Her Majesty (56 page)

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In some countries, the organisers prefer to give the award a different name. In Ireland, for example, it is known as Gaisce, or the President’s Award. The Duke’s not bothered, as long as it works.

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To this day, the Duke reveres his father’s memory and recently had Prince Andrew’s medals mounted in a special display case at Buckingham Palace. As the Duke has pointed out, his father’s role in his life is often overlooked. ‘One impression that needs to be corrected,’ he once said, ‘is that I was brought up by Lord Mountbatten. I don’t think anybody thinks I had a father. I grew up very much more with my father’s family than I did with my mother’s.’

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The Duke, instead, became Colonel of the Welsh Guards, informing them that they were ‘the only regiment in which the Colonel is legally married to the Colonel-in-Chief. He stepped down in 1975 to make way for the Prince of Wales.

9

Heads and Tails

‘
No monarchy is ever looking for a legacy
.’

Some things haven’t changed inside these three-hundred-year-old walls. Marlborough House still retains much of the grandeur of the royal residence which it was until the death of Queen Mary – the chandeliers, the grand staircase, many of the royal portraits. Wander round the enormous garden backing on to the Mall and you will find the graves of Queen Alexandra’s dogs and the final resting place of her pet rabbit, Benny.

It is hardly surprising that the Queen feels entirely at home inside the world headquarters of the Commonwealth, even if her grandmother’s old bedroom – the room in which Queen Mary died – is now the SecretaryGeneral’s office. The Duke of Marlborough’s victories still decorate the walls of the Blenheim Saloon, the main entrance hall. But no one is looking at the art in the Blenheim Saloon tonight. Everyone is watching a band of half-naked Rwandan drummers wearing huge straw wigs and thumping out traditional tunes.

Rwanda has officially joined the Commonwealth today and President Paul Kagame has come to the Commonwealth headquarters to meet the Queen. He explains that these drummers were performing in the Marlborough House garden when the Rwandan flag was hoisted aloft earlier. ‘Not dressed like that?’ replies the Queen, shivering at the thought. It has been freezing all day. ‘Yes, just like that!’ replies the gangly, softly spoken Kagame proudly. Prince Philip attempts conversation with the drummers. ‘Is this your own hair?’ he asks, pointing to the straw wigs. Blank looks. He tries again. ‘Can you vary the note?’ he asks, pointing at the drum. More blank looks. It is not surprising. Until recently, Rwanda’s language of government was French, because it spent most of the twentieth century as a Belgian colony. Following genocidal civil war in the nineties, it is rebuilding itself with a new English-speaking identity. Joining the British Commonwealth is a crucial part of the process. The Queen is delighted to welcome Rwanda aboard. It is a sign that her Commonwealth still
has a purpose and an appeal. ‘Good luck,’ she tells Kagame, shaking his hand. Now that his nation is in ‘The Club’, he will be seeing rather more of her in the future.

Today is Commonwealth Day 2010. Every year, on the second Monday in March, the Queen travels to Westminster Abbey for the most unorthodox event in the Abbey’s calendar. For a start, it is not a service. It is the ‘Commonwealth Day Observance’. Those officiating include representatives from the Muslim, Hindu and Baha’i communities. This year’s theme is science and the sermon is delivered by the fertility professor, Lord Winston. The Queen’s Commonwealth Day broadcast is screened. She talks about the power of technology to unite the Commonwealth but makes no mention of the Almighty. ‘You’d never get St Paul’s Cathedral allowing this,’ notes an admiring old hand from the Palace. ‘Some of the clergy were pretty horrified in the early days but the Queen wanted it. That’s why it happens.’ With no bishop to answer to, the Abbey is known as a ‘royal peculiar’. Its earthly boss is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith. And the Queen also happens to be Head of the Commonwealth. So if she wants
her
Commonwealth to hold its ‘observance’ in
her
Abbey, she can. In any case, Christianity is actually in third place in the Commonwealth rankings, outnumbered by both Islam and Hinduism. It would be rather rude to make this an entirely Christian do.

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.
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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 banquet 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.’