Assassination: The Royal Family's 1000-Year Curse (58 page)

showed that Bannigan had been sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment on a conviction for criminal libel. After three months in prison, his conviction was overturned on appeal. However, the Home Secretary rejected Bannigan’s claim for compensation, and he was incensed.

At his trial at the Old Bailey under the 1842 Treason Act, Bannigan told a new story. He claimed that he had been contacted by a foreign power (later revealed as Germany) and that a senior embassy official, a baron, wanted to promote a coup by English fascists. As part of the plot, Bannigan had been paid £150 to assassinate the King. Bannigan said that he had informed MI5 of the plot, and had proceeded with their knowledge so as to facilitate the arrest of the others involved, and without intending to kill the King.

Under cross-examination, Bannigan admitted that after his arrest he had told the police words to the effect that he wished he had done the job properly. The jury rejected Bannigan’s defence and found him guilty. He then asked the judge to give him the heaviest possible sentence so as to save his life. Surprisingly, Bannigan was sentenced to only 12 months’ hard labour, a light punishment in the circumstances, suggesting that either there may have been something to the defence or that the judge wanted to keep matters low-key and not create a martyr.

At the beginning of the Second World War, Bannigan was denounced as pro-Nazi. In 1940 he was again in trouble when (already having three convictions for fraud) he was found to be in possession of several important paintings, including a Gainsborough and a Romney. The police reluctantly accepted his explanation that he had been entrusted with the paintings so as to secure sales. Bannigan died in 1970.

Worse trouble awaited the new king: the consequence of his love for Mrs Simpson. On 16th November 1936, Prime Minister Baldwin was summoned to the Palace, and Edward announced that he intended to marry Mrs Simpson as soon as her divorce came through. The Prime Minister told Edward that the British people would find such a marriage unacceptable. In addition, Edward was Supreme Governor of the Church of England, which did not allow a divorced person to remarry while the former spouse was still alive – Wallis would have two of them. She was also believed to be having sexual relations with a duke and with a car salesman. Baldwin said that if the King married Mrs Simpson, the Government would resign. The Labour and Liberal leaders added that they would refuse to form a replacement government – it was after this that the ‘Leader of the Opposition’ became an official post carrying a state salary.

Baldwin warned the King that there would be a constitutional crisis, one that might threaten the very existence of the monarchy. Opposition also came from the dominions. The Prime Ministers of Australia, Canada and South Africa voiced their disapproval, as did the Irish leader who said Edward could not remain King of Ireland; but the New Zealand Prime Minister expressed no opinion, saying that he had never heard of Mrs Simpson. Edward’s response was to say that he did not care, and there were “not many people in Australia”.

For the British Government, no less objectionable was Edward’s meddling in foreign affairs, particularly his friendship with Germany. During his father’s reign, Edward had been in constant contact with the German ambassadors, Hoesch and then Ribbentrop, approving Germany’s remilitarisation of the Rhineland in breach of the Treaty of Versailles, which Hitler used to test the reaction of other countries to his territorial ambitions. Edward had even advised the Germans to proceed, and assured them that Britain would not fight. He was right – no country took any action.

Edward refused to halt his pro-German activities, and he would not budge on the question of his marriage. Wallis encouraged him to go on the radio and appeal to the British people, but Baldwin would not permit it. In the end, Edward told Baldwin that if he could not marry Mrs Simpson and remain king, he would abdicate. And that is what he did, just six weeks short of the 12-month time limit his father had predicted. Edward’s brother, Prince Albert, succeeded him as King George VI, and a law was passed excluding Edward’s issue from the succession.

Edward became HRH (His Royal Highness) the Duke of Windsor, and he married Wallis in France at the home of a prominent Nazi supporter; at 39 she was by seven years the oldest bride of an English/British king (the average age is 20). The wedding was on 3rd June 1937, George V’s birthday – Queen Mary believed it was a deliberate insult. Wallis became the Duchess of Windsor; but she would not be HRH, nor would any children. Edward and Wallis were furious at the denial of HRH for Wallis, and at King George who had banned members of the Royal Family from attending the wedding. The Windsors were also angered by the Government’s refusal to grant the Duke an annual payment from the Civil List. Instead, King George agreed to make annual payments out of his entitlement.

The Windsors moved to exile in France. Relations between the two brothers deteriorated when George had to buy Sandringham House and Balmoral Castle from the Duke (they were private properties, not passing with the Crown, and in his will George V had left them to Edward in the belief that he would be crowned king). Even after that, the Duke continued to demand more money from his brother. Friendship came to an end, George believing that Edward had misled him on his wealth and the moneys he had received as Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall. In the end, George refused to take the Duke’s calls, having warned him that if he ever returned to England uninvited, the annual payments would cease.

From then on, the Windsors never failed to show their dislike of Britain and the British. At the first opportunity, and against the Government’s wishes, the Windsors insisted on going to Germany to visit Hitler as his personal guests. It was said that the Duke favoured appeasement towards the growing menace, as did so many. Yet it was much more than appeasement, it was clearly friendship, admiration and support.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, the Duke was appointed Major-General and was attached to the British Military Mission in France. Nevertheless, the Windsors continued to socialise with Nazi supporters. Some people accused the Duke and Wallis of supplying the Nazis with secret information, but nothing was ever proved.

When the Germans invaded France, instead of returning to England with his regiment, the Duke took a car and drove with Wallis to Biarritz, then to the safety of Spain and then to Portugal. Before he left, the Duke asked the Germans to protect his properties in France by stationing soldiers outside them – and the Germans obligingly did so.

In Spain and Portugal, the Windsors continued to consort with Nazi sympathisers. The Duke actually gave an interview in which he forecast a German victory. He also advised all countries to accept ‘reorganisation of the order of society’ as the Germans had done. Incredibly, he told the German ambassador that continued heavy bombing would make England sue for peace. Prime Minister Churchill was furious.

Churchill wanted the Duke back in England. The Duke was willing to return, but he insisted on several conditions, the main one being that “my wife and myself must not risk finding ourselves once more regarded by the British public as in different status to other members of my family.” Churchill (who had been a leading supporter of the Duke during the abdication crisis) had no time for this sort of thing when the nation was fighting for survival. “Your Royal Highness has taken active military rank”, he replied, “and refusal to obey direct orders … would create a serious situation.” It seems he was quite prepared to court martial the Duke.

In response, the Duke sent a message indicating that he would settle for a short meeting at which he and the Duchess would be received by the King and Queen, and that notice of the meeting was to be published in the Court Circular. After speaking to King George, who wished to keep his brother out of England at all costs, Churchill decided that the best way to deal with the matter was to send the Duke to the Bahamas as Governor.

Edward accepted the appointment. Then it emerged that he wished to go to the Bahamas via New York. The Foreign Office suspected mischief by the Duchess, and objected. However, the Duke was adamant; they must spend some time in New York first. The Duchess was livid, and she was also angry that they were being forbidden from taking with them as servants two young men of military age.

Churchill was advised that he must treat the Duke as a petulant child, so he allowed him to take one of the servants, but New York was out of the question. The Duke agreed, provided he did not have to sail for a week. Churchill, who was at the time trying to run the war, gave way. Before the Duke sailed, Churchill warned him that, “Many sharp and unfriendly ears will be pricked up to catch any suggestion that your Royal Highness takes a view about the war, or about the Germans, or about Hitlerism, which is different from that adopted by the British nation and Parliament. … In particular, there will be danger of use being made of anything you say in the United States …”

After complaints from the ship owners, the Duke did not get his week-long delay. He left, complaining bitterly to Churchill about possessions he had to leave behind.

In the Bahamas (a group of islands separated from each other by shallow water and therefore called by the Spanish after Columbus landed there: the
Baja Mar
– the Shallow Sea), the Windsors continually moaned about living in a ‘third class colony’. In case there was any doubt about her feelings, the Duchess said of the British during the Blitz, “I can’t say I feel sorry for them”. As for the Duke, he did not hold back on his continued contempt for non-white people, saying of one official that “due to the peculiar mentality of this race, they seem unable to rise to prominence without losing their equilibrium”. The Duchess was more blunt, calling them “lazy, thriving niggers”.

Then the Duke gave an interview to an American journalist in which he described Hitler as a great man, adding that it would be a tragedy for the world if he were overthrown, and advising the US to mediate and not join the Allies. When the interview was published in Britain, Churchill wrote to the Duke cautioning him again and telling him that it “will certainly be interpreted as defeatist and pro-Nazi, and by implication approving of the isolationists’ aim to keep America out of the war”. This was at a time when Churchill believed that victory over Germany depended on America joining the war.

Many suspect that the Windsors were looking forward to the promised call from Hitler to return to London as king and queen once Britain had been conquered. As the Duke said, “After the war is over and Hitler has crushed the Americans, we’ll take over. The British don’t want me as king, but I’ll be back as their leader.” There were no doubts about the Windsors as far as the Americans were concerned. The FBI kept an eye on them, believing that the Duchess had been the mistress (which she denied) of fanatical Nazi Ribbentrop when he had been the German ambassador in London; and now that he was the German foreign minister, she was still in touch with him, passing on classified information obtained from the Duke.

It is alleged that MI5 later retrieved from Germany the correspondence between the Duke and Hitler so as to prevent its disclosure. As late as the mid-fifties, the Duke blamed the war on Anthony Eden for his treatement of Mussolini “and of course Roosevelt and the Jews”. Even in the sixties, when all the horrors of the war were known, the Duke said that he did not think that “Hitler was such a bad chap”.

Returning to Europe in 1945, the Windsors spent the rest of their lives in France, living tax-free in a house provided for them at nominal rent by the city of Paris and a country home next to their friends, the former British fascist leader Oswald Mosley and his wife. Queen Mary would not meet her daughter-inlaw, and other members of the Royal Family refused to receive her formally. However, the Duke did on rare occasions see his family, and in later years so did the Duchess. When George VI died, the Duke came to England for his brother’s funeral; the Duchess did not – she had already said on an earlier visit, “I hate this country; I shall hate it to my grave”.

The Duke died in 1972, aged 77. Wallis died fourteen years later, and the sales of her jewellery produced over £40 million. Both of them were buried at Windsor. They never had any children.

Amazingly, Edward had seen his great-grandmother as Queen, his grandfather as King, his father as King, himself as King, his brother as King and his niece as Queen. Yet his life was a life of contradictions. Hugely popular, he became hated; a king, he was never crowned
⁴⁷
; an admirer of the Germans, they nearly killed him; a supporter of the Nazis, but a Nazi supporter tried to assassinate him. Strangest of all, he was the man who was forced to give up the throne because he was head of a church that would not agree to the remarriage of a divorced person while the former spouse was still alive; yet that church was created as a result of Edward’s predecessor, Henry VIII, demanding that he should be allowed to remarry while his former spouse was still alive.

As for Wallis, her ruthless ambition endangered the monarchy; but in the long run, unintentionally, she probably did Britain and the monarchy a great favour. Underlined when Hitler’s deputy, Albert Speer, said of Edward, “His abdication was a severe loss for us.”

47 One of the three uncrowned monarchs: Jane Grey, Edward V and Edward VIII – some would add Harold Harefoot and Matilda, but Harthacanute (although overseas) and Stephen (although imprisoned) respectively remained king.