The Queen Mother (138 page)
Authors: William Shawcross
Rhodesia, another country of which she was fond, posed problems too. In 1954 she was appointed honorary commissioner of the British South Africa Police.
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She took up the appointment willingly, saying, ‘I have vivid memories of the smartness and efficiency of the British South Africa Police on my visit to Southern Rhodesia and it has given me particular pleasure therefore to be able to accept the appointment of your Honorary Commissioner. I would be grateful if you would convey to All Ranks my best wishes and my hope that I may have the opportunity of visiting them again in the not too far distant future.’
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After the white minority government of Rhodesia made its unilateral declaration of independence in 1965, she tried to maintain unofficial contacts with the country, receiving lengthy reports on the welfare of the British South Africa Police until 1970. But in March that year, after Rhodesia had declared herself a republic, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office advised that Queen Elizabeth’s appointment as honorary commissioner of the Police Force should be suspended. She wrote a note saying, ‘Suspend but not Sever! It
could
be cunningly written in.’
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There were then ten more years of increasing bloodshed between the Rhodesian security forces and black nationalist guerrillas before a transfer of authority was brokered in 1980 by the new British government led by Margaret Thatcher. In the country’s first-ever elections held on the basis of universal suffrage, the white minority regime finally lost power to a black government led by one of the principal guerrilla leaders, Robert Mugabe, and the independent country was renamed Zimbabwe. Hopes for a great future for Zimbabwe were to be dashed. The Queen Mother and other friends of the country watched in dismay as, over the next twenty years, Mugabe’s regime became increasingly corrupt and brutal, eventually destroying one of the most fertile and one of the richest countries in Africa.
In South Africa, apartheid was eventually defeated by the moral force of Nelson Mandela and the political skills of President de Klerk, and to the great pleasure of the Queen and the Queen Mother South Africa returned to the Commonwealth. A special service, which the Queen Mother attended, was held in Westminster Abbey on 20 July 1994 to mark the occasion. In March 1995 the Queen made her first visit to the country since her family trip in 1947; she was moved by the reception she was given, particularly in the black townships where the inhabitants lined the streets in far greater numbers than for any other visitor, cheering and waving placards saying ‘THANK YOU FOR COMING BACK’.
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M
ONARCHY OFFERS
constancy. No member of the Royal Family had the opportunity to demonstrate that quality better than the Queen Mother. Remarkably, during what turned out to be not the end but the central period of her life, the political pendulum swung decisively in Britain. With the coming of the Labour government in 1964 after thirteen years of Conservative rule, it had seemed that the move of
society towards government provision of all services was inevitable. It appeared that the role of the charitable sector, supported as it was by the monarchy, would inevitably decline. This was certainly what many Labour politicians wished should happen. They wanted no return to the 1930s and what one young socialist, Robin Cook, characterized as ‘a flag-day NHS’.
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But after Margaret Thatcher won power for the Conservative Party in 1979, collectivist nostrums and activities came under criticism. It was argued that since 1945 collectivism had not proved itself vastly superior to voluntarism; a more balanced view of the potential of philanthropy began to emerge. From within the Royal Family the most trenchant analysis of overwhelming centralized state power came from Prince Philip. In one speech he observed that government was no longer satisfied with such traditional, neutral concerns as peace and security – ‘but now it is interested in morality and behaviour and legislating for the common good. The fact is that the liberty of the individual is a vital part of the common good also.’ He criticized not only the collectivist mentality in Britain but, even more fiercely, the myths of Marxism – above all for its dismissal of the voluntary and altruistic elements in human nature.
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A few years later he was bolder still and was quoted as saying that the monarchy had helped Britain ‘to get over … the development of an urban industrial intelligentsia reasonably easily’.
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As the twentieth century drew to a close, it became clear that members of the Royal Family were still in constant demand to represent different sections of civil society. This was a surprise to some commentators but not so much to members of the family who saw the impact that their charitable and philanthropic work continued to have, year after largely unchanging year. In 1966, Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, the last-surviving grandchild of Queen Victoria, reflected that royalty was ‘an arduous profession’ which allowed its members few opt-outs. ‘Their daily tasks, for months ahead, are prescribed and set out in a diary of engagements from which only illness can excuse them. None but those trained from youth to such an ordeal can sustain it with amiability and composure. The royal motto “ich dien” is no empty phrase. It means what it says – I serve.’
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That was certainly true of Princess Alice herself, who had been tireless in her charitable works. It was equally true of Queen Elizabeth, who continued to add new charities and organizations to her patronages
right up until the end of her life. This aspect of her work brought both institutional and individual dividends.
The constitutional historian Vernon Bogdanor has argued in his book
The Monarchy and the Constitution
that the future of the monarchy lies ‘in the practical employment of its symbolic influence’.
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Queen Elizabeth’s public life and work showed exactly what he meant. The wide and complex web of her organizations kept her in touch with hundreds of different aspects of the changing world around her, and guaranteed that she received a massive postbag. Some of these letters were ‘fan mail’, some were chatty letters from lonely people who wrote regularly and who were referred to as ‘old friends’ by the ladies in waiting whose duty it was to reply. Other letters were requests for advice or help from people who clearly believed that Queen Elizabeth could be of more assistance to them than the impersonal organs of the state.
One of her ladies in waiting, Lady Angela Oswald, said later, ‘People treated her as a mixture of Agony Aunt, Information Office, Advice Bureau, Solve-the-Problem organisation. They wrote when they had nowhere else to turn.’ The ladies in waiting would discuss with Queen Elizabeth how best to help each individual – often one of her many patronages could assist – and, in later years, Fiona Fletcher, the Lady Clerk, ran an extensive filing system of Queen Elizabeth’s contacts which enabled specific assistance to be given. The benefit, to thousands of different people over the decades, was real. Her unique, personal value as a charitable fundraiser was noted by her friend Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire at a performance of
Die Fledermaus
at the Royal Opera House in aid of the Putney Hospital for Incurables, with which Queen Elizabeth had a long association. ‘Good Cake
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came and turned it into a gala. One forgets between seeing her what a star she is & what incredible and wicked charm she has got.’
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The Queen Mother’s philanthropic reach by the last decade of her life was remarkable, but most other senior members of the Royal Family played similar roles with their patronages and regiments. Indeed, this fruitful interchange showed the robustness of British philanthropic traditions despite the rise of the state. It has been argued that consistent royal involvement in the realm of voluntary action,
with its diversity, its principled rivalry and its love of the
ad hoc
remedy, had given the nation ‘immeasurable moral and democratic benefit’.
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At the same time, the monarchy offered a constitutional landmark and institutional continuity which made the costs of social change appear easier to bear.
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Queen Elizabeth spoke to this issue in January 1993, when she gave her annual talk to the Sandringham Women’s Institute. Looking back fifty years, she recalled the time ‘when the skies above us were filled with aircraft of the American 8th Air Force, stationed all around us in East Anglia’. She went on to affirm her faith in the unaltered core of her country: ‘Many changes have come about since those days of War, some good, and some not so good, but through all those changing scenes of life we can feel the strong beat of the English heart.’
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It was in this heart that she trusted above all.
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The inscription above the door of the original BBC headquarters in Portland Place read, ‘This Temple of the Arts and Muses is dedicated to Almighty God by the first Governors of Broadcasting in the year 1931, Sir John Reith being Director-General. It is their prayer that good seed sown may bring forth a good harvest, that all things hostile to peace or purity may be banished from this house, and that the people, inclining their ear to whatsoever things are beautiful and honest and of good report, may tread the path of wisdom and uprightness.’
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See Appendix B for a complete list of Queen Elizabeth’s patronages.
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This fund, set up in 1941 on the initiative of a Canadian Battle of Britain pilot, Flight Lieutenant Hartland de M. Molson, raised huge sums in Canada, initially for British victims of air raids, under the chairmanship of John G. McConnell. The organizers wanted it to be associated with Queen Elizabeth, and she allowed it to use her name, and also agreed to a later proposal that its work should extend throughout the Empire, and to victims of all kinds of enemy attack. By December 1941 it had raised £145,000; by VE Day $1,655,252 had been collected. It ceased to make appeals after May 1945, and its funds were used to support the WVS and SSAFA. (RA QEQMH/PS/CSP/Queen’s Canadian Fund)
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Benjamin Britten’s health was failing following a stroke, but that year the Queen commissioned him to compose a short piece as a surprise present for Queen Elizabeth’s seventy-fifth birthday. The result was
A Birthday Hansel
, a setting for voice and harp of poems by Robert Burns.
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The term used for regimental colours in the cavalry.
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Field Marshal Harold Alexander, first Earl Alexander of Tunis KG OM (1891–1969). During the Second World War he served as a commander in Burma, North Africa and Italy, eventually rising to become Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces Headquarters. In 1946 he succeeded Lord Athlone as Governor General of Canada and in 1952 he returned to Britain to become minister of defence in Winston Churchill’s Cabinet before retiring from public life in 1954.
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The shamrock was grown specially for the regiment in County Cork, and every serving member received a sprig; hitherto it had been provided by the regiment, but Queen Elizabeth decided to pay for it herself. The initial annual cost of about £25 rose to more than £1,700 over the next thirty years.
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The British South Africa Police (a Rhodesian force) had its origin in the British South Africa Company’s Police which was formed under the powers conferred by the Charter granted to the company in 1889 by Queen Victoria. The services of the BSAP to the Empire were recognized as early as 1904 when a banner in recognition of these services was presented to the force at Mafeking by Lord Milner on behalf of the King.
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‘Cake’ was the nickname that the Duchess gave to the Queen Mother after being deeply impressed long before by her enthusiasm at a wedding when the cake was cut.
AT HOME
‘One feels so beautifully far away’
F
OR
Q
UEEN
E
LIZABETH
one decade glided into another, with the basic pattern of her days, weeks, months and years being fairly constant. Thus in outward form the action on stage in 1963, for example, would in many ways have been repeated in 1983 or 1993, with the cast of characters much the same, merely older. Her constant pleasures – from P. G. Wodehouse to Sandown Park, from the Black Watch to Middle Temple, from her corgis to the royal yacht
Britannia
– did not change.
Each year she spent Christmas with the Royal Family, until 1964 at Sandringham and after that at Windsor until 1988, when the family reverted to spending Christmas at Sandringham. They were always at Sandringham for the New Year and, unless she was unwell, in which case the Queen took her place, Queen Elizabeth never missed her first fixture there in January: the annual general meeting of the Sandringham Women’s Institute. She visited the studs at Sandringham and Wolferton at least twice a week during her stay. Every year on 6 February, the anniversary of the King’s death, she took communion, usually with other members of the family. In later years she would spend this day at Royal Lodge.
For most of the second half of the winter and early spring she would be based at Clarence House with weekends at Royal Lodge. Easter was always with the family at Windsor and in May she would make her first visit of the year to Scotland, in the early years to the Castle of Mey, where she was constantly improving the house and the garden and where, in 1960, she bought the neighbouring Longoe Farm to pursue her growing interest in breeding Aberdeen Angus cattle and North Country Cheviot sheep. Latterly she went to Birkhall in May and invited friends to stay for the fishing. Then she would return south.
Summer’s annual events included the Derby, Trooping the Colour on Horse Guards Parade, the Garter Service at Windsor, and Royal Ascot. In July she went back to Norfolk for the King’s Lynn Festival and the Sandringham Flower Show. After her birthday on 4 August, she would go to Mey for a longer holiday, then a weekend with the Queen and other members of the family at Balmoral, after which she would move down the road to her home, Birkhall, until the end of October – with one final week at Mey. Then it was back to London and Royal Lodge until Christmas. Within this fairly well-fixed timetable there were many events that were ringfenced, on both the private and the public sides of her life.
