AND ANOTHER THING
A royal family on the rack and a poltroon in No. 10
PAUL JOHNSON
the personal crises within our royal fam- ily intensify. The Duke of Edinburgh is the latest target for the media, but he can look after himself. And if Fergie has to go bankrupt, that is a minor problem. But the crisis involving the Prince and Princess of Wales, Camilla and now Tiggy cannot be dealt with so easily because the Princess is mother of the future heir. One senses that events are moving to a horrible climax.
Who is to blame for this state of affairs, other than the obvious principals? The Queen, though beyond reproach for her personal conduct, cannot escape censure as a parent and sovereign. Unlike Queen Vic- toria, she has never been tough enough with her children (or sister). She is too easy-going and overinclined to ignore any- thing which does not directly concern her office. But then, throughout the last five years, during which the crisis involving the heir-apparent has grown public and intractable, she has been badly advised — I would say catastrophically advised. If a dis- aster involves a head of state, the head of government cannot escape involvement. In the case of a constitutional monarchy such as Britain's, the Prime Minister, who has all the power, must be held ultimately to blame if things go wrong. It may be his duty to take action or to stay his hand; but in either event his responsibility is paramount. Stanley Baldwin grasped this thoroughly in 1936. He was an unusually diffident and shy man and the last person in the world to pull his rank. But he knew in the end he had to act, and did so with firmness and skill, thus saving the monarchy and reuniting the country. In doing this he took grave politi- cal risks.
By contrast, John Major has let the crisis get out of hand, primarily for fear of imper- illing his own personal position and damag- ing his Government. He is an uneducated man who does not understand the nuances of the constitution, especially its religious aspects, and who has a cloth ear for the res- onances of English history. He is really only at home in the Whips' Office and among cronies like David Mellor and Jeffrey Archer. The interlocking circles of London society, whose gyrations have a direct bear- ing on these untoward royal events, merely make him dizzy. However, his ignorance is no excuse. He should have sought and taken better advice. Moreover, he has been Selfish and irresponsible. Unlike Baldwin, his priorities have been first to escape per- sonal damage, secondly to avoid getting the Government into a scrape, and only thirdly to protect the monarchy. On the whole, then, he has avoided doing anything, while the poison has spread and envenomed more and more people. In December he began to panic a little as he became aware of the damage being done to Britain, and so to him, by the decline in the British royal family's reputation. So he put pressure on a reluctant Queen to order a rapid divorce. It is this which has precipitated the latest bout of antagonisms, for it has raised the ques- tion of who, if anyone, the Prince of Wales will marry when he is 'free', and what rela- tionship this person will have with the royal children.
However, above and beyond the blame Major must shoulder for the negligent manner in which he has carried out his con- stitutional duties, there is his failure to pre- vent, in the first place, the gross intrusion into the private lives of the Prince and Princess of Wales which rendered their marriage an impossibility. Looking back on it, the breakdown seems inevitable. But I for one honestly believe that if the newspa- pers had not been allowed to intrude con- stantly and viciously on their privacy Charles and Diana would have struggled on together, as countless unhappy royal cou- ples have done before them. It was the `Six tons of concrete, please.' media, and especially the downmarket tabloids and one or two rogue broadsheets like the Sunday Times, which precipitated the crisis and, at every stage, deepened and exacerbated it.
If a privacy law of the kind some of us have advocated for many years, and which operates in most European countries, had been on the statute book early in the 1990s — as it could so easily have been — then it is probable that the heir and his wife would still be on reasonably good terms and doing their duties together. Their marriage was unquestionably weakened by the Prince's cruel adultery. But it was actually destroyed by the media, and more particularly by its ability to trample on anyone's privacy, including the constitutionally significant privacy of royalty, without any fear of the law. There have, of course, been plenty of other victims in recent years. The skewer- ing of Prince Philip by the Sun on Tuesday would not have occurred under a privacy law. It is hard to name any sphere or pro- fession which has not seen one of its lead- ers dragged down and ruined by the yellow press in the last three or four years. I am perfectly certain that Margaret Thatcher, had she remained in office, would have ensured by now that a sensible privacy law was in place. But then she was a responsi- ble Prime Minister, a patriot and a woman of courage.
By contrast, Major has funked the priva- cy issue time and again, for the most con- temptible reasons. He believes — wrongly in my view — that the traditional Conserva- tive newspapers will rally round him come election time and that the chances of this happening would be dashed for good if he allowed a privacy law to be enacted. Need- less to say, the yellow press have been care- ful to leave Major's own family alone. They are not fools and he knows they are not fools. But the manner in which he counts on his own family being immune to intru- sion, while leaving others — including col- leagues — exposed, makes his poltroonery even more reprehensible. If the royal imbroglio does end in a tragedy, Major will have blood on his hands. But I doubt if he will harbour any feelings of guilt. He is impervious to such things. He has a Whip's mind and a Whip's heart and a Whip's con- science. I suppose we ought to pity his moral inadequacies and pray for him. But that is no consolation to an ancient royal dynasty heading for the rocks.
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