History > 2006 > UK > Monarchy

Queen sends special message

to troops praising their courage

Published: 24 December 2006
The Independent on Sunday
By Marie Woolf, Political Editor

The Queen has paid tribute to the "courage and loyalty" of the armed forces and spoken of the "great personal risk" that soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have faced during the past year.

In her Christmas message to the armed forces, the Queen spoke of the "difficult and dangerous circumstances" in which the military is operating and expressed admiration for the sacrifices they were making.

"Members of my own family have had the opportunity this year to visit you. They have been hugely impressed by the spirit in which you go about your business in the most difficult and dangerous circumstances," she said. "Your courage and loyalty are not lightly taken. It is a pledge which calls for sacrifice and devotion to duty. And I know that yours is a job which often calls for great personal risk."

She said that troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were making "an enormous contribution in helping to rebuild those countries". The Queen added that her thoughts were with the families and friends of service personnel who had lost their lives in action.

    Queen sends special message to troops praising their courage, IoS, 24.12.2006, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2099978.ece

3.15pm update

We are available to download

Friday December 22, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Mark Oliver and agencies

She is, perhaps, increasingly becoming a Queen for the digital age by embracing new technology in her royal duties.

We discovered last summer that the Queen had been bought a silver iPod mini and today it was announced that her Christmas speech this year will be available as a podcast.

For the first time, people will be able to download the traditional Christmas message on the monarchy's website, royal.gov.uk.

Subscribers to the royal podcast will automatically receive the Queen's message on Christmas Day at 3pm, just as its television broadcast begins.

There is also a "click and play" option on the royal website so you can watch the speech online and a full text version will also be posted there.

The Queen's grandfather, King George V, delivered the first royal Christmas broadcast live on radio more than 70 years ago, from Sandringham in 1932. Apparently he was initially unsure about using the relatively untried medium of the "wireless", but eventually agreed.

The Queen made her first Christmas broadcast in 1952 and the annual message was first televised in 1957.

It appears that this latest move by the royals to embrace new technology and connect with the iPod generation will also be reflected in one of the themes of this year's speech.

Buckingham Palace said part of the message will be about "what old and young have to offer each other". It will also consider "how all faiths highlight the need to nurture and guide young people, and to encourage respect for elderly people".

As ever, officials are keeping the full content of the message under wraps.

This year's speech, which will be broadcast throughout the Commonwealth, has been pre-recorded at Southwark cathedral in London. In preview footage, the Queen, wearing a spring green outfit, is shown chatting to schoolchildren as she helps them make a triptych collage of a nativity scene. "It should twinkle rather well shouldn't it ... especially when the lights are on it," the Queen says.

She has also recorded a separate radio message for the armed services and their families, which is also available on the royal website. The message will be played to troops both in the UK and on postings overseas early on the morning of Christmas Eve.

    We are available to download, G, 22.12.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/monarchy/story/0,,1977859,00.html

2pm update

Diana death a 'tragic accident'

Thursday December 14, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Staff and agencies

Claims that Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Fayed were murdered were unfounded, the official British police inquiry concluded today.

Setting out the results of his three-year, high-profile report into Diana's fatal car crash in Paris, Lord Stevens bluntly told reporters at a packed central London news conference: "This was a tragic accident."

The former Metropolitan police commissioner said he had found nothing to justify further inquiries with members of the royal family. He described the investigations as "wide ranging and thorough".

He also dismissed claims that Diana was pregnant when she died or that she was planning to marry Mr Fayed.

He added: "There was no conspiracy to murder any of the occupants of that car. We are certain that the Princess of Wales was not pregnant at the time of her death. She was not engaged and she was not about to get engaged.

"I am satisfied that no attempt has been made to hold back information. The allegations are unfounded."

Detectives examined the persistent conspiracy theories surrounding the car crash, including allegations that the princess and Mr Fayed were murdered.

Diana, 36, and her 42-year-old lover died when their Mercedes crashed in the French capital's Pont de l'Alma tunnel on August 31 1997. The car was being pursued by paparazzi photographers as it was driven from the Ritz hotel to Mr Fayed's flat.

A French investigation into the tragedy concluded that the couple's chauffeur, Henri Paul, who also died, lost control of the Mercedes because he was driving too fast while drunk.

However, conspiracy theorists claim the couple was murdered by the British establishment to cover up allegations that she was pregnant and the couple were due to announce their engagement.

Mr Fayed's father, Mohamed al Fayed, who believes Diana and his son were victims of a plot by Prince Philip and the British establishment, today dismissed the report as "shocking", even before it was published.

At the news conference, Lord Stevens said he had carried out "every reasonable line of inquiry" in order to evaluate whether there was "any evidence to support these extremely serious allegations" by Mr Fayed.

The Harrods owner and his legal team had also made allegations about the French investigation, claiming it was done in such a way as to prevent a proper examination of the accident, Lord Stevens said.

He said he had "personally examined" MI5 and MI6 records over a long period of time and the inquiry team had been in contact with US intelligence services, who had given their assurance that they had no relevant information that would alter the findings.

"We are confident that the allegations made are unfounded," Lord Stevens said.

Referring to theories that the princess was pregnant, he added: "Prince William has confirmed to me that his mother had not given him the slightest indication of such plans for the future."

He said Mr Paul had been drinking on the night of the crash and had an alcohol level of around 1.74 grams a litre at the time of the crash - about twice the British drink drive limit. DNA testing had confirmed that the blood samples establishing that Mr Paul had been drinking were genuine.

Lord Stevens said that had Diana, Mr Fayed and Mr Paul been wearing seatbelts, they might not have died. The bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, who was seriously injured, was also not wearing a seatbelt.

Some 300 witnesses, including the Duke of Edinburgh, were interviewed during the inquiry. Two new eyewitnesses had been found and their evidence "further informed our assessment".

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme prior to the report's publication, Mr Fayed said the report had "betrayed" him and the British public.

"How can I accept something really shocking? I know deep in my heart that I'm the only person who knows the truth," he said.

Lord Stevens said he had no comment to make about Mr Fayed's reaction, adding: "He's a genuinely grieving parent."

Lord Stevens was asked to undertake the inquiry when the inquest into Diana's death was opened and adjourned in January 2004.

Prince Charles was interviewed last year and was apparently asked by Lord Stevens whether he had ever plotted to kill his former wife.

Forensic teams examined the wrecked black Mercedes S280 in painstaking detail, and the inquiry is said to have brought together around 20,000 documents and 1,500 witness statements.

Lord Stevens admitted today that there were some matters for which a "definitive answer" might never be found and "people will probably continue to raise issues".

Today, the MI5 whistleblower David Shayler said the report should not be taken at face value as parts of the evidence did not add up.

"For example, James Andanson, a paparazzo who was in Paris that day, who was alleged to have owned the Fiat Uno [in the tunnel at the time of the crash] but claimed to have owned a different one, was found some months later burnt-out in his car 150 miles from his home.

"The French have concluded that it was suicide, but I would contend that if someone wanted to commit suicide in a car, they attach a hosepipe to the exhaust, put it through the window, and they go very peacefully. No one I know commits suicide like that."

Princes William and Harry were understood to have been told of the outcome yesterday. Sources said today that they were distressed and angry after learning in full from the report of the photographers' behaviour. Pictures were taken of the princess as she lay fatally wounded while emergency workers worked to save her.

But when asked who was to blame for the crash, Lord Stevens said: "I lay no blame at anyone's door."

He said various legal cases were currently being pursued by Mr Fayed in the French courts, but he doubted they would affect his conclusion that there was no conspiracy.

Many people had "suffered from the intense scrutiny, speculation and misinformed judgments" since the crash, and Lord Stevens said he hoped the report would provide "some closure" for those who continued to mourn those who died.

Lady Butler-Sloss, who is now in charge of Diana's inquest, is due to resume the hearings in January.

    Diana death a 'tragic accident', G, 14.12.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/monarchy/story/0,,1971986,00.html

11am update

Goodman pleads guilty

Wednesday November 29, 2006
MediaGuardian.co.uk
Jemima Kiss

Clive Goodman, the royal editor of the News of the World, has pleaded guilty and could face jail for plotting to intercept private phone messages involving the royal family.

Goodman, 48, from Putney, south-west London, was arrested on August 8 after a police investigation into allegations of phone tapping at Clarence House. Members of the Prince of Wales's household claimed there had been security breaches in its telephone network.

In the dock at the Old Bailey with Goodman was former AFC Wimbledon footballer Glenn Mulcaire, 35, also from south-west London, who admitted the same charge.

Mr Mulcaire further admitted five charges of unlawfully intercepting voicemail messages left by a number of people, including publicist Max Clifford and Elle Macpherson.

The charges, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, date to interceptions between February 16 2006 and June 16.

The conspiracy charge, under the Criminal Law Act, relates to conspiring to intercept voicemail messages between November 1 2005 and August 9 2006.

Mr Justice Gross told the pair: "All options are open. It is an extremely serious matter."

They will be sentenced on a date some time after January 12.

During the hearing at the Old Bailey this morning, Goodman's defence lawyer John Kelsey-Fry QC said that Goodman wanted to apologise publicly and unreservedly to those affected by his actions, Prince William, Prince Harry and the Prince of Wales.

Mr Kelsey-Fry said: "Now that Mr Goodman has entered his plea of guilty, he wishes, through me, to take the first opportunity to apologise to those affected by his actions.

"The prosecution case refers to a gross invasion of privacy and Mr Goodman accepts that characterisation of his acts. He apologises to the three royal members of staff concerned and to the principals, Prince William, Prince Harry and the Prince of Wales."

Dressed in a dark wool suit, Goodman spoke only to confirm his name and to confirm his guilty plea.

Mr Mulcaire issued a similar apology to Goodman, including to those named in the charges he admitted.

Simon Hughes MP, Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, and Andrew Skylet, agent for England defender Sol Campbell, also were identified as people who had messages intercepted by Mr Mulcaire.

Staff at the Prince of Wales' residence became suspicious after two of Goodman's stories in the Sunday tabloid in 2005 detailed extracts of private staff phone messages concerning princes William and Harry.

Anti-terror police investigated the allegations and searched Goodman's home as well as properties in Chelsea, Sutton and the offices of the News of the World.

Goodman has been suspended by the News of the World since his arrest by officers from the Royal Protection Unit, and now faces the end of his career.

He admitted conspiracy to intercept communications to get royal scoops for the News of the World.

Glenn "Trigger" Mulcaire was a player and assistant manager with AFC Wimbledon in 2002.

He runs Nine Consultancy, a Chelsea-based firm described as a "crisis management consultancy".

Both men remain on unconditional bail. The probation service is to prepare reports on them before sentencing.

    Goodman pleads guilty, G, 29.11.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1959754,00.html

Poppy petals rain as Queen leads tributes to war heroes

A ceremony in Hyde Park honours the New Zealand dead as British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan pay their respects

Sunday November 12, 2006
The Observer
David Smith

In a moving and spontaneous act of remembrance yesterday, crowds scattered thousands of poppy petals in a fountain at Trafalgar Square, turning it into a pool of red. They were among millions of people across the country who paid tribute to Britain's war dead by falling silent at 11am, marking the moment the guns ceased fire at the end of the First World War.

The Queen was joined by Prince Charles, Prince William, Tony Blair and Helen Clark, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, at a service to unveil a £1m monument in Hyde Park, London, in honour of New Zealand's wartime courage. Last night the Queen joined hundreds of veterans for the annual Royal Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall. As the auditorium observed two minutes' silence, a shower of thousands of red poppies fell from the great dome.

The Trafalgar Square event, called Silence in the Square, witnessed live performances by classical singers All Angels and the Charterhouse School Choir. Rebecca Sullivan, 13, from Enfield, north London, recited a poem, 'There Lie Forgotten Men', which she wrote for her homework after learning about the world wars at school. At 11am a lone bugler played 'Last Post', buses and taxis stopped and the only sound was the ringing of church bells. The two minutes ended with the traditional 'Reveille' from a lone bugler.

At the Cenotaph on Whitehall, relatives wept as the names of all 121 British soldiers who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2003 were read out. They included Rose Gentle, whose son, Gordon, was killed in Iraq. In Baghdad, troops gathered in the heavily fortified American Embassy. And in northern France, Henry Allingham, at 110 Britain's oldest war veteran, laid a wreath in memory of his comrades.

    Poppy petals rain as Queen leads tributes to war heroes, O, 12.11.2006, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1945882,00.html

Gallows cast shadow over prince's Pakistan visit

Tuesday October 31, 2006
Guardian
Stephen Bates

In the splendid all-white fourth floor surroundings of President Pervez Musharraf's official residence in Islamabad yesterday, Prince Charles had one of the more delicate tasks of his first official visit to Pakistan. After chatting about the war on terrorism and last autumn's earthquake, there was the small matter of life or death to raise: the case of Mirza Tahir Hussain, the Briton who has been on Pakistan's death row for the last 18 years and is currently due to hang around the end of the year.

The prince had to do it, but diplomats would probably have been happier if he hadn't. They have been working quietly for years to secure a reprieve for Mr Hussain and fear that any publicity in the case will work against their efforts.

They had even persuaded Mr Hussain's brother not to come to Pakistan to plead his case while the prince was visiting the country. Any whiff of outside pressure, they believe, especially from Britain, could be counterproductive for Mr Hussain, convicted of killing a taxi-driver when he was 18.

Unfortunately for the strategy, the case was highlighted recently by Tony Blair in the House of Commons and somehow the prince's concern over Mr Hussain's fate, to the extent of writing a private letter about it to the Pakistan president, had also surfaced.

There had even been a public statement - discounted yesterday, of course - that the prince's visit might be cancelled if the execution went ahead on schedule while he was in the country.

The prince did indeed raise the matter with the president, but nothing more was said about it by his staff. The stay of execution remains, while the Pakistan legal authorities establish whether for the first time in the country's history, the president can commute a death sentence passed by a sharia court.

British contortions over the issue partially overshadowed the first day of the prince's visit, which was supposed to be taken up with diplomatic courtesy calls, first to the president and then to the prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, not to mention an evening reception hosted by the high commissioner, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, attended by the cream of Pakistani society, including the former cricketer Imran Khan.

Last night, a planned visit to a madrasa Islamic school in Peshawar by the prince and Camilla was cancelled on the advice of the Pakistani government owing to security fears and the threat of angry demonstrations.

The prince's five-day visit is primarily intended to emphasise the closeness of the ties between Britain and Pakistan, the cooperation offered by the latter in the war on terrorism and the aid and help provided by the former in development assistance to help Pakistan fully join the other Asian tiger economies. There is also the matter of £120m in reconstruction funding after last year's earthquake.

Charles was on safer ground as he toured an exhibition promoting Pakistan business enterprise, held in a marquee in the prime minister's front garden. It enabled him once again to extol the work of the Prince's Trust, which provides financial back-up and advice for young people wanting to set up their own businesses, as he launched a similar project for Pakistan called Youth Business International.

He even brought along two young English entrepreneurs who have been helped by the trust in Britain. One, Razia Anwar from Blackburn, spotted a gap in local skin care provision and launched a centre specialising in laser hair removal with the help of a £5,000 grant.

The prince was highly praised by Mr Aziz, who hoped the royal couple would live happily ever after. In return, the prince lugubriously remarked that he had been flattered when Mr Aziz visited him in London to discuss the trust's work. "The prime minister actually listened to what I was talking about. Normally that doesn't happen, I am telling you." Charles said : "For my wife and I it really is the greatest possible joy to be in Pakistan. It's taken me nearly 58 years to reach here, not for want of trying."

Despite the British anxieties about Mr Hussain's fate, the official spokesman for the Pakistani prime minister said they were relaxed about finding a way through the legal minefield. "We don't feel any pressure. We are always under pressure," he said.

    Gallows cast shadow over prince's Pakistan visit, G, 31.10.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,,1935573,00.html

Secrecy and security zones as Prince Charles flies in to Pakistan

· Public to be kept at bay during royal visit
· Death-row Briton's case to be raised with Musharraf

Monday October 30, 2006
Guardian
Stephen Bates in Islamabad

On overseas tours, Prince Charles is used to indulging his interests in the arts, architecture and organic vegetables amid the hurly-burly of crowds and royal walkabouts. But over the next five days in Pakistan, he and his wife, Camilla, will be lucky to shake hands with anybody resembling a bone-fide local as the one of the biggest security operations surrounding a royal visit swings into action.

The authorities have drafted extra police in to patrol the capital, Islamabad, and have reportedly detained local suspects. The prince and his wife will travel around the country in a Pakistan airforce helicopter and exclusion zones are being enforced around each location, with anti-aircraft batteries in place wherever the helicopter lands.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall arrived at the Chaklala military airport in Islamabad yesterday and were greeted by British high commissioner, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, and women's minister, Sumaira Malik. The duchess was dressed in a black short tunic top and black trousers, with a pale lilac scarf around her shoulders. Both were wearing red poppies as a symbol of Remembrance Day.

But such are the concerns for the royal couple's safety that the high commission refused to give details of their itinerary in advance to local journalists. "We never comment on security matters," one royal official said. "We don't do it in England, so it would be disingenuous to comment on the measures being taken here."

Gift of yak

Tariq Masood Yaseen, the chief of police security in Islamabad, told AFP: "Every aspect of the security for the prince's visit has been taken care of. We have made elaborate arrangements to make sure that it is foolproof." But some details have emerged locally, and a ceremony later in the week in which the prince is to given a yak (which he will not be bringing back to his farm in Gloucestershire) will doubtless feature large.

Both British diplomats and Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, are desperate for the tour to pass off quietly. The prince could not be visiting at a more sensitive time. Not only are his hosts on the front line in the war against terrorism, but relations are complicated by the possibility of the imminent execution of a British national, Mirza Tahir Hussain, convicted of killing a taxi driver 18 years ago. The visit is also going ahead despite the Foreign Office warning more ordinary citizens of a high terrorist threat in Pakistan.

Very few Pakistanis will catch even the merest glimpse of the royal couple, and those that do will have been carefully vetted. A local paper, the International News on Sunday, said: "Security concerns might not allow the common man to interact with him ... [although] people in Pakistan always take great interest in his life, mainly due to Lady Diana factor."

Islamic school

Unlike the US president, George Bush, who did not venture beyond the capital's diplomatic security zone during a one-day visit earlier this year, Prince Charles will visit a madrasa (Islamic school) and part of the northern mountain region devastated by last year's earthquake in which 80,000 people died. There will also be meetings with faith leaders, school children and a visit to an organic farm.

Mr Hussain's case is likely to be raised today when the prince meets Mr Musharraf and the prime minister, Shaukat Aziz. The Pakistan government was warned that the royal visit would be scrapped if the execution occurred this week, as it was originally scheduled to do.

Mr Hussain, who lived in Yorkshire, is on death row in Rawalpindi. He has been granted a two-month stay of execution. The Pakistani authorities are clearly desperate to resolve the matter, but the dead man's family are insisting on the death penalty being carried out, rather than them being paid financial compensation from Mr Hussain's relatives.

Mr Hussain claims the taxi driver attempted to sexually assault him and was killed accidentally when the man drew a gun and it went off in the struggle. The Lahore high court acquitted Mr Hussain in 1996, but the conviction was upheld by the federal and supreme sharia courts.

A senior government official told the local News on Sunday: "The issue of clemency is likely to come up during the visit and at the government level we are already doing what we can to facilitate a settlement between the two families."

The royal couple may be the most protected people in Pakistan this week, but fears remain that if terrorists do not get to them, they may strike elsewhere in the country. A Taliban warlord, Mullah Muhammad Amin, claims to have fighters sheltering in Pakistan with weapons and the ability to make roadside bombs.

Tours of duty

In 1998 Prince Charles flew to Sri Lanka as guest of honour at celebrations marking 50 years of independence amid some of the tightest security arrangements ever for a royal visit abroad. He also visited Sri Lanka after the tsunami in 2005.

During an official visit to Oman in 2003, Prince Charles was forced to issue a public statement denying lurid claims by a former Buckingham Palace employee and published in the Mail on Sunday.

In March 2005, Prince Charles went on a five-day, five-city tour of Australia and recalled that when he went to school there he was called a "pommie bastard".

    Secrecy and security zones as Prince Charles flies in to Pakistan, G, 30.10.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/monarchy/story/0,,1934842,00.html

Charles flies into mixed marriage storm

October 29, 2006
The Sunday Times
Dean Nelson, Delhi

PRINCE CHARLES will fly into a bitter religious row today when he arrives in Pakistan to promote greater tolerance between Muslims and Christians.

The Prince of Wales will tour Pakistan to support President Pervez Musharraf’s policy of “enlightened moderation”, and encourage a better understanding between the country’s Muslim majority and its beleaguered Christian minority.

His itinerary will include meetings with the country’s senior Christian leader, Anglican Bishop Alexander John Malik, who is caught in the crossfire between leading members of his own flock and Islamic fundamentalists over the marriage of his daughter Nadia to the son of a prominent Muslim family.

Nadia, one of Pakistan’s most glamorous models, and her husband Danyaal, a doctor, married in August in an opulent Lahore cathedral wedding led by her father, and attended by the country’s “Lollywood” film and fashion set.

Bishop Malik’s critics claim his daughter had converted to Islam and married her husband in a traditional Muslim wedding before attending a Christian blessing ceremony. Rival bishops have called for his resignation and claimed he has betrayed his flock. Leading Muslim clerics say the church ceremony is an insult if Nadia had converted to Islam, and that her Muslim husband was wrong to agree to a Christian blessing.

Last week Nadia denied she had converted, but agreed both families had struggled to accept an inter-faith marriage. She and her husband have since moved to Glasgow from where she told The Sunday Times she was relieved to be out of Pakistan.

“We’ve been very lucky because we’ve managed to move away. Discrimination would have caught us if we’d continued to live in Pakistan. It happens to every mixed couple because both communities feel betrayed, especially the Christians because I’m the bishop’s daughter and I’ve married a Muslim,” she said.

She had resisted marrying her husband for almost five years because she would not give up her faith. “Danyaal’s family is very religious. It was difficult for them to come to terms with the match. It was difficult to get them to come to the church, it was a struggle from beginning to end. Both families made sacrifices for us. It was a very stressful wedding,” she said.

The Christian community’s sense of betrayal, she said, was linked to the persecution it has suffered in recent years, including a number of brutal attacks on churches. More than 30 Christian worshippers have been murdered in the past five years.

Against this backdrop, rival bishops from the country’s Methodist and Presbyterian churches are outraged by Bishop Malik’s gesture.

“Some Christian parents are crying over this precedent,” said the spokesman for the Methodist Bishop Akbar Khokhar In an article in the Pakistan Christian Post, Presbyterian Bishop Timotheus Nasir argued that Bishop Malik should resign. “You have cheated and betrayed the flock of Christ. You have deceived the Christian community,” he wrote.

Islamic clerics were also angered by the marriage. Last week Mufti Asghar Ali Rabbani of the Farooqia College, a leading Islamic jurisprudence centre, said Nadia Malik was guilty of becoming an infidel if she had converted, and that her husband should not have taken part in the marriage ceremony in a Christian church. “She has become an infidel and the punishment for it is death,” Rabbani declared.

A spokesman for Prince Charles declined to comment on the Malik family’s troubles, but emphasised that the prince was respected in Pakistan for his long-standing support for understanding between the faiths.

    Charles flies into mixed marriage storm, STs, 29.10.2006, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2426884,00.html

Charles resists call for scrutiny of his estates' tax-free privileges

· Treasury backs prince's rebuff on disclosure
· MP says duchy has unfair advantage

Wednesday October 25, 2006
Guardian
Will Woodward, chief political correspondent

Prince Charles last night rebuffed a request for wider disclosure of his finances after questions about why his estate was exempt from corporation and capital gains tax.

Clarence House won support from the Treasury in resisting calls from Edward Leigh, chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, for a "fuller explanation" about the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, the Prince of Wales's main sources of income.

In particular information was required on the duchies' "favourable" tax standing with regard to "their competitive position in the property and other markets in which they operate".

Mr Leigh wanted the National Audit Office to be able to inspect the accounts.

The Duchy of Cornwall, established in 1337 by Edward III, comprises 56,229 hectares (139,000 acres), of which half are in Devon. It funds Prince Charles and his family, mainly from rents and dividends.

The duchy had £14,067,000 in income last year, up £793,000. As a crown property it is tax-exempt but Charles paid £3.3m tax to the Inland Revenue voluntarily (a rate of 23%). The duchy's value rose by nearly £46m to £551,597,000. Last year the public accounts committee said the duchies could have an unfair advantage in markets as a result of the tax exemption. In a letter to John Healey, the financial secretary to the Treasury, Mr Leigh asked for clarification, including details of the Treasury's claim that there were investment property firms facing similar tax treatment. "We just want to be assured that the estate is in exactly the same tax position as a similar sort of estate and doesn't get any tax advantages," Mr Leigh said last night.

The Labour MP Ian Davidson, a member of the accounts committee, told Radio 4 that the prince should pay both corporation and capital tax on the duchy, which was essentially now a property development company.

"Why should the prince's pay and property development company be exempt from taxation when every other property development company has to pay? It's simply unfair competition," said Mr Davidson. "The duchy is not only there to provide income to the present Prince of Wales, it's also there to provide income in perpetuity to future princes of Wales. We believe there's a clash of interests when the present prince actually chairs the organisation so he can decide what the balance is between money for him now and money for his successors."

A Clarence House spokeswoman said the accounts of the duchy, a private estate, were "already under rigorous scrutiny".

A Treasury spokesman said it would respond to Mr Leigh's "technical inquiries", referring to its response to last year's report, which defended the tax position of the duchies, which were set up so as to keep "a degree of financial independence from the government of the day".

A colleague of the chancellor, Gordon Brown, said last night: "It's interesting that Mr Leigh's committee decided to leak this letter a full year after the Treasury's response to Mr Leigh's committee, but the very day [Charles] visited the Treasury to discuss the future of volunteering with the chancellor." The prince did not "deserve to be the target of these shoddy and underhand tactics".

But Mr Leigh said it was "complete rubbish" to suggest the letter was so timed. It was written on the advice of the National Audit Office and signed last week, he said. "I was completely unaware the chancellor was meeting the prince today."

    Charles resists call for scrutiny of his estates' tax-free privileges, G, 25.10.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/monarchy/story/0,,1930811,00.html

News of the World royal editor arrested over Clarence House phone tapping

· Anti-terrorism police lead eavesdropping inquiry
· Other public figures may have been target of sting

Wednesday August 9, 2006
The Guardian
Sam Jones

Anti-terrorist police yesterday arrested three men, including the News of the World's royal correspondent, for allegedly intercepting phone calls at Clarence House, the official residence of the Prince of Wales.

The arrests were part of a wider inquiry which began in December when three members of the royal household at Clarence House complained to Scotland Yard's Royalty Protection unit. The investigation has been extended because detectives believe that public figures beyond the royal household - among them an MP - have also had their phones tapped.

Officers from the Met's anti-terrorist branch and the specialist crime directorate have not ruled out the possibility that other royal households could have had their phones intercepted, or that the conversations could have involved members of the royal family.

Scotland Yard said three men were arrested early yesterday in south London. A 48-year-old man was arrested at his home in Putney, another man, 35, was arrested at home in Sutton, while a third, 50, was detained at another address, also in Sutton. All three were arrested under section 1 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and taken to central London police stations where they remained in custody last night.

It later emerged that the 48-year-old man was Clive Goodman, the News of the World's royal correspondent, and that police had searched the paper's offices in Wapping, east London.

The News of the World confirmed last night that Goodman was one of the men being held. A spokeswoman said: "Clive Goodman, a News of the World journalist, was arrested today and is currently being questioned at Charing Cross police station in London."

Scotland Yard said the initial investigation at Clarence House had focused on "alleged repeated security breaches within telephone networks over a significant period of time".

Given the seriousness of the potential security breach, the inquiry was then passed on to SO13, the Met's anti-terrorist branch, who made yesterday's arrests.

Scotland Yard added: "As a result of their inquiries police now believe that public figures beyond the royal household have had their telephones intercepted, which may have potential security implications."

The investigation is being led by a small team of officers from SO13 and officers from the specialist crime directorate. Detectives have also been liaising closely with the Crown Prosecution Service.

Scotland Yard is known to be angry about repeated press breaches of royal security which force them to divert officers from anti-terrorism operations to chase undercover journalists.

A Clarence House spokesman said last night they would not be commenting on the arrests. Although the exact nature of the alleged tapping remained unclear last night, it is thought that the allegations related to calls from mobile phones rather than land lines. Scanning equipment has often been used by those wishing to eavesdrop on mobile phones.

Prince Charles, his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, and Diana, Princess of Wales, have all been unwitting subjects of phone interceptions in the past. In 1993, a tape of an intimate late-night phone call between the prince and the duchess was made public. During the conversation, Prince Charles was allegedly heard telling the duchess he would like to "live inside your trousers". It is thought the recording was made by a radio enthusiast using a hi-tech scanning device. The tape was released a year after a recording of Diana allegedly talking to a mystery man - later identified as her close friendJames Gilbey - emerged. The conversation came to be known as Squidgygate because of Mr Gilbey's alleged pet name for Diana.

Stung Investigative errors

Questions have been asked about the News of the World's journalistic practices after a series of high-profile investigations went wrong.

· Last week, the paper was forced to pay former leader of the Scottish Socialist party Tommy Sheridan £200,000 in damages after he sued for libel over untrue allegations that he had cheated on his wife and visited swingers' clubs. In court, Mr Sheridan described the News of the World as "pedlars of falsehood, promoters of untruth, concerned only with sales, circulation and profit, not people's lives and truth".

· The paper's star reporter, Mazher Mahmood - dubbed "the fake sheikh" - was embarrassed in court at the end of July after three men who the paper had claimed had tried to buy radioactive material for a terrorist "dirty bomb" were acquitted. The three were arrested after a joint sting operation involving Mahmood and the Metropolitan police's anti-terrorist branch.

· In March this year, George Galloway claimed Mahmood had unsuccessfully attempted to push him into making anti-semitic remarks and accepting improper political financing. The MP went on to exact his revenge by publishing photos of Mahmood on the internet after a court battle with the News of the World.

· In 2003, a sting operation carried out by Mahmood backfired very publicly when the trial of five men who had been accused of plotting to kidnap Victoria Beckham, and her children collapsed after the revelation that the News of the World had paid a convicted criminal, Florim Gashi, who acted as their informant. Gashi, who has been convicted for dishonesty, admitted lying in a police statement about the kidnap case.

    News of the World royal editor arrested over Clarence House phone tapping, G, 9.8.2006, http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1840326,00.html

On queen's 80th, Britons ask: Is monarchy licked?

Updated 4/21/2006 12:03 AM ET
USA TODAY
By Jeffrey Stinson

LONDON — Queen Elizabeth II, who has been on the throne longer than all but three British monarchs, turns 80 Friday.

She will spend her birthday much as she has spent her 54 years as Britain's figurehead: On Wednesday, she hosted a lunch for 99 Britons who share her date of birth. Thursday, she visited the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the BBC; both also were celebrating their 80th birthdays. Today, she will go on one of her "royal walkabouts" to talk with her subjects in the town of Windsor. Elizabeth will cap the day at a dinner hosted by her son and heir to the throne, Prince Charles, and his wife, Camilla.

Although she is 15 years past the normal retirement age in Great Britain, Elizabeth won't be quitting. "She's always made it clear she will not abdicate," Buckingham Palace spokeswoman Ailsa Anderson says. Nor, Anderson says, will the queen be handing off any of her duties to Charles, despite her age.

As the popular Elizabeth enters her twilight years, some Britons wonder whether the sun should set on the 1,000-year-old British monarchy when it sets on her — especially with the unpopular Charles, 57, next in line for the throne.

Advocates of maintaining the monarchy say having Elizabeth as the symbolic head of a great nation, performing ceremonial duties, is worth the $65 million it costs British taxpayers every year. "Almost from the moment she was born, she has done her duty without flinching and without complaint," says historian Robert Lacey, who has written two biographies of Elizabeth. "That's one reason there is deep and abiding affection for her."

Foes, however, portray the monarchy and its birthright of privilege and wealth as anachronisms in the 21st century. "People want a say in who leads them," says Graham Smith, campaign coordinator for Republic, the nation's leading anti-monarchy group. Smith and his group say the monarchy should be replaced with someone who is elected to represent the nation in a ceremonial fashion. They claim that an elected ceremonial head would cost the nation less than royalty.

Smith says Charles' unpopularity offers a flash point to begin a serious debate on abolishing the royal family. Just 37% of Britons think that Charles should succeed his mother, according to a poll published April 5 by The Times of London.

In fact, the poll taken of 1,503 adults from March 31 to April 2 by the Populus polling organization found that 39% would prefer that Charles' elder son, Prince William, leapfrog his father for the crown.

"It definitely helps us," Smith says. "Prince Charles is not popular at all. There's definitely a problem with him, and we'll take advantage of that."

Charles' burdens

The seemingly hapless Charles — portrayed as the villain in his divorce from the popular Princess Dianaafter acknowledging an affair with true love Camilla, whom he married last year —cannot seem to catch a break.

Last month, Charles was accused by some members of Parliament of overstepping the traditional bounds imposed on the royal family of not interfering in political matters.

The criticism came after he went to court to claim copyright infringement when the London newspaper Mail on Sunday published diaries he wrote during his visit to Hong Kong in 1997 for the transfer of the former British colony to China. In the diaries, Charles referred to the hand-over as "the great Chinese takeaway" (the British term for carryout).

He called the Chinese leaders "appalling old waxworks" and dismissed a speech by the Chinese president as "propaganda."

Charles' former secretary, Mark Bolland, revealed at the trial that Charles often fired off missives to Prime Minister Tony Blair, Cabinet members and members of Parliament on everything from the environment to architecture.

Charles, Bolland said, saw himself as a "dissident working against the prevailing political consensus."

Charles won his case in court but was blasted in the court of public opinion. Although Blair defended Charles and his right to speak out on issues of the day, others did not. Paul Flynn was one of several members of Parliament who warned that the monarchy would collapse if the prince continued to interfere with politics.

Flynn, a Labor Party member from Newport West, Wales, told the Press Association that if Charles was "going to find it irresistible to interfere in politics ... then the monarchy would be in grave peril with him as head of state."

Going public on political issues is something that Elizabeth would not do, says Ingrid Seward, editor of Majesty magazine.

"She's above politics," Seward says. "Her subjects know that she has their well-being at heart." And, she says, Charles will no longer be able to wade into political issues if he becomes king.

Two weeks ago, Charles had to read how his second son, Prince Harry, 21, partied with lap dancers as he and his class at Sandhurst military college finished training. And on the first anniversary of his marriage to Camilla, he got to see The Times poll, which also indicated that 56% of Britons did not wish to see his new wife become queen.

Seward, who says she thinks that Charles will be a good king, calls the Prince of Wales a victim of bad press. As a result, she says, it's easy to see why he is less popular than son William, 23.

"People read about his quirky personal life and his comments, and it makes them nervous," she says of Charles. "I think people look at him and say, 'He couldn't handle Diana, (so) what makes us think that he could be king?' "

In comparison, Prince William, tall and blond like his late mother, Diana, stays out of trouble, and is quiet and well-mannered. "Who wouldn't want a beautiful young monarch?" Seward says. "It appeals to the glamorous Hollywood image that we have of a monarch."

British monarchs are not, however, chosen by opinion polls or popular elections. There is a line of succession. And there is no way that William will take the throne before Charles, unless Charles voluntarily bypasses the job that he has spent his life training for or dies before he gets there.

Because the queen will not abdicate, age indeed could be a problem for Charles. Although the queen is 80, she appears robust. Her mother, the Queen Mother Elizabeth, lived to age 101 and died in 2002.

Historian Lacey dismisses much of the conjecture. He says Charles will become king and argues that the British monarchy and the mystique that surrounds it are larger than the personalities involved, including the prince of Wales.

"William may be young and glamorous now, but in 15 years or so he's on his way to middle age and losing his hair," Lacey says. "People will see him then the way that they see Charles now."

He also dismisses arguments from foes of the monarchy, such as Smith, who see Charles' ascension to king leading to the demise of the royalty and ushering in the day when Britons will elect a ceremonial head of state.

"I don't think many in Britain think we need another politician or a sports figure or a celebrity to sit in Buckingham Palace," he says.

David Culver, 67, a retired Royal Air Force officer, says he doesn't want the monarchy replaced and certainly not with a politician, because he doesn't trust politicians.

"I'm very old-fashioned in that regard," said Culver, who was passing by Buckingham Palace on Tuesday as tourists gathered to watch the changing of the guard. "As a member of the armed forces, I swore my allegiance to the queen. Yes, it's the politicians in government that decide on going to war. But ultimately, the loyalty is to the queen."

The royal family's popularity rises and falls over the years, Lacey points out. It's highest when romance is in the air or when a new baby comes along. It dips during harder economic times, when people question why they are paying those millions to cover royal living expenses, travel and staff.

Despite the ambivalence, the British and royalty seem to go hand in hand. As Shakespeare put it: "This royal throne of kings ... this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England."

Queen beats roast beef

Respondents to a poll of 1,000 adults in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in December by the British research firm GfK NOP were hard-pressed to come up with an icon that summed up traditional England beyond the monarchy. The monarchy was the most popular choice at 48%. The runner-up was roast beef at 42%.

"It's part of our history. It's something to be proud of. It's an institution that's bigger than the personalities," Jessica Walker, 23, a health psychologist, says of the monarchy.

Walker is moving from London to New Zealand, where Queen Elizabeth still will be her ceremonial figurehead because the nation is part of the British Commonwealth. That, she says, provides a sense of comfort and continuity. "The monarchy is still a symbol, here and in New Zealand. If we abolished it, we would remove those ties."

Because the monarchy has been around for so long and survived so many personalities, Lacey doesn't soon foresee a day when it will disappear — as long as monarchs, such as Elizabeth, do their duty and put the country before themselves.

"The monarchy is always best when it is doing its duty," he says. "If we didn't have a royal family, the ladies in their hats, who would go and visit the hospitals, the hospices, (and) take the salutes from soldiers?"

    On queen's 80th, Britons ask: Is monarchy licked?, UT, 21.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-04-20-royals-cover_x.htm

Elizabeth the Last

The Queen, who is 80 today, is the best thing about the monarchy:
constant, reassuring and one of the most accomplished politicians of our age.
But the institution is finished, says Jonathan Freedland, and Elizabeth could well be all that's keeping it alive

Friday April 21, 2006
Guardian
Jonathan Freedland


The Queen has a habit of leaving people she meets tongue-tied. They are overwhelmed by the moment and either say nothing or babble things that make no sense. So it must have been for the bewildered member of the public who, faced with the monarch, could only remark that the lady before her looked a lot like the Queen. "How reassuring," Her Majesty replied. The rock star Ozzy Osbourne, meanwhile, recalled that when he met the Queen, his only thought was that he was face to face with "the world's biggest £20 note".

And somewhere in these two stories lies the essence of our relationship with the woman who turns 80 today, and who has represented us as our head of state for 54 years.

For the Queen is ubiquitous in our national life in a way unmatched by any other human being. Her silhouetted profile is on our coins and stamps, her face on our bank notes; we all see her every day, more often than we might glimpse the face of our own mothers. And this is how it has been for the entire lives of most of us, and for most of the lives of the rest.

Her life is intimately bound up with what now constitutes Britain's living memory. A newborn baby before the General Strike of May 1926, she was present during the abdication crisis of 1936. She was already a visible public figure, a princess and heiress to the throne, during the second world war. As Queen, she has received no fewer than 10 prime ministers: when Winston Churchill, a figure as remote from most young Britons as Horatio Nelson, served his final term at 10 Downing Street, his weekly audience was with the young Elizabeth. From Suez to the Beatles, the Sex Pistols to the miners' strike, from Lady Diana to Big Borther, she has been there throughout - a kind of blue-blood Zelig, present in the background (and sometimes foreground) of most of the major events of the British 20th century and beyond.

So much has changed over these years, she may well be the only constant we have. Think of anything else that has been around as long - from the BBC to the Labour party - and they are all utterly transformed. Watch a movie set in 1960s London and all of it has vanished: the red telephone boxes, the Routemaster buses, the Hillmans and Austins. But she is still here. She was the Queen before there was Elvis, when computers were the size of a large room, when a third of the nation believed she had been handpicked by God. From the age of the steam train to the era of satnav, she has been on the throne through it all.

It is no wonder that she is in our dreams (one survey reportedly found that the most common British dream was of taking tea with the Queen). She exists somewhere deep in our collective consciousness, a sole fixed point in a world that has changed beyond all recognition. If she finds it reassuring that she looks like the Queen, then so do we.

But it is not just length of service that makes her feel like a permanent part of our landscape. It is also the way she has done her job. She has served in a demanding role, that of head of state, for half a century and has barely made a mistake. The job requires her to be politically neutral and, despite 54 years of attention to her every utterance, that is precisely how she is perceived. Scan through newspaper clippings of the second Elizabethan era and you will not find gaffes and crises, leaks of private remarks and subsequent denials. Instead she has played it straight, watching the dismantling of the British empire, the cold war, the industrial unrest of the 1970s and the Thatcher revolution of the 1980s, letting slip barely a breath of an opinion.

That is no easy feat. Think of her uncle, the short-lived Edward VIII, and his flirtation with Adolf Hitler; think of her own mother, and her sympathy for pre-war appeasement; think of her husband's regular, ethnically themed "jokes". Or, more immediately, think of her son, with his constant interventions in public affairs - on complementary medicine, architecture, organic food, religion, foot and mouth - typified least flatteringly by his bombardment of government ministers with long, exasperated letters. Angry of Highgrove. Not the Queen's style, not one little bit.

The truth is that, by the usual measures - namely, sustained popularity and an ability to avoid trouble - Elizabeth Windsor would have to be judged one of the most accomplished politicians of the modern era, albeit as a non-politician. There is only one substantial blot on the copybook: her failure to read the public mood after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. Her belated response, the televised address to the nation once she had finally broken off her summer holiday in Balmoral, had the visual grammar of a hostage video - as if she was compelled to read the words in front of her in order to save her skin. Which, in a way, she was.

For monarchists, this astonishing record is something to celebrate. For republicans it is a cause of decades-old frustration. For more than half a century, it has been impossible to get traction on the question of how we choose our head of state simply because the present incumbent has performed so effectively. Reformers have been left making abstract arguments, each one a blunt arrow bouncing off the steel armour of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

Yet this week's 80th birthday could, paradoxically, begin to turn that logic on its head. Republicans could admit the obvious - that the Queen has done a near-faultless job - but nevertheless start to raise the wider questions about the merits of monarchy. And those questions would have a relevance now that they might have lacked before, for one simple reason: mortality.

Yes, the Queen has done a grand job, republicans can argue; but she will not be around to do it for ever. Surely when any holder of a senior position turns 80 it is fair to start thinking not only about their successor but about the manner of their selection. And it is on this ground that the notion of royalty is most vulnerable. For no matter how admired the Queen is as an individual, there are few strong arguments for the defence, in principle, of the set-up that she embodies. The common-sense view of the whole matter can be summarised very crudely: nice lady, shame about the institution; great Queen, shame about the monarchy.

Over the 10 years or so that I have been debating this question, I have noticed the same dynamic repeat itself. Make a republican case, and people will rush to defend Elizabeth. But acknowledge the Queen's remarkable decades of service; declare that she should continue to wear the crown until the day she dies; insist that, when she does, she be given a full state funeral with all the pomp and honour that would be owed by a grateful nation; and suggest that only then should we change the system to allow Britons to choose their own head of state ... do all that and just watch how the debate shifts. A room that was three-to-one against a republic will become three- to-one in favour of it.

The arguments are simple and compelling, starting with the very notion of heredity. Even the most strident monarchist will usually dodge that idea rather than attempt to defend it. They can say little to rebut Tony Benn's well-worn line that we wouldn't trust the airline captain who announced over the public address system, "I'm not, in fact, a trained pilot - but don't worry, my dad was." Nor could they ever tackle Tom Paine, the great, woefully undervalued, British revolutionary, who believed that the notion of allocating positions of state according to birth was as absurd "as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; as absurd as an hereditary poet laureate". We would not choose our prime ministers by bloodline - Mark Thatcher, anyone? - so why choose our head of state that way?

To that, the pragmatic royalist will ask why it even matters. The monarch has no real powers, they will say. She cuts a few ribbons, launches the odd ship, hosts the occasional state banquet: who cares? To which the answer is that the office of head of state matters enough that every country has it, even if it is sometimes combined with head of government. It matters enough that no ardent monarchist would ever countenance its abolition.

And it matters because it represents us, to the rest of the world, but, much more importantly, to ourselves. For better or worse, the head of state is the figurehead, the human embodiment of the British nation. What does it say about us if even now, in the 21st century, our symbol is the child of a single, white, aristocratic family, chosen solely by the blood in her veins? Much of British life used to be that way, when background determined all. We like to think we are different now, that our position is no longer a simple function of our birth. But in this single corner of our collective life, the old rules apply. And it is not just any corner, but the one that symbolises what kind of society we are.

Monarchists cannot have it both ways. They cannot say that this institution does not matter and, at the same time, insist that the core principle at its heart must never be changed. They should be honest about their true belief, that this institution is indeed important. On that, republicans would agree. As the Queen and her enduring place in the national imagination proves, the office of head of state matters a lot: it embeds itself deep in our collective marrow. By preserving it in perpetuity for a single, pampered family we send a powerful, subliminal message to every generation of Britons. You may work hard, we say; you may be full of talent and virtue. But you will never, ever, fill the highest office of the land. Your blood is not the right blood.

Most democracies abandoned such lunacy centuries ago, but here it persists. We talk the talk about social mobility, but on our national ladder, the top rung is always out of reach. Symbols matter and our central one says that Britain is a place where birth still determines rank.

Our politics is warped by this institution too. If we have an over-mighty, over-centralised executive it is because the prime minister is able to rule with quasi-monarchical powers, including the right to dole out seats in the upper house of our national legislature, under the crown prerogative. If we want to reform that, and we should, it will be near impossible to do it without touching the crown itself.

Traditionalists will say that our tourist industry will suffer. Republicans should point to Versailles and the White House in reply: two places that are hardly short of visitors, even though no hereditary monarch is in residence. Royalists will say that the monarchy provides much-needed continuity, with the Queen's place over the past 60 years an eloquent illustration. This is their best argument, but there is a reply.

For the Windsors do embody a certain continuity, but it is with the history of their own family and their own class. Their ancestors are important, but they do not account for our entire history; there is more to our island story than fables of kings and queens. There is our restless pursuit of liberty and democracy: from Magna Carta to the revolution of 1688, from the Levellers and the Peasants' Revolt to the Chartists and the Suffragettes. We yearn for continuity with that history too and monarchy will never provide it.

These are arguments that we need to have, and we need to have them now. If genes are any guide - and when it comes to royalty, you would think that they would be - Elizabeth could well live and reign for another 20 years, overtaking even Victoria's 64-year record. But the way this system works, her successor will be anointed the second she dies: there will be no pause for a debate. If we want one, we have to have it now, so that we might reach a national consensus before the moment arises, not wait until it is too late. So let's wish the Queen a very happy birthday; let's hope she has many more to come and in good health; let's thank her for all she has done. But let's decide now that, when she goes, we bury this ludicrous institution with her.

On the balcony: which royal does most for the republican cause?

William

The Diana good looks might have helped, but they're offset by a truly retro Etonian attitude to class. And his hair's receding.

Republican rating: 7/10

Peter

Who? Invisible son of Anne. Sister Zara is a different story - her pierced tongue could win cred points. Worrying.

Republican rating: 5/10

Harry

Wins the party- boy vote but has inherited his grandfather's knack for racist gaffes. A gift.

Republican rating: 8/10

Charles

King Charles III? Three little words which make the republican argument come alive.

Republican rating: 9/10

Edward

Still believe that genetics are a guide to ability? I don't think so.

Republican rating: 8/10

Anne

A woman whose idea of public diplomacy was to immortalise the words "naff off".

Republican rating: 7/10

Andrew

For reformers who believe the royal family are overpaid do-nothings, he's the poster-boy.

Republican rating: 8/10

The Queen

So popular for so long, she's the ultimate roadblock to reform.

Republican rating: 1/10

Philip

With his knack for offending people of all races, creeds and colours, he's been a prize asset to the abolitionist cause.

Republican rating: 7/10

Eugenie and Beatrice

They might work as collectible dolls, but not quite head-of-state material.

Republican rating: 8/10

    Elizabeth the Last, G, 21.4.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/monarchy/story/0,,1757958,00.html

An unpretentious Elizabethan

Friday April 21, 2006
The Guardian
Leader

Sometimes little changes help to clarify larger ones. In 1986, when she qualified for her first bus pass, the Queen's 60th birthday was a great national event, marked by a thanksgiving service at Windsor, a mass rally of children bearing daffodils up the Mall, a gala evening at Covent Garden - and the obligatory set of commemorative postage stamps. Ten years later, in the midst of a decade of royal marital and other misfortunes, Britain was a very different place. In 1996, the Queen's 70th was allowed to pass almost furtively. A general jumpiness at the palace dictated that there were few events, with not a postage stamp to be seen. The future was genuinely unclear.

Today, as she completes a further decade, the celebrations of the Queen's 80th will be lower key and less concentrated than they were in 1986 (but then she is 20 years older). Yet they will also be far more confident than in 1996. Many of the clouds that hung over the House of Windsor a decade ago have thinned or gone away. Wednesday's lunch for 99 fellow 80-year-olds was a touching occasion. Today's walkabout will be suffused with goodwill. And the commemorative stamps are back, too.

Part of this general warmth, quite rightly, is simply about behaving properly towards an old lady on an important birthday. But it is also about honouring someone who, in defiance of reason and over an exceptionally long period, has broadly succeeded in remaining a force for national cohesion rather than becoming a force for division. The pendulum has swung back the Queen's way. This achievement should not be underestimated. It was not inevitable. Nine years ago, in the hysterical public mood after the death of Princess Diana, her courtiers feared the Queen would be widely booed when she appeared in public. Now, and on this day in particular, that has become inconceivable.

There are lots of contributory causes of this turn-around in the general mood. Popular caprice is part of it. So is a defter approach to public relations at the palace. But it would be perverse not to recognise the main factor, which is that almost everyone - monarchist, republican or agnostic - has always recognised that the Queen has done her odd job very well indeed. Intermittent dissatisfaction with the royal family or with the monarchy has rarely been personalised against her. Other public figures may rise or fall in public esteem, but no politician can rival the Queen's ratings - not least for honesty; and over half a century too.

It is unlikely that this mood will change in the present Queen's lifetime - which, as her friends have again made clear this week, will be the same thing as her reign. Even if there is some fresh major scandal in the family during that time, it is unlikely that the national mood will now turn more questioning or sceptical than it was in the years of Diana's divorce and death. And it is even more improbable that it would be focused in a hostile way on a woman in her ninth decade who has enjoyed such sustained popularity for so long. If she becomes even more remote in the years to come, as must be likely, the public seems just as likely to give her the benefit of the doubt. In that sense, therefore, the Queen has won herself the space to preside over her version of the monarchy for the rest of her life.

This achievement comes at a price, however. The longer that the unpretentious Elizabethan version of monarchy continues, the more sharply the question will arise of whether new ways are required to secure a further lease of life for the monarchy under her successors. There is no guarantee that the current concordat with the public will survive under another monarch, and especially under a monarch who is a figure of controversy or derision. That is a debate which should not be put on ice until the moment comes. But it is not a debate for today. Today is not a day for institutional deference. But it is a day for human respect.

    An unpretentious Elizabethan, G, 21.4.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1758084,00.html

The constitutional crisis we face when the Queen is gone

Read the coronation service and it's clear this framework of monarchy and established church cannot outlive Elizabeth

Friday April 21, 2006
The Guardian
Madeleine Bunting

There have been the official 80th photographs, the 80 facts for an 80-year-old monarch issued by Buckingham Palace, a respectful television programme on her extraordinary life and long reign. There will be plenty more celebrations come the official birthday in June, but as the Queen finally celebrates her landmark day, there's a thought that, however inappropriate, can't but rear its head: what happens to a monarchy that has become so profoundly associated with one particular person? Is the institution robust enough to survive its passage to a new incumbent?

So much of our understanding of the monarchy has been bound up with the character of Elizabeth Windsor; her combination of reserve, sense of duty and that quintessential English upper-class lifestyle of frugal and rural. The kilts, the corgis, the cereal-box Tupperware, the request to servants not to walk down the middle of carpets to prevent wear: all are redolent of an upbringing in the first half of the 20th century and its discipline of iron self-restraint and small indulgences. No one accuses the Queen of celebrity-style extravagance, of too many exotic holidays, house makeovers and absurd wardrobes of clothes. On the contrary, she is a woman of grimly determined duty and her face as often as not indicates the huge sacrifice of a woman who would probably have been far happier living in the obscurity of a large landed estate, breeding horses.

What is often missed out of the puzzling phenomenon of this woman's life is her religious faith. It is what makes her devotion to duty and self-sacrifice explicable. While the church over which she presides has faced dwindling congregations, her Christmas Day speeches and addresses to the Church of England Synod have often been remarkably religious. It's hard to think of a recent predecessor - let alone a likely successor - of a comparable sincerity of belief, and it has been vital in sustaining the establishment of the Church of England. It would be quite possible to make the claim that Elizabeth Windsor has become one of the nation's most articulate religious leaders - but that says as much about the timidity of the competition as it does about her.

Her belief explains much about how she has understood her position and her responsibilities, and about how she has developed a contemporary monarchy; it helps explain the ultimately ill-fated invention of the royal family just as the permissive 60s gathered pace - an alternative model of conjugal commitment and family responsibility - which foundered in the marital troubles of her offspring. It also helps explain why this is a woman who is extremely unlikely to abdicate, rather as Pope John Paul II soldiered on to the bitter end, driven by a sense that he had been chosen and consecrated by God to fulfil his earthly role.

If this sounds a bit far-fetched applied to the Queen, look at the order of service of the 1953 coronation: it makes explicit that she was chosen by God to be queen of England and anointed by the Holy Spirit with the wisdom and other blessings required for the job. If you believe that, retirement is not really an option.

All of which raises the question of how the idiosyncratic and delicate framework of the monarchy, the establishment of the Church of England and the state, which the Queen has managed to hold together despite the dramatic decline in Christianity, would survive her demise. It may be a tactless time to raise the question when celebrating an 80th birthday - it may also, given her mother's longevity, be a good 20 years off - but this framework will be suddenly exposed in all its glorious anachronisms come the next coronation.

There has been some speculation about how the coronation oath might have to be rejigged with some hasty legislation - four out of the five questions in the oath relate to the upholding of Christianity, three specifically to the upholding of the Church of England. How will that go down in a country where the number regularly attending Anglican services is roughly matched by the number of British Muslims? There has also been speculation about a tweaking of the official title to defender of faiths. But this is fiddling round the edges compared to the actual coronation service. This ceremony at the crux of the British constitution is a ritual steeped in the history of a millennium of European Christianity. It blows apart completely the fiction that we live in a secular state.

The nub of the ceremony is the anointing by the Archbishop of Canterbury of the monarch on the palms, chest and head. This is a sacrament; not just symbolic, it actually transforms the recipient. As the Bishop of Salisbury, David Stancliffe, puts it: "It marks an outpouring of the Holy Spirit with gifts of grace to sanctify the person, it marks the choice of God of this person to be king or queen and starts a process which will be fulfilled in the course of their reign."

After the anointing, the monarch dons robe royal, orb, sceptre, rod and crown - all symbols of the divine grace being poured on to the new sovereign - while the archbishop incants prayers such as "may you continue steadfastly as the defender of Christ's religion". He concludes in a benediction: "The Lord who hath made you [king or queen] over these peoples give you increase of grace, honour and happiness in this world and make you partake of his eternal felicity in the world to come."

The monarch is accountable to God for their rule, and the prayer is that they will eventually come to enjoy eternal life. (There are echoes here of Tony Blair's own admission recently that he would be accountable to God for his decision to go to war in Iraq; while he may have horrified secularists, he was, in fact, only articulating the spirit of the British constitution.)

Eternal life, divine grace, sacrament, anointing: it's hard to imagine, come the next coronation, a BBC commentator like Andrew Marr providing explanations that could satisfy secular Britain. Will a coronation be justified as a "heritage opportunity" marketed to tourists to enjoy some British pomp, or will this Charlemagne-derived event finally prompt the determination to update Britain's quaint constitution? It's hard to head off the latter with a discreet revamp of the ceremony ahead of time. That leaves a constitutional crisis waiting to happen: the relationship between sovereign, church and state, which the Queen has managed to largely steer clear of public debate, would come under the bewildered glare of the global media, and who knows how it would fall apart under that kind of scrutiny?

    The constitutional crisis we face when the Queen is gone, G, 21.4.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1758160,00.html

She will survive

In her 80 years, the Queen has become an expert at ducking difficult issues. When she goes, the debate over the monarchy will start in earnest

Saturday April 15, 2006
The Guardian
Germaine Greer

In February 1954 Queen Elizabeth II and her consort paid their first visit to Australia. We had been waiting for them with bated breath ever since the fairy-tale couple had got as far as Kenya on their way to Australia in 1952, when the death of George VI was announced and Lilibet had to return to England, to be acclaimed, get crowned and all that jazz. I watched the pomp and the panoply from afar, cut out every jewel-encrusted image from the daily newspapers and the Women's Weekly, and pasted them up in a creaking scrapbook.

I knew every brooch, every earring, every tiara. I chose only the pictures where the Queen was smiling, a big-toothed slightly horsey smile that combined oddly with her narrow forehead, a bit George Formby, you might say. My grandmother had given me a book of the coronation of George V, a special supplement to the London Illustrated News I think it must have been, and I had learnt every trick of the ceremonial, the monarch in priestly white garment, the anointing, the conferral of the swords of spiritual and temporal power, the orb, the acclamation, all very theatrical and very, very high church.

The campery of it was summed up in a joke that Philip is said to have made as Elizabeth processed past him on her way out of Westminster Abbey, her delicate neck bowed beneath the weight of the imperial crown. As she tottered past, expressionless and very pale, he is meant to have sung out of the side of his mouth, just loud enough for her to hear, "Where did you get that hat?" It worked: the Queen giggled, the crown wobbled, and the anxious crowd saw for the first time that day the blazing royal smile.

I don't know whether our school wasn't invited because it was Catholic, or whether our school refused to attend because it was Catholic, but we didn't get to participate in the big rally of schoolchildren who had treated the Queen to an exhibition of figure marching at the showground and got in return a stiff little speech beginning, as all the Queen's speeches did, "My husband and I". So that we shouldn't miss out altogether, my mother rather uncharacteristically decided to drive her three children to Exhibition Street, to get a sight of the Queen and her husband as they were driven past on their way to a state banquet. We arrived in mid-afternoon, climbed on to scaffolding set up for the purpose, and waited, clutching paper Union flags, for hours. It was getting dark by the time the motorcade appeared. The royal car was lit from inside, so that we could see a flash of tiara, a white glove moving back and forth like a metronome, an ermine stole. The duke was on our side; his face was strangely orange.

Before we could remember to wag our flags, we found ourselves staring at the rear lights of the Daimler. My brother was convinced that the Queen had been gripping a torch with her knees. "How else could we have seen her face like that?" My mother was certain that the Duke of Edinburgh had been wearing make-up, which was probably nearer the mark. I stopped keeping my scrapbook.

In those days, though many Australians were Fenians and even more felt nothing but contempt for the British officer class, we were all monarchists. As long as Elizabeth managed to convey the impression that she adored us, we were happy to adore her. With such a dainty little woman for a monarch, it was easy to love and honour the crown, even though none of us knew quite what it was.

Australia had been claimed for the crown; all of Australia that was not alienated as freehold was crown land, leased from the crown. In this spirit Robbie Thorpe, a veteran of the aboriginal tent embassy set up on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra in 1972 and still there, served notice on the Queen when she was staying in Government House in Melbourne during her brief visit to the Commonwealth games in March, calling upon her as the head of state to address the issues of "genocide, sovereignty and treaty within 28 days" or show good cause why she should not be arraigned in the international criminal court. What Thorpe was offering the Queen was an opportunity to defend British sovereignty over Australia and to put to rest the question of indigenous sovereignty once for all, or to be defeated and resign her position as head of state, leaving aboriginal elders in the same rather dubious and contradictory position as she now occupies. Elizabeth II will not rise to the occasion.

Elizabeth Tudor, who was otherwise as expert as Elizabeth Windsor in evading difficult issues, might have taken the rap. The morning after she received Thorpe's challenge, she might have gone on foot to Camp Sovereignty, set up in King's Domain very near to where I glimpsed Elizabeth Windsor all those years ago, stood in the purifying smoke of the ceremonial fire and spoken movingly to her black subjects of her passionate indignation at the extent of their suffering, embracing their cause and promising to redress their grievances, and thereby got them to acclaim her as their queen and their best ally in the fight against corporate Australia.

It was Elizabeth Tudor's strategy to represent herself as a heroine in a sacred alliance with the common people against their oppressors. If Elizabeth Windsor cannot play her game, it is partly because she has inherited a class system so entrenched that, like her son, she could not stoop to put the paste on her own toothbrush. Elizabeth Tudor knew from her childhood that only extreme daring would see her through to a natural death. She was happy to have the chance to disguise her cunning as caprice and keep her enemies guessing. Elizabeth Windsor surprises and foxes no one; she does as she is told. It is a strange reflection that, though she is the commander in chief of the British (Commonwealth) armed forces, she may not direct their operations. On the contrary, she may not even express her opinion of the operations they have been involved in. In this she is less free than any of her subjects.

Elizabeth I fretted and fumed incessantly about the unremitting interest displayed by her courtiers in her sex life. Elizabeth II avoided this by marrying the man who had been chosen for her. The choice was astute. Philip Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, five years older than the princess, was her second cousin once removed, third in line in succession to the Greek throne, as well as tall, fair and handsome. As a descendant of Queen Victoria he was already a member of the Firm. He was educated at Cheam and Gordonstoun and was allowed to join the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth as a foreign national. It was there that 13-year-old Lilibet met him and set her heart on him, according to her besotted governess. Any fear that her marrying a foreign prince might prove prejudicial to the future of Britain was removed by persuading the young nobleman to renounce his Greek citizenship and his claim to the Greek throne. He converted to Anglicanism, divested himself of his foreign titles and took the surname of the principal mover in the business, his uncle, Louis Mountbatten. The engagement was announced in July 1947, and the wedding followed four months later.

The royal wedding was designed to raise the spirits of dejected post-war Britain, therefore it was necessary to convince the public that the princess's marriage was a true love match. This was made easier by the obvious fact that Philip's foreign family had been sidelined. His sisters had married within the pro-Nazi hierarchy, and would not be invited. Other European princesses would face difficulties caused by the wartime allegiances of their consorts, but not Elizabeth. Philip was seen by all, save a carping few, as British in all but fact. Over the years gossips have tried to detect Philip in infidelity, and they have all failed. He accepted the job of royal consort and he did it faithfully, but even so he was never accorded the title of prince consort. The Queen probably would have done as most wives do, and taken her husband's name, if Queen Mary had not objected. As it is the family name is still Windsor; the sovereign's sons are Windsor, and the eldest-born son's eldest-born son is Windsor. Otherwise they are all Mountbatten-Windsor. All the names are fly-by-night, in that they were all invented as substitutes for German names.

Keeping the Firm in business has been tricky, especially because the Queen was unable to guide the matrimonial choices made by her children as cunningly as Lord Mountbatten guided hers. When she insisted, as in the case of Prince Charles, on heading him away from Camilla Parker-Bowles and toward Lady Diana Spencer, the outcome was catastrophic. The role played by the Queen in the breakdown of the relationship of her sister Princess Margaret with Group Captain Peter Townsend is still unknown, but her awareness of her sister's heartbreak may have been one cause of the Queen's and the duke's failure to protect their other children from marriages that could not survive in the strange outmoded milieu of dynastic politics as theirs had done.

We have known since Michael Fagan hopped through the window into the queen's bedroom in 1982 that she and the Duke of Edinburgh do not always share a bed. This is not worth remark; probably most 60-some-year-old spouses would sleep apart if they had separate rooms to sleep in. The reason for such apparent estrangement may be as simple as snoring. Ryan Parry's revelations about the queenly lifestyle were sadder. Her Majesty watches telly while she eats, and she eats, apparently, five times a day, just like an old lady in a care home. Like an old lady in a care home, although she is given food at prescribed hours, she often doesn't eat it. We are to believe that the fresh-baked scones from the newly modernised Windsor Castle kitchens are given to the corgis. The Queen watches EastEnders and The Bill, when she could watch absolutely anything she chose, but she does not choose. Just like my mother in her aged care facility.

In 1963 the then prime minister of Australia made a speech in London, in which he said of the Queen, "I only saw her passing by, but I shall love her till I die." By that time the Australian love affair with the Queen was already over and Menzies' speech was widely ridiculed. On her latest visit she was pretty much ignored by the Australian media, who were much more excited by the presence of Condoleezza Rice. They loved the fact that Rice gets up at 4.30am to run on the treadmill, works on her abs every day, can ice-skate and golf to championship standard, that she wears dominatrix outfits featuring short skirts, jack-boots and ankle-length coats, and that she has real, world-wide, kick-ass power. One deeply adulatory article was headed, "I only saw her passing by ..."

The palace bureaucrats have now seen fit to reveal that in her 54 years on the throne, Elizabeth II has sent more than 280,000 telegrams to people celebrating diamond wedding anniversaries, more than 100,000 telegrams to centenarians, about 37,500 Christmas cards, distributed 78,000 Christmas puddings, made 259 overseas trips, sat for 139 official portraits, hosted 91 state banquets, launched 23 ships, and outlived at least 30 corgis. You won't catch Condoleezza doing many of these chores, but the world according to Marm is a safer, nicer place than the battlefield presided over by Condi. Condi may run for president of the US and she may win, in which case many of us will appreciate the gentle touch of an elderly leader in pastel florals and a shady hat, who likes her gin and Dubonnet.

It is now 16 years since the Queen's annus horribilis. She has weathered the storm in which it seemed possible that the British would ditch the monarchy, and has come through apparently unscathed. What seems certain is that the British will not ditch her now that she has assumed the mantle of her beloved mother and become the smiling and indulgent grandmother of the nation.

If she has inherited her mother's longevity gene she will be around for another 20 years. She still speaks coherently, walks as erect as ever she did, and only wears spectacles for reading. She has proved to be much tougher than the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, who has been left by a series of strokes too frail to speak in public. The next crisis will come if Elizabeth's subjects begin to suspect, as the faithful did of the previous pope, that she is gradually becoming senile. If then she should abdicate in favour of the heir apparent, who is as disliked by the people as he dislikes them, the monarchy will be once again in crisis. This thought is probably enough to keep her reigning over us indefinitely. Après elle le déluge.

    She will survive, G, 15.4.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1754427,00.html

Prince's candid thoughts revealed to a larger than intended audience

· Charles's entire report handed over to media
· Associated Newspapers calls for full trial with jury

Thursday February 23, 2006
Guardian
Stephen Bates


Any hopes Prince Charles and his advisers had of curtailing media scrutiny were in disarray last night, following a second day of high court hearings into his claim that the Mail on Sunday breached his confidence and infringed his copyright by printing his private thoughts about the British handover of Hong Kong.

As his entire nine-year-old report about the visit was handed over to the rest of the media, questions were already being raised about the wisdom of Clarence House's relentless pursuit of the newspaper which has turned a one-day story three months ago into what may become long drawn-out litigation.

Prince Charles is seeking a summary judgment, during what will now stretch to a three-day hearing, in the hope of heading off a full jury trial including the calling of witnesses. But even the heir to the throne does not take on Associated Newspapers and its lawyers with impunity - or immunity. They are arguing that a full trial is needed.

The day's hearing produced the 3,000 word journal, detailing the prince's candid thoughts on having to travel Club Class, his ruminations on the geriatric Chinese leadership and his sorrow at the imminent loss of the Royal Yacht Britannia.

To add insult to injury there was also, in passing, a reference to his personal authorisation in September 2002 of a leak to the Daily Mail - the Mail on Sunday's sister paper - of a letter he had written to the then lord chancellor Lord Irvine, bemoaning the spreading culture of excessive litigation.

The prince is, Associated Newspaper's counsel Mark Warby QC informed the court with imperceptible irony, "a figure of genuine literary stature".

Copies of the work, said to have been written by the prince on the lengthy journey home from China in July 1997, were handed to journalists by the newspaper's lawyers on the basis that they were not to be reproduced in full or removed from the building.

The Great Chinese Takeaway, as the report is called, starts with a whinge about being forced to travel Club Class on an outward bound British Airways jet because government ministers such as then foreign secretary Robin Cook and dignitaries including Edward Heath, Douglas Hurd and Paddy Ashdown had bagged all the first class seats.

"It took me some time to realise that this was not first class (!) although it puzzled me as to why the seat seemed so uncomfortable. Such is the end of Empire, I sighed to myself."

Sadness

On arrival in Hong Kong, the prince was taken to the Royal Yacht Britannia, shortly to be decommissioned as a cost-saving measure.

"[The ship] was tied up alongside the old naval base and near to the Prince of Wales building I must have opened in the 1980s (goodness only knows what the Chinese will have renamed it by now). As usual it was wonderful to step into the familiar atmosphere but this time tinged with an overwhelming sadness at the thought that this was going to be the last time of doing so on an overseas visit. Every moment seemed precious, to be held as a lifelong memory of what it used to be like and of how incredibly well Britain could be represented and marketed overseas."

He records Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of state, invited aboard for a breakfast of home-made Danish pastries, asking of the ship's disposal. "Why is this happening?" she said. Robin Cook, too, described the vessel as "a world negotiating advantage" but only after "I had invited him and his wife to stay the night on board," says the prince.

Charles also described a meeting with the Tony Blair, then in office for less than two months. "He is a most enjoyable person to talk to - perhaps partly due to his being younger than me! - he also gives the impression of listening to what one says which I found astounding." Curiously, the Mail on Sunday omitted this reference from its report, though it assiduously recorded other, critical, remarks about the prime minister.

The prince says he told the prime minister: "Introspection, cynicism and criticism seem to be the order of the day and clearly he recognised the need to find ways of overcoming the apathy and loss of self-belief, to find a fresh national direction. I said I thought the best way was to concentrate on the things we do best as a nation."

He turned positively Eeyore-ish when drenched in rain during the handover ceremony: "Just as I had thought and as if on cue the rain came lashing down and I found myself standing at the lectern and trying to make sense of my speech which by now had become a soggy mess of paper pulp and each page stuck together.

"Never before have I been called upon to make a speech underwater ... as it transpired no one could hear anything I said because of the noise of the rain on the umbrellas. The things one thinks one is doing for England!"

As reported by the Mail on Sunday, the prince did indeed find the Chinese leadership a bunch of waxworks and regarded the ceremony as "an awful Soviet-style display" with goose-stepping soldiers and "the ultimate horror" an artificial breeze, created to make the flags flutter.

Geoffrey Howe and Edward Heath however came in for almost as much criticism as the Chinese leaders: "It would seem that long ago they had succumbed to the sinologists' line that that it was far better to kow tow."

Consoled

The prince left Hong Kong with spirits lifting: "I stood on deck gazing at the departing skyline of Hong Kong and telling myself that perhaps it is good for the soul to have to say goodbye to that and the dear yacht in the same year. Perhaps."

He was consoled by a steam-past by the ships of the Royal Navy's fleet in the Pacific. "The American navy could not have carried out a manoeuvre like it. It takes 300 years of hard-won experience to do it so the Chinese must have been mystified by what was going on."

The newspaper's purpose in publishing the prince's journal, which had been circulated only to a few friends, Mr Warby said, was to enable public to understand his views and it was justified in doing so. "They are not 'what I did on my holidays'," he said.

The barrister said the prince had authorised an official - apparently deputy private secretary Mark Bolland - to leak the prince's views on the litigation culture to the Daily Mail in 2002. "It was done with the Prince of Wales's knowledge - it is somewhat ironic," he said. "We are not critical of the prince over this conduct but the price of political activism is transparency. You cannot have it both ways."

The case is due to finish today.

    Prince's candid thoughts revealed to a larger than intended audience, G, 23.2.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/monarchy/story/0,,1715911,00.html

Charles the political dissident, as revealed by his former aide

Witness statement tells of prince's furious letters to ministers


Wednesday February 22, 2006
Guardian
Stephen Bates

Prince Charles regards himself as a "dissident working against the prevailing political consensus", who scatters furious letters to ministers on contentious issues and denounces elected leaders of other countries, it was revealed yesterday.

The views and practices of the heir to the throne were detailed in a remarkable witness statement by his former deputy private secretary and spin doctor, Mark Bolland, who claimed the prince routinely meddled in political issues and wrote sometimes in extreme terms to ministers, MPs and others in positions of political power and influence.

The remarks, which were not even read out in court, overshadowed the prince's attempt to seek summary judgment against the Mail on Sunday for breach of confidence and infringement of copyright after the paper published extracts last November from a journal he wrote following the British handover of Hong Kong in 1997, giving candid views of the then Chinese leadership and British ministers.

The remarks also produced rebuttal statements from Sir Michael Peat and Sir Stephen Lamport, his current and former private secretaries, leaving a clear impression of continued chaos in Clarence House.

Mr Bolland's 10-page statement said: "The prince used all the means of communication at his disposal, including meetings with ministers and others, speeches and correspondence with leaders in all walks of life and politicians. He was never party-political, but to argue that he was not political was difficult ... These letters were not merely routine and non-controversial ... but written at times in extreme terms ... containing his views on political matters and individual politicians at home and abroad and on international issues.

"He often referred to himself as a 'dissident' working against the prevailing political consensus."

It added: "I remember on many occasions seeing in these day files letters which, for example, denounced the elected leaders of other countries in extreme terms, and other such highly politically sensitive correspondence."

Among matters on which Mr Bolland said the prince made his views known were GM foods.

He also alleged that he refused to attend a banquet held at the Chinese embassy in London in 1999 during a state visit by the then president, Jiang Zemin, and made sure that his boycott was leaked to British newspapers.

Mr Bolland said: "He did this as a deliberate snub to the Chinese because he did not approve of the Chinese regime and is a great supporter of the Dalai Lama whom he views as being oppressed by the Chinese ... The Prince of Wales was delighted at the coverage."

The statement was circulated by Associated Newspapers, the owner of the Mail on Sunday and its sister publication the Daily Mail, as part of its case that it had a right to print extracts from the prince's journal so that the public might know his views and that the prince's opinions were so widely circulated anyway that they could not be held to be confidential.

The prince's legal advisers abandoned an attempt to preserve the statement's confidentiality last week.

The newspaper is arguing that the prince's political behaviour has long been regarded as constitutionally controversial. In its written statement of defence it states: "One who, like the complainant, is a persistent and ardent lobbyist on a range of issues and wields the influence which only his peculiar status can afford, is surely open to greater scrutiny. The electorate ... has the right to know his views. In a democracy the price of political activism must be transparency."

When it published the extracts in defiance of telephone representations from Sir Michael Peat to Mail on Sunday editor, Peter Wright, the newspaper extravagantly praised the prince's views.

The prince's barrister, Hugh Tomlinson QC, argued in court yesterday that the journal was a private document, which the prince had no intention of publishing, even though he arranged for it to be circulated at the time to friends and contacts.

It was leaked to the newspaper, along with seven others, by a disaffected former secretary, named as Sarah Goodall, who was sacked in 2000.

One of the recipients of the prince's private views about members of the government is the Conservative MP Nicholas Soames.

In his rebuttal statement Sir Michael said: "The Prince of Wales avoids making public statements on matters which are the subject of disagreement between political parties.

"He does not campaign on contentious issues but occasionally raises questions about matters which he regards as being of public concern ... The prince has not 'bombarded ministers with his views but has written to them from time to time on issues which he believes are important."

The prince's advisers have been determined to prevent further disclosures and punish the Mail on Sunday despite the experience of the royal butler trials three years ago which ended in embarrassing humiliation for the royal family after the Queen revealed during the trial of the Princess of Wales's former butler Paul Burrell that she had given him permission to take some of the late princess's possessions for safe keeping.

Those trials threw up a picture of the prince's household in administrative chaos. Mr Bolland's witness statement yesterday alleged that the prince's office's reputation "was not completely off the mark".

At Westminster last night ministers were said to be relaxed about the disclosure of the prince's lobbying, which has been known for some years. They were said to welcome his interventions on issues of concern.

    Charles the political dissident, as revealed by his former aide, G, 22.2.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/monarchy/story/0,,1715063,00.html