Royal intervention in the affairs of another state is a very risky business
Prince Charles’s intervention seems to have played some part, earlier this month, in the release from a Pakistan jail of a British man, Mirza Tahir Hussain, who had languished in prison for 18 years for the alleged murder of a taxi driver. Reunited with his family at Heathrow on 17 November, Mr Hussain thanked the Prince of Wales, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and human rights groups who had worked for the clemency which President Musharraf has granted him.
Given the apparent injustice of Mr Hussain’s conviction (he had been acquitted by a civil court, then sentenced to hang by a Sharia court), the efforts of human rights activists and of Tony Blair and Margaret Beckett, though praiseworthy, were not surprising. Prince Charles’s involvement in the case, however, was, I believe, rather unusual.
While on a visit to Pakistan with the Duchess of Cornwall, the Prince raised Mr Hussain’s plight during a meeting with President Musharraf; and neither Clarence House nor the government of Pakistan (which issued a statement reporting the intervention) seems to have wanted to hush this up. Given the happy ending to the story, few will be disposed to question the appropriateness of the royal intervention. I certainly cannot bring myself to do so. But when it comes to putting an oar in to essentially intergovernmental affairs of a controversial kind, there is a delicate tightrope to be trodden by monarchs and heirs to the throne. Unless Musharraf had privately invited Charles’s démarche in order to give him an excuse for action he anyway wanted, the Prince was taking a risk. If ministers had urged him to intervene, then so were they.
He got away with it. So did the Queen, who in 1975 took a much more serious risk, almost certainly at the urging of Harold Wilson’s government, and was lucky indeed to succeed. The story, a huge sensation at the time, has been almost completely forgotten. It is worth retelling.
Denis Hills, who died two years ago at the age of 90, was an adventurer, a maverick and a fine writer. A grammar-school boy who had been a schoolmate of Enoch Powell at King Edward’s School in Birmingham (‘A pale face,’ wrote Hills, ‘never without his cap, carried an armful of books and kept to himself’), he became one of a minority of white university lecturers in Uganda who had not quit the country as Idi Amin went off the rails. He had been writing a book (The White Pumpkin) for publication after he left the country, but Amin’s spies discovered that he had described the dictator as a ‘village tyrant’ and a ‘black Nero’ and he was thrown into prison, tried and sentenced to death by firing squad.
‘I tried to persuade myself that the whole affair — my cell walls spattered with the blood of squashed mosquitoes and despairing graffiti, the shuffle of army boots in the corridor, the occasional cackle of laughter from the guardroom ... was a pantomime. Amin liked clowning. But he would joke one moment, and order one of his killer squad to cut off a man’s head the next.’ (Denis Hills, Tyrants and Mountains, John Murray, 1992) The most tremendous international hooha ensued, which ended in the British foreign secretary, James Callaghan, being told by Amin that unless he came to Kampala himself, within ten days, Hills would be shot. Mr Callaghan refused to go unless Hills had first been reprieved. Queen Elizabeth II wrote Amin a private letter and sent Lieutenant-General Sir Chandos Blair to deliver it personally. Amin met him in a cowboy hat, raged against the British, told the press that Chandos was drunk, and that he had signed a warrant for Hills’s execution. Ugandan radio reported that the President had thrown the Queen’s letter on to the floor. ‘But because the Queen is my friend, the order will be reconsidered.’ Jim Callaghan arrived in an RAF transport plane carrying officials and British journalists. Amin got his summit; Callaghan got his man; the press got their story; poor General Blair (‘small and neat in a service uniform with campaign ribbons, ... trying ... to control his impatience’) managed to keep his temper; and they all flew back to Britain, the foreign secretary treating Hills to steak and champagne on board, and quizzing him on Enoch Powell. ‘“Back to the economy,” he sighed, and told his press officer to take me to see the journalists who were making a great din, like a rugger team, in the rear of the plane.’ The story has a Gilbert and Sullivan quality. After landing, Hills learnt that there had been a statement and questions in the Commons. I have found the report in the Times of 24 June 1975. Callaghan had told the House of the Queen’s intervention. ‘Only Mr Enoch Powell ... showed any signs of dissent. How did Mr Callaghan dare to court the humiliation which had been inflicted on the Queen by advising her to write to President Amin, he asked. Mr Callaghan replied that the Queen acted on the advice of the Prime Minister, but there was no reluctance on anyone’s part to act on the advice that was given.’ Fifty-five years after Hills and Powell had left King Edward’s School, Hills met the MP again, at a crowded party. ‘I recognised the pallor, the stare and the frown. He recognised me straight away. “You were an outstanding sportsman,” he said, solemnly. I told him I agreed with his protest. “The risk of the Queen being humiliated, had I known about it at the time, would have been unacceptable.” Nothing more was said, and we drifted apart.’ Was Powell right? On balance I judge otherwise, but only on balance. It must be part of a monarch’s duty to try to help her subjects in distress overseas, even if this is normally left to her ministers. And Amin was such a buffoon, yet so bloodthirsty, that few would have thought the Queen ‘humiliated’ if her intervention had failed. Nevertheless you can be sure there will have been an anguished debate about this within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and probably the Palace too. At any one time there are likely to be dozens of British citizens on death row abroad, some of them in pitiable circumstances: the likely victims of gross injustice. After Prince Charles’s intervention in Pakistan, it will be just that little bit harder to justify his non-intervention in the next scandalous abuse of a British expatriate that comes to the attention of the news media.
Royal démarches are precious things, not least because they are so rare. They should be used sparingly.
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