So 2007 has ended and my witness is nearly completed with another day of work to be undertaken on January 2nd. The fireworks on London's embankment were a cacophony of light and sound, costing one million pounds and appearing to out do the efforts of other nations. It was brash and bold but spoilt by the excruciating banal commentary, and for me summoned up one perspective on the present state of Britannica, a P.L.C out to make and the spend as much money as possible regardless of values. The 2007 symbol of this was the collapse of Northern Rock. I thought of the contrast between this and the moral values of Queen Elizabeth II after watching four successive programmes on the House of Windsor from its creation in 1917 to the present campaign for Camilla, the second wife of Prince Charles to function alongside him as Queen in succession to his mother.
Given the continuing good physical and mental health of Queen Elizabeth I am not likely to see if Charles and Camilla make it and what they then do, or if there will be a fashionable generation jump similar to that within our main political parties which commenced when Tony Blair first became Labour Leader, together with the most recent news that a 19 year old Oxford University student is being groomed to take office in Pakistan following the assassination of his mother, or if faced with requirements of the new world order, there will be a radical modernisation our institutions of government, the House of Lords, the jousting of Prime Minister's Queen Time, and having a heredity chairperson of the Board.
I thought the order of the Channel 4's E 4 programming inspired, commencing with the creation of the House of Windsor, the marriage of Elizabeth to her royal second cousin once removed and equally third cousin according to branches of the background, the campaign for Camilla to be Queen and the events which have forced Queen Elizabeth during her reign to change from her beliefs about her duty to her god, her position as head of states and to the people of the Commonwealth. The research establishing the factual basis on which these programmes were created has been undertaken by others but individually and collectively, and viewed with the additional information from BBC series on the Queen and her family at work, it appeared to me to create a comprehensive reality which all neutrals will accept, and which I also suspect only the most blinkered of monarchists and anti monarchists will reject.
My daily work is about the impossibility of making a judgement about one life, my own, without having all the information which has governed my thinking and my actions together the information regarding the thinking and actions of all those who interacted with me at the key moments when I could have thought and acted differently and that even if such information was to be available it is impossible to recapture from memory the personal feelings and factors which governed moments and the choices over a long period of time
What these programmes about the monarchy attempted is to try and separate the concept of an heredity head of state from the individuals who carry out the role and then examine how events outside of their control affected the official performance of the role and their personal life, and how events within the personal life affected the official roles.
To do justice to the programmes and to the Queen, it is also essential to separate her experience and position from the rest of the royal family, and in this respect I thought the programme which singled out ten events during her life presented the clearest picture, but which was also significantly enhanced by information from the three other programmes.
The main issue is the concept of an heredity head of state and which falls apart if there is a voluntary abdication, which is how Elizabeth became Queen, through the decision of her uncle to give up the throne for an experienced but miscalculating woman who was a divorcee. The British Aristocracy has always accepted outsiders, whether through legal marriages or from liaisons, and whether these were secret or open, as long as the individuals directly involved are prepared to fit into the accepted culture of the day and then adapt with everyone to changes required for the continuing survival of the order. There would have been no constitutional crisis if the King and Mrs Simpson had accepted that she could be no more that his mistress. and that it would be necessary for him to marry a virgin of British Aristocracy who would produce one, or better still two, children preferably, sons to preserve an essentially British Monarchy that had already officially dropped its German links in 1917 as a consequence of World War I. It has now become evident that Charles was forced to give up hope of marrying was has been the love of his life because it was known that although single, Camilla was not a virgin.
Elizabeth, and her father, had no preparation for becoming the head of state, and the root of the problem which caused the abdication, affected the future welfare of her sister, Margaret, and that of Charles has been and remains the fact that the British Monarch is defender of the faith, and official position of the church in relation to sex before marriage, adultery and divorce together with the requirement since 1917 that the partner of the monarch should be also of Royal Blood, preferably of a British House, which together with being a virgin would guarantee that succession would not be challenged on the grounds of right.
It was also not long into her reign that Queen Elizabeth was required to tell her younger sister that she could not marry the man of her choice because he was divorced. I wonder how much the Queen took this action out of conviction or from her sense of duty as a constitutional monarch who had taken vows which she is reputed to have strongly believed in at her Coronation. I raise this question because the programmes presented the case that it was the single minded wish of Elizabeth to marry her future husband which commenced with a teenage crush at the age of thirteen years, and which had swayed the reservations of parents, the court, and the government into accepting Prince Phillip of Greece and Denmark, and with the surname of Battenberg, despite the anti German feeling immediately after World War II, and because of the changes which had been made to divest the formal German ancestry to create the artificial House and surname of Windsor in 1917. The programmes also emphasised the role of Lord Mountbatten of Burma, the uncle of Prince Philip in pushing the marriage in order to further his own, and the position of the Mountbatten family, with the understandable expectation that in accordance with custom the bride would take the surname and the family House of her husband, as do ninety nine percent of those who marry in the British Islands today. At best there is a compromise with joint surnames and it is significant that Phillip and his uncle were reported to have been furious when such a compromise was also rejected and the Queen on advice insisted that she and their children would continue to have the surname Windsor as well as being known as part of the House of Windsor.
The constitutional basis was the 1917 Royal Proclamation that the family would abandon its paternal German ancestry and take the name of Windsor, the town in the county of Berkshire, dominated by the Royal Palace. By marriage Queen Victoria became part of the House of Wettin from Saxe-Cobourg and Gotha and the Queen's great grandfather and grandfather Edward VII and George V were both Kings of the House of Wettin, Saxe-Cobourg and Gotha. Following the death of her husband Queen Victoria had imprisoned herself in her Palace at Windsor, a Palace which Edward VII had radically transformed along with Buckingham Palace to his own liking, as well as reintroducing all the pomp and public spectacle of Royalty with the laying in State of his mother, his coronation and the State opening of Parliament
It is therefore not surprising that there was considerable resistance to Elizabeth marrying someone with a German family background, especially as his four sisters had all married German Princes, and who was also someone in line of succession to the Greek throne, a country torn between Communists and those who wanted to bring back the 1922 exiled monarchy, and who was also a man baptised in the Greek Orthodox Church, whose mother spent the greater part of her life in an asylum because of mental illness, and also someone regarded as a man's man who might not be expected to be faithful to her. The programme made the latter point and there has been media speculation in past times about this aspect of their relationship.
However I would suggest that the opposition was primarily concerned with the impact upon public opinion and the security of the heredity monarch given the election of republicans to Parliament and what seemed to be the revolutionary nature of the Atlee Labour government with the introduction of nationalization and the formal creation of the welfare state. However the insecurity which was wider and deeper was the fear of the landed British Aristocracy which had come to regarded itself as rulers of the Empire and superior to its mainland European branches.
Queen Elizabeth and her husband are in fact of Danish family origin with both descended from Christian 9th of Demark and are therefore second cousins once removed. The Queen is descended via her father from Alexandra of Denmark and the Duke via his paternal grandfather who became George 1st of Greece when Denmark was needed to provide the next monarch in that country. Thus it could be argued that they were more Scandinavian than German, and in fact apart from his first two years, Prince Phillip was brought up in Paris, Surrey and Scotland before becoming a distinguished officer in the British Royal Navy in which he served as did his uncle throughout World War II. The making of Prince Phillip as Duke of Edinburgh, a British Citizen also had its origins in 1917. Prince Phillipos of Greece and Denmark was a member of the Royal House Oldenburg, technically of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderberg-Glucksburg. The surname Mountbatten was a 1917 concoction to officially rid the German connection because the family surname was until then Battenberg.
The linking of the western European royal houses from Scandinavia to Greece is a complex matter but with the British link through Queen Victoria and her children, and where the Queen has stronger British links because of her mother's ancestry of Bowes Lyon. It is fact that Prince Phillip has become the oldest living great grandchild of Queen Victoria and her second oldest living descendent after Prince Carl Johan of Sweden. He and his family had to be rescued from the 1922 Greek revolution by a British gunboat, something which his uncle would have fully supported having attended the Court of the Russian Tsar as a young man and fallen in love with the younger sister of Anastasia, the Grand Duchess Maria who perished with the rest of her family and where it is said Mountbatten kept her photograph at his bedside through his marriage and until his untimely death, blown up by the IRA with members of his immediate family while boating.
The willingness of Phillip to give up his claim to the Greek throne, to become a naturalized citizen of his adopted country and to convert from Greek Orthodoxy to the Church of England might have been sufficient to become acceptable had it not been for suspicions about the motives and the integrity of his uncle who was regarded as a brilliant and courageous man, but also an adventurer, that is the kind of man who created the Empire from the time of Elizabeth 1st until appointed by her father as the last Viceroy of India and which led to the creation of the present nations of India and Pakistan, divided primarily according to religion.
Doubts about the extent of the ambition of Lord Mountbatten came to the fore during the Labour Government of Harold Wilson when it was said he was approached and attended a meeting with named individuals including the media Baron Cecil King to consider a coup to replace Wilson by himself. The allegations about Harold's Wilson's pro Russia position and the suddenness of his subsequent resignation when in office, and with a good majority, has fuelled speculation about this situation, but speculation it remains because inquiries have produced no evidence.
But suck talk appears less fanciful with the decision to reject Rab Butler as Prime Minister although there is no evidence that Mountbatten was directly involved as it appears the Queen relied entirely on the advice of her constitutional Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Fearing that his life was ending Macmillan decided to resign as Prime Minister and from Parliament but did not went Butler to succeed him and advised the Queen to risk a constitutional crisis by using her Royal Prerogative to invite the unelected Member of the House of Lords, the landed aristocrat, Alexander Fredericke Douglas-Home, the 14th Earl Home 1951-1963, Baron Home of Hirsel 1903-1995 and Lord Hume of Berwick to form a new Government. Lord Home was the last individual to become Prime Minister when a member of the House of Lords and the first to resign his peerage, which required a special act of Parliament, then to successfully contest a carefully chosen seat in the Commons in order to meet the political requirements of the day, but who reverted to being a Lord upon his loss of office and where his son then became the 15th Lord Home after his death. The experience is said to have made the Queen hesitant to use the Royal Prerogative subsequently
There is no evidence that Queen Elizabeth was a knowing party, or were the majority of the Cabinet to the Sir Anthony Eden conspiracy, based on a French Government plan for Israel to go to war with Egypt, after Egypt announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal which controlled the passage of 80% of the World's oil, and for Britain and France to then intervene to restore peace. This decision placed the Queen in the most difficult position because she is not only the Commander and Chief, but every member of the armed services swears an oath of allegiance and obedience to her, and through her to her commissioned officers and other senor ranks in hierarchical precedence. The programmes report that Lord Mountbatten was strongly opposed to the Suez action and made his views known.
The decision of the United States of America not to support the intervention and the United Nations to condemn the venture, together with widespread opposition on the part of the British public, led to British French withdrawal and the realization of the Queen led aristocracy that Britain's role in the world was irreversibly changed. Changes which had commenced with the reluctant giving up of colonial power, the restricted role of the Queen as head of the Commonwealth and then what would have appeared as the most significant change in sovereignty, the decisions of Conservative Ted Health to join the European Economic Community and then Conservative Margaret Thatcher to agree to the Maastricht Treaty.
As previously mentioned one of the strengths of the British ruling class in terms of wealth, land, power and influence, within and outside of government, national and local, has been its adaptability and presentational skill in appearing to be one thing while doing the other, The problem has been the growing education and power of the middle classes who tend to believe in and attempt to practice the morality and religions they profess. No such problem exists with the lower working class and the underworld who are willing to accept bread and circuses as long as they are free to provide for themselves and their family by smuggling, cut price stolen goods and exploit the state welfare system while making merry to day and every day by whatever means they can.
The Monarchy faced with the loss of all power and with its continuation in question came to rely on three developments. The first which Queen Elizabeth would have wholehearted supported was the role of the Royal family as the bastion of Christian marriage. In this respect there was a problem in that Prince Phillip did not have the background of being a loved child in loving parental home with his parents separated and brought up by nannies, residential schools and an ambitious hard working uncle. The young Queen was also required to undertake duties at home and abroad, which in those days meant being away from her children for months at a time.
I can only speculate on the connection between having absent parents in their early childhood and being sent away to school in relation to the failed first marriages of Princess Anne, Charles and Andrew. All three sons were sent to Gordonstoun as were the two children of Princess Anne
Those of us who have experienced the loneliness of childhood in the midst of large extended families and with devoted and caring parents understand the life long consequence in relation to our self confidence and ability to function in the normal cut and thrust of society. Most parents have to learn the role of parenting whatever from their own experience as members of a family, or from trial and error and instinct, and the importance of grandparents and other adults cannot be underestimated although this can be unhelpful as well as helpful if there is conflict about the role and approach. It is unsurprising therefore that Prince Charles should turn to his supportive uncle and then to the more worldly experienced, self confident, loving Camilla who clearly understood what Charles needed in terms of support.
This is the context in which the Mountbatten family, father and uncle appear to have played a role in persuading Charles that he needed to marry a virgin of British aristocratic breeding to produce one or preferably more heirs to the throne, which led to the selection of Diana, and who is also said to have also had the support of the Queen Mother and of Camilla. Given this level of stated family support how did the gulf between expectation and reality appear to have so quickly developed? Or that Diana would fail to understand her constitutional public role to support the future King or that she would indulge in a series of inappropriate relationships, during and after the formal break up of the marriage without apparent regard to the impact on her children, or on the monarchy? I have no basis for suggesting an explanation other than from the work of others. She was from a broken home, in desperate need of constant love and attention and apparently no member of her own family, or friend, or from the House of Windsor, was able or willing to explain in advance what her precise role and relationship with the Prince was likely to be.
The evident failure of the relationship and the incompatibility of interest must have been devastating to both and it would be inhuman if they and been able to sustain the situation without turning to others for affection. It is at this point that differences in coping between the couple became apparent for the world to see. Diana cast off all restraint and became the outward loving, caring spontaneous personality for which she is now remembered. She successfully portrayed herself as the victim, turning the general public away from Charles and from Royalty, especially a brother and sister also divorced and the image required by the established Churches of England and Scotland crashed during the course of one year.
The Monarchy has developed two other functions. The first can be regarded as cement which binds the middle classes and a selection of others to supporting the retention of the heredity monarch. This is the system of honours given to the services, armed, public and voluntary and to those who distinguish themselves in some way on behalf of their country and the communities, however local. Together with the recognition given to those who live until 100 and those whose marriages survives six decades, together with invitations to garden parties and receptions. Play the game, be part of the system and society and you will be shown recognition in some way during your lifetime. Moreover you do not have to lead a life beyond reproach to be allowed to join the club and to have been a sex crazed drug taking alcoholic is no obstacle as long as the behaviour is in the past and you demonstrate the ability to function in an ongoing more responsible way. The problem is that apart from nominations in relation to the Royal staff, the initial control of allocations has been within the control of the ruling Prime Minister, although steps have been taken to modernise and make the system more neutral and responsive to public interests, rather than in the interests of the public, government and the monarchy.
The recent BBC series should leave no one in any doubt of the extent to which the Queen, her husband, her children and other relatives have and continue to make themselves available to authorities, organisations and to business interests as well as social and cultural, on a vast scale and on a daily basis year in and year out. Yet despite such efforts it is also fact, following the death of Diana, that the British Islands was on verge of republicanism. Once again I suggest that the contrast between how Diana performed this role and the rest of the Royal family had become all too evident. The problem, and it may be a problem which will disappear in time, is that too often the Queen and her family are viewed as engaged in role play, role play at which they are exceptionally good at, but where there are indications that the role is manufactured and does not reflect their true feelings or nature, whereas the criticism of Diana is that sometime after her marriage ended she decided to give way to her feelings and inclinations and be herself regardless of what anyone and everyone thought. Prince Charles has the additional problem that he went on public record that he believes in an elite without making it clear if this is a meritocracy or aristocracy, and then he was also caught out showing his true nature and feelings during the Camillagate tapes and through his contempt for individuals within the media. There is also circumstantial evidence that his public relations manager adopted the strategy of encouraging media stories which put other members of the Royal family in a poor light to bring his situation and that of Camilla into better perspective and public understanding. Again one of the programme stated this without producing evidence.
The dramatic death of Diana and the normal reaction of the Queen as a parent and grand parent to retreat from public life and concentrate on the welfare of her grand children, in a situation of a popular new Labour Government and a Prime Minister able to express their feelings brought the Monarchy to the precipice. The decision to fly the flag at half mast, to stop and view the flowers and talk to those present, to come out onto the pavement for the passing of the cortege and to talk to the Commonwealth beforehand, was sufficient to begin the process of healing the rift between the Queen and her people, although it was quickly evident that the rift was not with the Queen as a person but with the institution, its costs and the failure to pay taxes like the majority, except for most rich. This also became an issue when the government of the day immediately offered the use of public funds for the rebuilding of Windsor Castle when sections were destroyed through fire. The rift was therefore more serious because it went to the heart of what Queen Elizabeth believed in and had stood for, the role of the heredity monarch as the embodiment of the standards, needs and wishes of the people.
There was however one success out of the debacle of the marriage between Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, the combination of the parenting of their two sons. Diana provided he kind of mothering that circumstance appeared to have denied the Prince and his brothers and sisters, and one suspects many of those with privileged parents in terms of birth, wealth or office. It is the norm rather than the exception that the children pay the price in such situations and although cut short Diana appears to have provided her sons with the ability to understand and be part of their wider generation. At the same time Charles, because of the lessons learnt from his own childhood and no doubt with the background support of Camilla, and with the support of his parents, has shown the ability not only to carry on from where his former wife was unable to continue, but to provide his sons with the experience of interests to enable then to fulfil their future roles as part of the changing monarchy and to be able to understand and represent all the interests which now make up the British Islands
The problem is while the Monarchy, the establishment, the elite, has always been able to adapt according to the carefully assessed needs of the Britannica PLC its established Church, its armed services and its people, the nature of Britain and the pace of change has become out of the control of the British Government and its trusted and well tried institutions, and worryingly, instead of concentrating on effective management based on proven experience, the response has been to follow the jump in generations started by Tony Blair and which has now spread to the Conservative and Liberal Democratic parties. Just at the point when Gordon Brown had several times shown that that he could effectively manage in a crisis, he threw away the initiative by considering calling for a General Election and then when the evidence of the polls suggested he could lose overall political control he led his forces back into the valley after having marched them to the top of the hill. He needs to follow the lead of the Queen and stand above the squabbling of the House of Commons and the thinking up of clever jibes which affect and influence no one except those in government, those wishing to be in government and those who make their living observing and commentating on government. The General Public expects role play but also expects the performer to believe in what they do and to treat their real audience with respect.
We have created a multi racial, multi religious and multi social society in terms of skin colours and ethnic origins with the burst of new Europeans having far greater impact than the West Indians of the 1950's, the Ugandan Asians, or those originally from the Indian sub continent. The influx has been too many and too quickly and the average Islander does not care if they are illegal, asylum seekers or with valid work or long stay visiting rights or permits. It has happened and we must all learn to live the situation and quickly adapt national and local governments and national and local institutions to meet the new situation in the wider context of Europe and the new nations who will dominate the world economy and political stage during the latter part of this century and into the next, China and India, and Russia if it can get its act together again. However this will not be the end of changing power structures because eventually other individuals nations in Africa, in South and central America and in central and other parts of Asia will see the wisdom of combining their resources and strengths into more effective collective trading and bargaining.
The greatest threat facing the UK is also potentially its potential saviour. This is the significant revival of religious faiths among younger people involving evangelical Protestantism, Catholicism and most visible among young Muslims . This may be the situation in British Judaism but I have not come across any evidence or attempted to find out the position today. Some forty years ago left wing politics and the CND movement was full of idealistic young Jews with an interest and commitment to both Israel and the future of the British Islands. Collaboration between such religions and all the others can only be of value to religious belief and practice in general and the establishment and common purpose of the community. Each of the religions has to demonstrate understanding and tolerance towards other religions and towards non believers. This is and should be outside the control of monarchy and government, other than to support and to intervene when invited or when the greater interests of all the people are clearly involved and are recognised and accepted by Parliament. I would like to see Prince Charles take an oath as defender of faiths and the rights of those without faith. This will mean the disestablishment of the Church of England.
We cannot begin to forecast the consequences of enlarging further education to its present and proposed scale but which together with the inexpensive travel within the UK and abroad has turned our cities and towns into playgrounds for the young where drugs, alcohol and casual sex has become the norm every weekend. The inviting of large number of overseas students to help pay for the expansions will also result in further changes in the composition our cities and towns, on the availability and cost of accommodation and on temporary and subsequent employment, and on inter marriages and the movement of young people across nations and continents.
As more young people continue into further education and do not immediately contribute to the economy and to taxation revenues, and as advances in medicine, in living conditions and individual means among elders continues to improve, the pressure on the economically active to contribute more and more in taxation, there is the risk that cry of no more could become revolutionary.
With already vast chunks of our land, buildings, institutions and businesses bought out by Muslims, Russians, the Chinese, Americans, and other nations together with global conglomerates, and the other changes mentioned, the concept of a meaningful Britishness is questioned, although there are historical geographical areas and distinct cultural identities, in Scotland, in Wales, in Northern and Southern Ireland, in the North East, In Yorkshire and so on.
The greatest challenge and threat to the British Islands is our increasing dependence on imported food, on the importation of manufactured goods or the raw materials from which to manufacture goods, and on the depletion of our own natural sources of energy and increasing reliance of those imported and supplied by others. This adds up to increasingly not being masters of our future. This is all happening now.
Moreover it also evident that the effects of the misuse of natural and manufactured resources is already having impact on climate and the natural environment and is beyond our separate ability to change without collective action on a global scale by government and by every individual. The implication is the confidence and trust of people in government and its head of state (s) has an increasing significant and which requires priority attention.
My conclusion is that faced with these changes and priorities the future of the monarchy as a head of state, in whatever form is considered appropriate is an issue to be looked at in practical terms. Britannia PLC has developed a number of important selling features, including economic and political stability, its openness to those who wish to contribute, its history, its ability to put on a good show ranging from Live Aid to the Concert for Diana, to changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace, to Royal Receptions and visits and even to fireworks displays to mark the end of a year. A feature of the British good show is that it has quality and style and quality and style costs. In this respect does anyone seriously challenge the value for money given by Queen Elizabeth and her husband decade upon decade?
Realistically what happens when Queen Elizabeth dies should be established now and any change should be agreed, prepared for and implemented subject to review depending on the elapse of time and circumstance. If as appeared to be possible ten years ago the UK nations suddenly decided to go for a universally elected head of state or one selected from an agreed short list by the Privy Council, who would have been considered for the job and put for up for the position? Who would be the candidates if something happened again tomorrow? John Major, Michael Howard, Ian Duncan Smith, Tony Blair, Neil Kinnock David Owen, David Steel come first to mind? What about Vince Cable, Charles Kennedy or Ming Campbell? My personal choice would be Michael Heseltine, for no other reason that I once sent him an essay about my views after spending a month at the Henley management college in the 1980's which he liked and arranged to be circulated throughout Whitehall. Then of course there is Ken Livingstone or Boris Johnston! Note these are all men so what about Mrs Blair? Or even the winner of a public voting competition between the winners of the X factor, Britain's Got Talent, Strictly Come Dancing or Your fired I am Alan Sugar? Is this what we really really want?
Given the continuing good physical and mental health of Queen Elizabeth I am not likely to see if Charles and Camilla make it and what they then do, or if there will be a fashionable generation jump similar to that within our main political parties which commenced when Tony Blair first became Labour Leader, together with the most recent news that a 19 year old Oxford University student is being groomed to take office in Pakistan following the assassination of his mother, or if faced with requirements of the new world order, there will be a radical modernisation our institutions of government, the House of Lords, the jousting of Prime Minister's Queen Time, and having a heredity chairperson of the Board.
I thought the order of the Channel 4's E 4 programming inspired, commencing with the creation of the House of Windsor, the marriage of Elizabeth to her royal second cousin once removed and equally third cousin according to branches of the background, the campaign for Camilla to be Queen and the events which have forced Queen Elizabeth during her reign to change from her beliefs about her duty to her god, her position as head of states and to the people of the Commonwealth. The research establishing the factual basis on which these programmes were created has been undertaken by others but individually and collectively, and viewed with the additional information from BBC series on the Queen and her family at work, it appeared to me to create a comprehensive reality which all neutrals will accept, and which I also suspect only the most blinkered of monarchists and anti monarchists will reject.
My daily work is about the impossibility of making a judgement about one life, my own, without having all the information which has governed my thinking and my actions together the information regarding the thinking and actions of all those who interacted with me at the key moments when I could have thought and acted differently and that even if such information was to be available it is impossible to recapture from memory the personal feelings and factors which governed moments and the choices over a long period of time
What these programmes about the monarchy attempted is to try and separate the concept of an heredity head of state from the individuals who carry out the role and then examine how events outside of their control affected the official performance of the role and their personal life, and how events within the personal life affected the official roles.
To do justice to the programmes and to the Queen, it is also essential to separate her experience and position from the rest of the royal family, and in this respect I thought the programme which singled out ten events during her life presented the clearest picture, but which was also significantly enhanced by information from the three other programmes.
The main issue is the concept of an heredity head of state and which falls apart if there is a voluntary abdication, which is how Elizabeth became Queen, through the decision of her uncle to give up the throne for an experienced but miscalculating woman who was a divorcee. The British Aristocracy has always accepted outsiders, whether through legal marriages or from liaisons, and whether these were secret or open, as long as the individuals directly involved are prepared to fit into the accepted culture of the day and then adapt with everyone to changes required for the continuing survival of the order. There would have been no constitutional crisis if the King and Mrs Simpson had accepted that she could be no more that his mistress. and that it would be necessary for him to marry a virgin of British Aristocracy who would produce one, or better still two, children preferably, sons to preserve an essentially British Monarchy that had already officially dropped its German links in 1917 as a consequence of World War I. It has now become evident that Charles was forced to give up hope of marrying was has been the love of his life because it was known that although single, Camilla was not a virgin.
Elizabeth, and her father, had no preparation for becoming the head of state, and the root of the problem which caused the abdication, affected the future welfare of her sister, Margaret, and that of Charles has been and remains the fact that the British Monarch is defender of the faith, and official position of the church in relation to sex before marriage, adultery and divorce together with the requirement since 1917 that the partner of the monarch should be also of Royal Blood, preferably of a British House, which together with being a virgin would guarantee that succession would not be challenged on the grounds of right.
It was also not long into her reign that Queen Elizabeth was required to tell her younger sister that she could not marry the man of her choice because he was divorced. I wonder how much the Queen took this action out of conviction or from her sense of duty as a constitutional monarch who had taken vows which she is reputed to have strongly believed in at her Coronation. I raise this question because the programmes presented the case that it was the single minded wish of Elizabeth to marry her future husband which commenced with a teenage crush at the age of thirteen years, and which had swayed the reservations of parents, the court, and the government into accepting Prince Phillip of Greece and Denmark, and with the surname of Battenberg, despite the anti German feeling immediately after World War II, and because of the changes which had been made to divest the formal German ancestry to create the artificial House and surname of Windsor in 1917. The programmes also emphasised the role of Lord Mountbatten of Burma, the uncle of Prince Philip in pushing the marriage in order to further his own, and the position of the Mountbatten family, with the understandable expectation that in accordance with custom the bride would take the surname and the family House of her husband, as do ninety nine percent of those who marry in the British Islands today. At best there is a compromise with joint surnames and it is significant that Phillip and his uncle were reported to have been furious when such a compromise was also rejected and the Queen on advice insisted that she and their children would continue to have the surname Windsor as well as being known as part of the House of Windsor.
The constitutional basis was the 1917 Royal Proclamation that the family would abandon its paternal German ancestry and take the name of Windsor, the town in the county of Berkshire, dominated by the Royal Palace. By marriage Queen Victoria became part of the House of Wettin from Saxe-Cobourg and Gotha and the Queen's great grandfather and grandfather Edward VII and George V were both Kings of the House of Wettin, Saxe-Cobourg and Gotha. Following the death of her husband Queen Victoria had imprisoned herself in her Palace at Windsor, a Palace which Edward VII had radically transformed along with Buckingham Palace to his own liking, as well as reintroducing all the pomp and public spectacle of Royalty with the laying in State of his mother, his coronation and the State opening of Parliament
It is therefore not surprising that there was considerable resistance to Elizabeth marrying someone with a German family background, especially as his four sisters had all married German Princes, and who was also someone in line of succession to the Greek throne, a country torn between Communists and those who wanted to bring back the 1922 exiled monarchy, and who was also a man baptised in the Greek Orthodox Church, whose mother spent the greater part of her life in an asylum because of mental illness, and also someone regarded as a man's man who might not be expected to be faithful to her. The programme made the latter point and there has been media speculation in past times about this aspect of their relationship.
However I would suggest that the opposition was primarily concerned with the impact upon public opinion and the security of the heredity monarch given the election of republicans to Parliament and what seemed to be the revolutionary nature of the Atlee Labour government with the introduction of nationalization and the formal creation of the welfare state. However the insecurity which was wider and deeper was the fear of the landed British Aristocracy which had come to regarded itself as rulers of the Empire and superior to its mainland European branches.
Queen Elizabeth and her husband are in fact of Danish family origin with both descended from Christian 9th of Demark and are therefore second cousins once removed. The Queen is descended via her father from Alexandra of Denmark and the Duke via his paternal grandfather who became George 1st of Greece when Denmark was needed to provide the next monarch in that country. Thus it could be argued that they were more Scandinavian than German, and in fact apart from his first two years, Prince Phillip was brought up in Paris, Surrey and Scotland before becoming a distinguished officer in the British Royal Navy in which he served as did his uncle throughout World War II. The making of Prince Phillip as Duke of Edinburgh, a British Citizen also had its origins in 1917. Prince Phillipos of Greece and Denmark was a member of the Royal House Oldenburg, technically of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderberg-Glucksburg. The surname Mountbatten was a 1917 concoction to officially rid the German connection because the family surname was until then Battenberg.
The linking of the western European royal houses from Scandinavia to Greece is a complex matter but with the British link through Queen Victoria and her children, and where the Queen has stronger British links because of her mother's ancestry of Bowes Lyon. It is fact that Prince Phillip has become the oldest living great grandchild of Queen Victoria and her second oldest living descendent after Prince Carl Johan of Sweden. He and his family had to be rescued from the 1922 Greek revolution by a British gunboat, something which his uncle would have fully supported having attended the Court of the Russian Tsar as a young man and fallen in love with the younger sister of Anastasia, the Grand Duchess Maria who perished with the rest of her family and where it is said Mountbatten kept her photograph at his bedside through his marriage and until his untimely death, blown up by the IRA with members of his immediate family while boating.
The willingness of Phillip to give up his claim to the Greek throne, to become a naturalized citizen of his adopted country and to convert from Greek Orthodoxy to the Church of England might have been sufficient to become acceptable had it not been for suspicions about the motives and the integrity of his uncle who was regarded as a brilliant and courageous man, but also an adventurer, that is the kind of man who created the Empire from the time of Elizabeth 1st until appointed by her father as the last Viceroy of India and which led to the creation of the present nations of India and Pakistan, divided primarily according to religion.
Doubts about the extent of the ambition of Lord Mountbatten came to the fore during the Labour Government of Harold Wilson when it was said he was approached and attended a meeting with named individuals including the media Baron Cecil King to consider a coup to replace Wilson by himself. The allegations about Harold's Wilson's pro Russia position and the suddenness of his subsequent resignation when in office, and with a good majority, has fuelled speculation about this situation, but speculation it remains because inquiries have produced no evidence.
But suck talk appears less fanciful with the decision to reject Rab Butler as Prime Minister although there is no evidence that Mountbatten was directly involved as it appears the Queen relied entirely on the advice of her constitutional Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Fearing that his life was ending Macmillan decided to resign as Prime Minister and from Parliament but did not went Butler to succeed him and advised the Queen to risk a constitutional crisis by using her Royal Prerogative to invite the unelected Member of the House of Lords, the landed aristocrat, Alexander Fredericke Douglas-Home, the 14th Earl Home 1951-1963, Baron Home of Hirsel 1903-1995 and Lord Hume of Berwick to form a new Government. Lord Home was the last individual to become Prime Minister when a member of the House of Lords and the first to resign his peerage, which required a special act of Parliament, then to successfully contest a carefully chosen seat in the Commons in order to meet the political requirements of the day, but who reverted to being a Lord upon his loss of office and where his son then became the 15th Lord Home after his death. The experience is said to have made the Queen hesitant to use the Royal Prerogative subsequently
There is no evidence that Queen Elizabeth was a knowing party, or were the majority of the Cabinet to the Sir Anthony Eden conspiracy, based on a French Government plan for Israel to go to war with Egypt, after Egypt announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal which controlled the passage of 80% of the World's oil, and for Britain and France to then intervene to restore peace. This decision placed the Queen in the most difficult position because she is not only the Commander and Chief, but every member of the armed services swears an oath of allegiance and obedience to her, and through her to her commissioned officers and other senor ranks in hierarchical precedence. The programmes report that Lord Mountbatten was strongly opposed to the Suez action and made his views known.
The decision of the United States of America not to support the intervention and the United Nations to condemn the venture, together with widespread opposition on the part of the British public, led to British French withdrawal and the realization of the Queen led aristocracy that Britain's role in the world was irreversibly changed. Changes which had commenced with the reluctant giving up of colonial power, the restricted role of the Queen as head of the Commonwealth and then what would have appeared as the most significant change in sovereignty, the decisions of Conservative Ted Health to join the European Economic Community and then Conservative Margaret Thatcher to agree to the Maastricht Treaty.
As previously mentioned one of the strengths of the British ruling class in terms of wealth, land, power and influence, within and outside of government, national and local, has been its adaptability and presentational skill in appearing to be one thing while doing the other, The problem has been the growing education and power of the middle classes who tend to believe in and attempt to practice the morality and religions they profess. No such problem exists with the lower working class and the underworld who are willing to accept bread and circuses as long as they are free to provide for themselves and their family by smuggling, cut price stolen goods and exploit the state welfare system while making merry to day and every day by whatever means they can.
The Monarchy faced with the loss of all power and with its continuation in question came to rely on three developments. The first which Queen Elizabeth would have wholehearted supported was the role of the Royal family as the bastion of Christian marriage. In this respect there was a problem in that Prince Phillip did not have the background of being a loved child in loving parental home with his parents separated and brought up by nannies, residential schools and an ambitious hard working uncle. The young Queen was also required to undertake duties at home and abroad, which in those days meant being away from her children for months at a time.
I can only speculate on the connection between having absent parents in their early childhood and being sent away to school in relation to the failed first marriages of Princess Anne, Charles and Andrew. All three sons were sent to Gordonstoun as were the two children of Princess Anne
Those of us who have experienced the loneliness of childhood in the midst of large extended families and with devoted and caring parents understand the life long consequence in relation to our self confidence and ability to function in the normal cut and thrust of society. Most parents have to learn the role of parenting whatever from their own experience as members of a family, or from trial and error and instinct, and the importance of grandparents and other adults cannot be underestimated although this can be unhelpful as well as helpful if there is conflict about the role and approach. It is unsurprising therefore that Prince Charles should turn to his supportive uncle and then to the more worldly experienced, self confident, loving Camilla who clearly understood what Charles needed in terms of support.
This is the context in which the Mountbatten family, father and uncle appear to have played a role in persuading Charles that he needed to marry a virgin of British aristocratic breeding to produce one or preferably more heirs to the throne, which led to the selection of Diana, and who is also said to have also had the support of the Queen Mother and of Camilla. Given this level of stated family support how did the gulf between expectation and reality appear to have so quickly developed? Or that Diana would fail to understand her constitutional public role to support the future King or that she would indulge in a series of inappropriate relationships, during and after the formal break up of the marriage without apparent regard to the impact on her children, or on the monarchy? I have no basis for suggesting an explanation other than from the work of others. She was from a broken home, in desperate need of constant love and attention and apparently no member of her own family, or friend, or from the House of Windsor, was able or willing to explain in advance what her precise role and relationship with the Prince was likely to be.
The evident failure of the relationship and the incompatibility of interest must have been devastating to both and it would be inhuman if they and been able to sustain the situation without turning to others for affection. It is at this point that differences in coping between the couple became apparent for the world to see. Diana cast off all restraint and became the outward loving, caring spontaneous personality for which she is now remembered. She successfully portrayed herself as the victim, turning the general public away from Charles and from Royalty, especially a brother and sister also divorced and the image required by the established Churches of England and Scotland crashed during the course of one year.
The Monarchy has developed two other functions. The first can be regarded as cement which binds the middle classes and a selection of others to supporting the retention of the heredity monarch. This is the system of honours given to the services, armed, public and voluntary and to those who distinguish themselves in some way on behalf of their country and the communities, however local. Together with the recognition given to those who live until 100 and those whose marriages survives six decades, together with invitations to garden parties and receptions. Play the game, be part of the system and society and you will be shown recognition in some way during your lifetime. Moreover you do not have to lead a life beyond reproach to be allowed to join the club and to have been a sex crazed drug taking alcoholic is no obstacle as long as the behaviour is in the past and you demonstrate the ability to function in an ongoing more responsible way. The problem is that apart from nominations in relation to the Royal staff, the initial control of allocations has been within the control of the ruling Prime Minister, although steps have been taken to modernise and make the system more neutral and responsive to public interests, rather than in the interests of the public, government and the monarchy.
The recent BBC series should leave no one in any doubt of the extent to which the Queen, her husband, her children and other relatives have and continue to make themselves available to authorities, organisations and to business interests as well as social and cultural, on a vast scale and on a daily basis year in and year out. Yet despite such efforts it is also fact, following the death of Diana, that the British Islands was on verge of republicanism. Once again I suggest that the contrast between how Diana performed this role and the rest of the Royal family had become all too evident. The problem, and it may be a problem which will disappear in time, is that too often the Queen and her family are viewed as engaged in role play, role play at which they are exceptionally good at, but where there are indications that the role is manufactured and does not reflect their true feelings or nature, whereas the criticism of Diana is that sometime after her marriage ended she decided to give way to her feelings and inclinations and be herself regardless of what anyone and everyone thought. Prince Charles has the additional problem that he went on public record that he believes in an elite without making it clear if this is a meritocracy or aristocracy, and then he was also caught out showing his true nature and feelings during the Camillagate tapes and through his contempt for individuals within the media. There is also circumstantial evidence that his public relations manager adopted the strategy of encouraging media stories which put other members of the Royal family in a poor light to bring his situation and that of Camilla into better perspective and public understanding. Again one of the programme stated this without producing evidence.
The dramatic death of Diana and the normal reaction of the Queen as a parent and grand parent to retreat from public life and concentrate on the welfare of her grand children, in a situation of a popular new Labour Government and a Prime Minister able to express their feelings brought the Monarchy to the precipice. The decision to fly the flag at half mast, to stop and view the flowers and talk to those present, to come out onto the pavement for the passing of the cortege and to talk to the Commonwealth beforehand, was sufficient to begin the process of healing the rift between the Queen and her people, although it was quickly evident that the rift was not with the Queen as a person but with the institution, its costs and the failure to pay taxes like the majority, except for most rich. This also became an issue when the government of the day immediately offered the use of public funds for the rebuilding of Windsor Castle when sections were destroyed through fire. The rift was therefore more serious because it went to the heart of what Queen Elizabeth believed in and had stood for, the role of the heredity monarch as the embodiment of the standards, needs and wishes of the people.
There was however one success out of the debacle of the marriage between Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, the combination of the parenting of their two sons. Diana provided he kind of mothering that circumstance appeared to have denied the Prince and his brothers and sisters, and one suspects many of those with privileged parents in terms of birth, wealth or office. It is the norm rather than the exception that the children pay the price in such situations and although cut short Diana appears to have provided her sons with the ability to understand and be part of their wider generation. At the same time Charles, because of the lessons learnt from his own childhood and no doubt with the background support of Camilla, and with the support of his parents, has shown the ability not only to carry on from where his former wife was unable to continue, but to provide his sons with the experience of interests to enable then to fulfil their future roles as part of the changing monarchy and to be able to understand and represent all the interests which now make up the British Islands
The problem is while the Monarchy, the establishment, the elite, has always been able to adapt according to the carefully assessed needs of the Britannica PLC its established Church, its armed services and its people, the nature of Britain and the pace of change has become out of the control of the British Government and its trusted and well tried institutions, and worryingly, instead of concentrating on effective management based on proven experience, the response has been to follow the jump in generations started by Tony Blair and which has now spread to the Conservative and Liberal Democratic parties. Just at the point when Gordon Brown had several times shown that that he could effectively manage in a crisis, he threw away the initiative by considering calling for a General Election and then when the evidence of the polls suggested he could lose overall political control he led his forces back into the valley after having marched them to the top of the hill. He needs to follow the lead of the Queen and stand above the squabbling of the House of Commons and the thinking up of clever jibes which affect and influence no one except those in government, those wishing to be in government and those who make their living observing and commentating on government. The General Public expects role play but also expects the performer to believe in what they do and to treat their real audience with respect.
We have created a multi racial, multi religious and multi social society in terms of skin colours and ethnic origins with the burst of new Europeans having far greater impact than the West Indians of the 1950's, the Ugandan Asians, or those originally from the Indian sub continent. The influx has been too many and too quickly and the average Islander does not care if they are illegal, asylum seekers or with valid work or long stay visiting rights or permits. It has happened and we must all learn to live the situation and quickly adapt national and local governments and national and local institutions to meet the new situation in the wider context of Europe and the new nations who will dominate the world economy and political stage during the latter part of this century and into the next, China and India, and Russia if it can get its act together again. However this will not be the end of changing power structures because eventually other individuals nations in Africa, in South and central America and in central and other parts of Asia will see the wisdom of combining their resources and strengths into more effective collective trading and bargaining.
The greatest threat facing the UK is also potentially its potential saviour. This is the significant revival of religious faiths among younger people involving evangelical Protestantism, Catholicism and most visible among young Muslims . This may be the situation in British Judaism but I have not come across any evidence or attempted to find out the position today. Some forty years ago left wing politics and the CND movement was full of idealistic young Jews with an interest and commitment to both Israel and the future of the British Islands. Collaboration between such religions and all the others can only be of value to religious belief and practice in general and the establishment and common purpose of the community. Each of the religions has to demonstrate understanding and tolerance towards other religions and towards non believers. This is and should be outside the control of monarchy and government, other than to support and to intervene when invited or when the greater interests of all the people are clearly involved and are recognised and accepted by Parliament. I would like to see Prince Charles take an oath as defender of faiths and the rights of those without faith. This will mean the disestablishment of the Church of England.
We cannot begin to forecast the consequences of enlarging further education to its present and proposed scale but which together with the inexpensive travel within the UK and abroad has turned our cities and towns into playgrounds for the young where drugs, alcohol and casual sex has become the norm every weekend. The inviting of large number of overseas students to help pay for the expansions will also result in further changes in the composition our cities and towns, on the availability and cost of accommodation and on temporary and subsequent employment, and on inter marriages and the movement of young people across nations and continents.
As more young people continue into further education and do not immediately contribute to the economy and to taxation revenues, and as advances in medicine, in living conditions and individual means among elders continues to improve, the pressure on the economically active to contribute more and more in taxation, there is the risk that cry of no more could become revolutionary.
With already vast chunks of our land, buildings, institutions and businesses bought out by Muslims, Russians, the Chinese, Americans, and other nations together with global conglomerates, and the other changes mentioned, the concept of a meaningful Britishness is questioned, although there are historical geographical areas and distinct cultural identities, in Scotland, in Wales, in Northern and Southern Ireland, in the North East, In Yorkshire and so on.
The greatest challenge and threat to the British Islands is our increasing dependence on imported food, on the importation of manufactured goods or the raw materials from which to manufacture goods, and on the depletion of our own natural sources of energy and increasing reliance of those imported and supplied by others. This adds up to increasingly not being masters of our future. This is all happening now.
Moreover it also evident that the effects of the misuse of natural and manufactured resources is already having impact on climate and the natural environment and is beyond our separate ability to change without collective action on a global scale by government and by every individual. The implication is the confidence and trust of people in government and its head of state (s) has an increasing significant and which requires priority attention.
My conclusion is that faced with these changes and priorities the future of the monarchy as a head of state, in whatever form is considered appropriate is an issue to be looked at in practical terms. Britannia PLC has developed a number of important selling features, including economic and political stability, its openness to those who wish to contribute, its history, its ability to put on a good show ranging from Live Aid to the Concert for Diana, to changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace, to Royal Receptions and visits and even to fireworks displays to mark the end of a year. A feature of the British good show is that it has quality and style and quality and style costs. In this respect does anyone seriously challenge the value for money given by Queen Elizabeth and her husband decade upon decade?
Realistically what happens when Queen Elizabeth dies should be established now and any change should be agreed, prepared for and implemented subject to review depending on the elapse of time and circumstance. If as appeared to be possible ten years ago the UK nations suddenly decided to go for a universally elected head of state or one selected from an agreed short list by the Privy Council, who would have been considered for the job and put for up for the position? Who would be the candidates if something happened again tomorrow? John Major, Michael Howard, Ian Duncan Smith, Tony Blair, Neil Kinnock David Owen, David Steel come first to mind? What about Vince Cable, Charles Kennedy or Ming Campbell? My personal choice would be Michael Heseltine, for no other reason that I once sent him an essay about my views after spending a month at the Henley management college in the 1980's which he liked and arranged to be circulated throughout Whitehall. Then of course there is Ken Livingstone or Boris Johnston! Note these are all men so what about Mrs Blair? Or even the winner of a public voting competition between the winners of the X factor, Britain's Got Talent, Strictly Come Dancing or Your fired I am Alan Sugar? Is this what we really really want?
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