November – Remembrance Sunday – is an unbreakable fixture in the Queen’s diary.

  The Queen’s devotion to the Commonwealth is partly a sentimental thing. Her father helped create the modern Commonwealth shortly before his death, providing a useful, face-saving way for the United Kingdom to shed the British Empire but keep its ties with the former colonies. But it is also a question of personal pride. When it started, the Commonwealth had eight members. Today it has fifty-four. It has literally grown up with the Queen. The whole thing could have fallen apart on several occasions. It could have become an expensive vanity exercise like France’s Francophonie (in which one country is top dog and hands out favours to the rest). But the Commonwealth remains a free assembly of equals which covers a third of the world’s population, includes all the main religions, speaks English, has a British-style legal system and yet frequently enjoys hitting Britain with a big stick. When it started, it was the only show in town apart from the United Nations. Now governments have international groupings galore. Unlike the newer breed of talking shops with their snappy initials – BRIC, EU, G20 and so on – this one has no initials.*

  Some would say that it has no purpose either. Around the Commonwealth, there are those who see it as an irrelevant imperial hangover. Many argue that its failure to take a firm stand on human rights abuses from Gambia to Sri Lanka shows that it is toothless and inept. In Britain, many believe that it gives kudos to dictators and kleptocrats or that it is a nostalgic distraction from the realities of life in the European Union. Some British prime ministers have not always seen the merits of spending several days on the other side of the world arguing technicalities with the leader of a microstate which they would be hard pushed to find on a map. Tony Blair does not even mention the Commonwealth in his memoirs. In person, he insists that it is ‘important’, adding the caveat: ‘I took it, frankly, as seriously as it was justified in being taken.’ It has been said that the only reason some British prime ministers have bothered with the Commonwealth at all is because they will be accused of snubbing the Queen if they do not. Other leaders admit that, without the Queen, the turnout might be considerably lower. John Key, Prime Minister of New Zealand, tots up all the summits on today’s circuit and says: ‘You can see the pressure on leaders’ time. I don’t think you’d get them turning up if it wasn’t for the Queen or, after her reign, the King.’

  British Foreign Secretary William Hague has pledged to raise the profile of the ‘C in FCO – the Foreign and Commonwealth Office: ‘I’m not naive about how difficult it is to breathe meaningful life into it. But it’s definitely worth the effort because it is the ultimate network and we are entering a network world.’ Unlike NAFTA or OPEC, it was not created by geography or economic interest. It is an historic quirk. Why else would Canada and Tuvalu find themselves around a summit table as equals? Its meetings are the only major world summits with no interpreters. The result is a family feel. It thrives on disagreement – its politicians are usually squabbling about five things at once – but, like a family, it can quarrel without falling apart, reinforced by its rich network of associations. ‘There’s a huge flotilla of professional organisations and they buzz away the whole time,’ says Lord Hurd. ‘It’s not sensational but it’s continuous. You never get the bitterness you often get at the United Nations. The Commonwealth has its own vocabulary.’ There is even a very distant hope that Ireland might one day rejoin an organisation it left in 1949. The outstanding success of the Queen’s state visit in May 2011 – the first since the creation of the Republic of Ireland – has made the idea less far-fetched.

  If you were starting a new nation from scratch tomorrow, then the Commonwealth could advise you on everything from building a police force to a dental service. There is a queue of countries with no historic British ties – like Rwanda – which want to join to enjoy the networking potential. And if all its fifty-four governments can be expected to agree on just one thing, it is that they are all very happy to have the Queen as head. ‘It would be impossible without her,’ says John Key. ‘She binds together an eclectic group of countries who often have very little in common.’ Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser thinks it would be madness to remove the royal connection. ‘There’s no advantage, only a downside,’ he says. ‘We’d become just like any other institution.’ The Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Kalamesh Sharma, has no doubt that the Queen is the glue in the organisation: ‘The Queen’s association makes us like a family, a very special community.’

  As her former Private Secretary Sir William Heseltine points out, it’s an organisation with long memories. ‘From the very beginning, when the Queen made her way round the Commonwealth, she got to know some of those African leaders who were youngsters when she first met them,’ he says. ‘And they grew up together and had a relationship which was, in some cases, quite affectionate, and certainly respectful. And I think they began to regard her as a mother figure of the Commonwealth. Certainly, in the Thatcher days, she was regarded as very much more sympathetic to the organisation than the Prime Minister – which indeed she was. So they regarded her as a protector of their Commonwealth aspirations.’ Long before Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa, the Queen was quietly treating him as a head of state. When he appeared at the 1991 Commonwealth summit, the Queen, as ever, was preparing to host her traditional ban
quet for heads of government. Mandela, recently out of prison, was still nearly three years away from being elected one, so he had not been invited to the party. ‘Let’s have him,’ the Queen told the Secretary-General. And he came. Heseltine has no doubts about the Queen’s part in the creation of Zimbabwe: ‘That was, in Commonwealth terms, one of her great achievements, even if it didn’t turn out as well as it might have done.’ Zimbabwe’s subsequent descent into poverty and corruption will have aggrieved the Queen as much as anyone. It has since resigned from the Commonwealth – just before it was expelled – but even in his most inflammatory rantings against Britain, President Robert Mugabe has avoided attacking the Monarch. After all, she once had him to stay at Buckingham Palace.

  The same sense of the Queen as a benign umpire has rubbed off on the new generation of leaders, some of whom were in primary school during the heyday of Commonwealth quarrels. ‘She’s so well versed, so comfortable with us,’ says Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Maldives, the low-lying Islamic republic in the Indian Ocean. ‘She keeps her distance to the necessary extent. But I haven’t seen anyone who understands us more.’

  He was a recent overnight guest at Windsor Castle where he was astonished by the Queen’s knowledge of both the Commonwealth and of his country, which she last visited in 1972. ‘There were things she mentioned which she couldn’t have been briefed about. She mentioned that on her trip to the Maldives a fishing boat had been missing and that she had sent her ship, Britannia, to rescue this boat. And she wanted to know how these people were – if they were still alive. After I got home, I wanted to see if they were around. There was no official record of it, so how did she know? But I found that one of the people was alive and I was also able to let her know that all of the people had put up pictures of her in their homes.’

  Those close to the Queen say that another reason for this bond is her sense that she has ‘earned’ it. Everything else – her throne, her Church, her estates – was inherited, but on her watch the Commonwealth has gone from infancy to maturity as a global institution. It is her equivalent of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, her Prince’s Trust. It will undoubtedly come to be regarded as one of the defining elements of her reign. And it is why, in bright November sunshine, she has crossed an ocean with a heavy cold to preside over another gathering of ‘The Club’. The Commonwealth leaders meet every two years and, this time, it is the turn of Port of Spain, the capital of the Caribbean twin-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Most of The Club are represented by their prime ministers although a few have sent their foreign ministers instead. Some Commonwealth nations are so unstable that it can be risky for leaders to leave their own shores – as the Prime Minister of Vanuatu is about to find out. By the time this three-day conference ends, he will be the ex-Prime Minister of Vanuatu, having been ousted in his absence. Two countries are missing. Fiji is suspended for refusing to hold a democratic election and tiny Nauru (population: 10,000) has not paid its bills.

  Politicians fly in from all over the world and drive straight from the airport to the heavily fortified Hyatt Regency hotel from where they will hardly stir. There aren’t enough beds in town, so the thousands of lobbyists, Commonwealth associations, charity workers and the media are all berthed on a pair of large cruise ships. In years gone by, the Queen would have stayed in the Royal Yacht. Since Britannia is now a Scottish tourist attraction, she is staying in a newly opened boutique hotel. The Carlton Savannah is so new that the paint is still drying and some of the light fittings have not been completed. The Queen is staying in an eleventh-floor apartment called the ‘Wow Suite’ – as its future occupants will, no doubt, remark when they are told who stayed there first.

  Unlike the politicians, the Queen will actually be out and about among the ordinary people during her time here. She is not only here as Head of the Commonwealth but as Queen of Great Britain, in which capacity she will also pay a state visit to Trinidad and Tobago. When she became Queen, it was a colony. When she first visited in 1966, it had gained independence but had kept her as Queen. By her second visit in 1981, it had voted to become a republic. Third time around, though, the welcome is just as exuberant. Port of Spain is the city which invented the steel drum and calypso. Its carnival ranks alongside those of Rio and New Orleans and is the model for Notting Hill’s. Each spring, half the nation join carnival bands and parade past the other half. Six months on, the champion junior band are back in their costumes to greet the Queen outside the country’s old national theatre, the Queen’s Hall. More than 150 children are dressed in a riotously imaginative collection of costumes – birds, flowers, fish, phantoms and much else. They are all under fourteen but some stand twelve feet tall, swaying on stilts. One poor boy falls off during the long wait but no damage is done and he is propped back up again. Many are from a local children’s home. Their carers explain that being in a prize-winning carnival band – and meeting the Queen – will be defining moments in their lives. Anywhere in the world, organisations like this boil down to a few indefatigable volunteers with big hearts and limitless patience, women like Rosalind Gabriel who spent a year sewing and gluing all these costumes together. She is a ‘must’ on the list of people for the Queen to meet. More children are inside the theatre, either to welcome or perform for the Queen. Adults are not much in evidence, which is how the Queen likes a lot of her engagements these days. ‘She’s been almost everywhere in the world and she doesn’t like spending every visit talking about “the last time I was here”,’ explains one of her team. Even so, it’s nice to see a few old faces. Among those in the greeting line is Thora Dumbell, eighty-five, a former ballet star who once danced with Fred Astaire and choreographed the rally for the Queen in 1966. She must have made an impact. ‘Back then, I was invited to have coffee with her, and Prince Philip said: “I wish I could put you in a little pot and take you back to England.” I still think of her as my Queen.’

  The Monarch is dressed for the occasion in a bright red floral dress and white jacket. Rosalind’s carnival band shimmers and dazzles and drums and whistles. It has to be persuaded to shut up so that the Queen can hear Timel Flament-Rivas, aged nine, sing a new calypso written by local composer Larry Harewood: ‘Welcome to our twin islands, a nation under the sun/A glimpse of your schedule shows your work is never done. May God pour his richest blessings, keep you in good health./And may you remain the Head of the Commonwealth.’ Veteran royal watchers can tell that the Queen is enjoying this because she is tapping her foot. She is not, as a rule, a great foot-tapper. Timel, it turns out, has several verses. It all goes on rather longer than the organisers planned. There is nervous watch-checking among the suits but the Queen is in no hurry. In his little tuxedo and bow tie, Timel is entirely relaxed, too. His mother, Jeaniffer, speechless with pride, turns out to be a former ju-jitsu world champion who once hospitalised two muggers. Nerves of steel run in the family.

  Inside the auditorium, the audience – almost all children – scream hysterically as the Queen walks in. Even though it’s a Saturday, they are all in neat school uniforms. If anyone totted up the hours the Queen has spent watching ‘local cultural entertainments’ in her life, it must amount to months if not years. But she is not merely watching this youth concert. She is sitting forward in her seat, enthralled.

  Afterwards, she walks outside to meet the long-suffering carnival band which has now been standing in the sun for more than two hours. It explodes into life, gyrating to the drums and whistles. ‘Flap any harder and you’ll take off,’ the Duke of Edinburgh tells a golden humming bird. The Queen is enchanted. She meets Rosalind Gabriel and discusses the challenge of producing 150 costumes. ‘Do you reuse them?’ asks the Duke. ‘No, we make them new,’ says Rosalind. ‘He was blown away by that,’ she says later, a little blown away herself. Thora Dumbell is glowing. ‘I think the Queen was looking better today than when I first met her. She looks fantastic,’ she says. ‘I reminded her of the rally in 1966 and she said: “You came to see me afterwards.” So she r
emembered me!’

  In the Queen’s younger days, a state visit like this might have lasted a week. As the oldest monarch in history, her schedules have been trimmed back a little but there’s always a state banquet. In Trinidad, it takes place on the lawn of President’s House, the former colonial residence. There is much excitement that the Queen is wearing an Angela Kelly dress embroidered with the national birds and flowers of Trinidad and Tobago. Once the Queen gets home, however, the beads and crystals will be unthreaded and re-embroidered in a maple leaf pattern for next year’s tour of Canada. Her team call this ‘credit crunch couture’.

  By way of hospitality in return, she hosts a reception for the great and good of Trinidad and Tobago in her hotel. Football star Dwight Yorke gives her a signed football. ‘Very nerve-wracking,’ he says. Cricket legend Brian Lara gives her a signed bat. There’s another reception on the British High Commissioner’s lawn where the Queen meets more West Indies cricketers, including Willie Rodriguez, Daren Ganga and Deryck Murray. Talk turns to the new genre of Twenty20 cricket. It is clear that the Queen is not a fan. ‘I have a friend who can’t bear it,’ she remarks, deploying time-honoured royal shorthand for a personal opinion. ‘He says: “I won’t watch it!”’ This is the sporting corner of the party. Rodriguez ignores the old canard that one should never ask the Queen a question (it all depends on the question) and points out that the Queen’s horse, Barber’s Shop, has been running in England that very afternoon. How did the horse get on? ‘No one’s told me it won,’ she says in mock despair, ‘so I presume it has not.’ (It has come seventh.)

  The Duke is introduced to a group of Red Cross workers, among them Tanya Wood from Britain. ‘I was sent here for my sins,’ she says. ‘And what were your sins?’ asks the Duke. He has his own mini-state visit to perform on this tour. Just to make sure that the people of Tobago do not feel overlooked, he flies to the smaller island for a day. The Queen, however, has a Commonwealth to attend to.