The Firm: The Troubled Life of the House of Windsor (37 page)

‘I think it is a complete misconception,’ the Duke of Edinburgh once said, ‘to imagine that the monarchy exists in the interests of the monarch. It doesn’t. It exists in the interests of the people.’

And at the moment the polls show that between 70 and 80 per cent of the British people are very pleased that it does; furthermore, that they expect the monarchy to last at least another fifty years. Of the remainder, some couldn’t care one way or another and the rest want to see the Queen and her family pack their bags and install some suitable democratically elected president in her place. Doing that would involve unravelling hundreds of years of history – the monarchy is woven into every strand of our national life. Not impossible – although deeply divisive, given that between 70 and 80 per cent of the population would be against it. But even if 100 per cent of the British public was in favour of abolishing the monarchy, there would never be unanimous agreement on a replacement. Whether selected or elected, the position would be politicized and would split the country as violently as the election of a government does. And once installed, could any figure plucked from politics, business, academia, showbiz or even football be an improvement? Could they command the
respect worldwide that the monarch does? Would they be as effective? Would they have the long-term interests of the country at heart or would they look no further than their own term of office or the next election to fight?

Tony Benn, the former Old Labour minister and life-long republican who renounced his hereditary peerage in 1963, believes that our entire system of government is dangerously undemocratic and would like to dismantle everything, including the honours system: ‘It takes forty-three million electors to elect 651 MPs, but took only ten Prime Ministers, from Attlee to Major, to make 840 peers – and introduce a written constitution.’ In his book
Common Sense
, published in 1993, he puts forward a compelling argument that ‘the mythology and magic surrounding the Crown and the Royal Family have always been used … to veil a whole range of undemocratic powers protected by the concept of “royal prerogatives” …’

Certain executive powers are always vested in the Head of State, as such powers normally derive either from the written constitution of a country or from a statute passed by Parliament.

Not so the British Crown, which can in law dissolve Parliament, ask an individual to form a government, declare war, sign treaties, make ministers, create peers, appoint archbishops, bishops and judges, grant pardons or issue commissions without consulting Parliament at all. All but the first two powers are actually exercised by and with the advice of the Prime Minister, and, in theory any Prime Minister could be brought down in the Commons if the powers were grossly abused. One important prerogative is the right to go to war without consulting Parliament. The House of Commons has no legal right to be consulted. The
Falklands and Gulf wars were never put to the vote for decision.

Writing in the
Guardian
last November, Benn described his Utopia:

Britain is gravely handicapped by this medieval system of government which gives us a president without any checks and balances, and keeps the serfs firmly in their place. Any serious democratic reform of our constitution would give an elected parliament control of all executive powers, firmly cap the fount of honour, and arrange for the election of a small senate to act as a revising chamber, whose speaker could occasionally act as head of state for ceremonial purposes.

This would have the advantage of liberating the Royal Family, leaving them free, as citizens, to live their own lives, say what they like, and take part in elections like the rest of us. They could then safely vote for King Tony and his neoconservative courtiers, at No. 10, knowing that New Labour could be trusted to preserve privilege in Britain.

It is the prospect of King – or more probably President – Tony, or President Thatcher or Hattersley, that sends shudders down many a spine and makes many people who might intellectually think the monarchy has had its day opt for maintaining the
status quo.
And for many of the people who want the Windsors booted out of Buckingham Palace it is a straightforward question of class and envy. The constitution is a red herring, just as cruelty to the fox was a red herring in the hunting debate. The opulence and the privilege is what sticks in the craw, particularly when members of the Family Firm are seen
to abuse it. That and the belief that we pay huge amounts of money for them to enjoy a life of luxury, while we in our humdrum lives struggle. In the year to June 2004 the Head of State cost £36.8 million – effectively paid for, not by us, but out of revenue from the Crown Estates that were surrendered in exchange for the Civil List. It amounts to 61p per person per year, or less than the price of two pints of milk. And in comparison with other institutions funded by the taxpayer, the monarchy is a positive bargain.

The difficulty is that no matter how often you do the sums, make the comparisons or even cut the cost, the impression lodged in the national psyche is that the House of Windsor is a bastion of privilege. Its incumbents are seen – even by monarchists, who admire the job they do – as people who have next to nothing in common with the majority of their fellow countrymen. Prince Andrew, an unlikely role model, is far closer to ordinary people with his passion for golf than any other member of the family. Golf is a good egalitarian sport, enjoyed by millions all over the world, and he raises a lot of money for charity while he’s playing it. Hunting, shooting, polo and carriage driving are not. They are sports traditionally associated with the landed aristocracy and alien to great swathes of the population. Prince Edward plays real tennis, which he took up at Cambridge, a great game but not a populist one; there are only a handful of courts in the land. As John Major says, ‘The most important thing for the monarchy is that they aren’t seen to be curious creatures drafted in from Planet Windsor that have nothing in common with and no relevance to the way most people live their lives.’

‘One of the most difficult things is the fact that for historical and all sorts of reasons, the monarchy has been identified, and still is, with the aristocracy and the equivalent, the upper classes now,’ says a senior Anglican.

I think it was a great pity that people like Charles and William hunted because there was a huge popular desire that that should be ended and it wasn’t whether it was right or wrong, it was that they were identified immediately with a continuation of large houses, lots of servants, mixing with certain sorts of people. I know that day by day they meet all kinds of people but for choice, when they are on their own, inevitably they meet with their friends who are of a certain kind, as are the courtiers and the officers of state. That somehow has got to change. Charles had a fairly normal education, and William has had Eton but also St Andrews which should have enabled him to make lots of friends of a more general type. This constant kind of identity with just that particular class is not going to work any longer because Britain has changed. The trouble is you can’t overnight de-friend your friends and make changes. So maybe it will be William. They are aware of the need to make changes, I know, but I don’t know how aware of that side of it they are. I would expect most Palace officials are quite far on the right politically and that inevitably has an impact on how you view things. £4.5 million spent on Clarence House improvements? I don’t think anyone is telling him. It’s a pretty ritzy life even for the Queen; but how do you do this other than by bringing in trustworthy, radical new thinkers? And who do you trust? That’s the difficult thing about the monarchy.

The Queen is in her late seventies and she is a product of her generation. She has a number of close friends who have been friends for years and are people she met either when she was growing up or who are related in some way or who she has got to know through horseracing. They are aristocratic, titled, and moneyed – some are ladies-in-waiting, and their young
teenage sons serve as pages of honour, carrying the Queen’s train on ceremonial occasions. Having been educated by governesses and never having had the opportunity to meet people outside her social circle, it is hardly surprising.

Prince Charles, however, went to boarding schools and university and was in the Navy; in theory he could have acquired a wider circle of friends but he didn’t. His closest friends tend to share his love of country sports and see life from a privileged perspective. There’s no reason why the Prince shouldn’t mix with the people he enjoys being with but there is a danger that too many with both double-barrelled names and shotguns give him a limited view of life and a false sense of security. Past advisers have found they were in competition with his friends; his private secretaries would advise one course of action, friends would talk him out of it, either telling him what he wanted to hear or pushing their own agendas. His decision to carry on hunting, for example, and to let his sons continue to hunt during the run-up to the controversial Bill last autumn, was a massive coup for the pro-hunting lobby but in PR terms a mistake. It placed him fairly and squarely in one camp and reinforced the impression of a Prince who lives in a different world from the majority of his future subjects. The facts about hunting were irrelevant; it had become a Them and Us situation, and by siding with Them he alienated Us.

The hope is that Prince William, whose exposure to real life has been far greater and, with luck, will continue for longer than his father’s did, will make his friends from a wider constituency and not fall back on the rich, privileged and rather unimaginative hunting and polo-playing Gloucestershire set of his youth. It will be on his style that the long-term future of the monarchy will rest, and the way he lives and behaves and the people with whom he surrounds himself which will be all important.

When the HIV/AIDS epidemic hit London in the eighties, Michael Mayne, then Dean of Westminster Abbey, did a great deal of fundraising for the AIDS charities. In addition, three or four times a year he invited up to sixty people, many of whom had full-blown AIDS, to a buffet supper in a room adjoining the Abbey. Afterwards they would sit down informally and say a few words about themselves before going on a night tour of the Abbey, ending up with a prayer and a blessing in one of the little chapels. The year before she died, he wrote to Diana, Princess of Wales, and invited her to join them. She said she would love to but asked for it to be kept quiet. She arrived half an hour after everyone else when they were in the midst of supper. ‘I met her in the Deanery,’ he remembers, ‘and took her through.’

They had no idea she was coming and I shall never forget their faces when they saw her, nor will I forget the way she was with them. She knew – she had a marvellous intuition – exactly what to say, who to hug, whose hand to hold, who to sit with, she was quite remarkable, then we had the circle, then she came with us on the tour and the prayers; and they were on a high when they left that night. It was a remarkable gift to be able to do this. I know she did some very silly things but she was in an impossible position, and I didn’t like some of the effects of what happened after her death, I felt it was a bit odd, unhealthy, but one could understand it. Here was someone from the monarchy who was relating to people in a new way, and in doing that she had transformed people’s expectations of the monarchy but she also made it much more difficult for the monarchy to fulfil them.

I think with care, and if the media don’t destroy him, William could combine the best of both approaches. He is
likely to be impatient with some of the court ritual – for example how you behave in the royal presence. Those who go and see the Queen are instructed to walk six paces in and bow; and on leaving to walk back for six paces and bow again. There are other ways of showing respect for a person – by how you treat them. So that will go I imagine, but he will respect the tradition and bring a real humanity to his relating to people in a different age and in a different culture.

The Queen’s style of monarchy has been hugely successful, largely because of her personality, her total dedication, but also because she saw the need to modernize and to allow the institution to evolve. It will go further with the Prince of Wales; his style will be and should be markedly different – for a younger generation, a changed society. The difference will begin with his coronation, whenever it happens. There will be plenty of trumpets, a lot of gold, a lot of music, the coronation chair and crowds in the streets, but there will be Church and Faith leaders from every major tradition. The Queen is Supreme Governor of the Church of England, which automatically falls to the sovereign; but Charles expressed a desire many years ago to become Defender of Faith and unofficially a group has been discussing a coronation which could encompass both the new and the old. Part of it is certain to be in Westminster Abbey because of the history – coronations have been held there for the last nine hundred years and that is where the religious part of the ceremony would be held – but it is more than likely that afterwards there would be a multi-faith gathering in St Edward’s Hall in Parliament.

There is no doubt that to have a Head of State in the twenty-first century who is selected by an accident of birth is anachronistic and entirely out of keeping with modern society, but
we are not alone. There are no fewer than seven hereditary monarchies in Europe – Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands – all, with the possible exception of Denmark, much younger than our own, all more pared down, none with the Commonwealth or the history of Britain’s; but those with proportional representation, like Sweden – the bicycling monarchy – with more power. ‘It is noticeable that the countries in Europe in which monarchy has survived are amongst the most stable and the most prosperous in the world,’ says Vernon Bogdanor in his book
The Monarchy and the Constitution.
‘One cannot, of course, draw the conclusion that they are stable
because
they are monarchies. It is, rather, more likely that certain countries have retained their monarchies because, enjoying a stable and continuous evolution towards parliamentary democracy, they found no need to alter the form of the state.’