The Queen’s role as a mainstay of Britain’s ‘soft power’ – through decades of trials and tribulations
Sean O'Grady charts how Her Majesty’s charisma has partly compensated for Britain’s loss of empire and declining power in the world
Reconciliation and tolerance are values so central to the job description of Queen Elizabeth II that she is almost woke. Although, in reality, of course, all she is doing is accepting and promoting the kind of multicultural and multiracial societies that the UK and the commonwealth have become – in sharp contrast to the homogenous scene in 1952 (with the uneasy exception of the then dominion of the Union of South Africa, in its apartheid phase).
She does the right thing the right way, on the whole, and, especially as the years have gone on, her charisma has partly compensated for Britain’s loss of empire and declining power in the world. She has been able to leverage her position to help her ministers and further British interests, especially in signalling and leading efforts at reconciliation.
Two decades after the end of the war, for example, she visited what was then West Germany to show there were no hard feelings about the time when the Luftwaffe had bombed Buckingham Palace and missed killing her father by a few yards (of course handed the King and Queen a huge propaganda victory in their tours of bombed-out neighbourhoods at the same time – “at last we can look the east end in the face”).
A few years later, when feelings against Japan were still running high, she hosted the state visit of Emperor Hirohito. In recent years, the stand-out success was the visit to Ireland in 2011, with a particularly delicate phrasing of an apology in all but name:
“These events have touched us all, many of us personally, and are a painful legacy. We can never forget those who have died or been injured, and their families. To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past, I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight, we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all. But it is also true that no one who looked to the future over the past centuries could have imagined the strength of the bonds that are now in place between the governments and the people of our two nations, the spirit of partnership that we now enjoy, and the lasting rapport between us.”
Again, it is difficult to look at those words and not feel a sense of unease when contemplating the current state of affairs on the island of Ireland.
It was perhaps no accident that the Queen chose the pre-eminent multicultural city of Leicester in which to begin her golden jubilee tour in 2012, and she has always made a point of including other faith groups and cultural leaders in national events, including the annual Cenotaph ceremonies.
In her own address to parliament in 2002 – not the Queen’s Speech, which is written for her by her ministers – she was bold: “The consolidation of our richly multicultural and multifaith society, a major development since 1952, is being achieved remarkably peacefully and with much goodwill.” In 2004 she doubled down, and went so far as to declare:
“There is certainly much more to be done and many challenges to be overcome. Discrimination still exists. Some people feel that their own beliefs are being threatened. Some are unhappy about unfamiliar cultures.
“They all need to be reassured that there is so much to be gained by reaching out to others; that diversity is indeed a strength and not a threat.
“We need also to realise that peaceful and steady progress in our society of differing cultures and heritage can be threatened at any moment by the actions of extremists at home, or by events abroad. We can certainly never be complacent.”
Woke, no? Occasionally we hear hints about her politics. Returning from one audience, Tony Benn, one of the rare socialists in any of “her” Labour governments, concluded she was a typical aristocratic woman of her generation, and a moderate “wet” Tory. Her favourite prime ministers seem to have been Churchill and Harold Wilson, and The Sunday Times said she fell out with Margaret Thatcher over her “divisive” policies in the 1980s. (Apparently the two were a little puzzled by one another, but got along despite “policy differences” over the miners’ strike and commonwealth sanctions on South Africa.)
The only area in which she just cannot seem to control her messaging is Scottish independence. At the last independence referendum, she told a well-wisher that people should “think carefully” about their vote. At the silver jubilee dinner in 1977, with the slogan “It’s Scotland’s Oil” echoing around, she caused unusual upset by saying with mild defiance: “I cannot forget that I was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Perhaps this jubilee is a time to remind ourselves of the benefits which union has conferred, at home and in our international dealings, on the inhabitants of all parts of this United Kingdom.”
Otherwise, during crises, hung parliaments, and in the days when she had to choose a new Tory prime minister (before they had these pesky leadership elections), she didn’t put a foot wrong, staying out of it for as long as possible.
The Queen is so ubiquitous that we have always been in danger of taking her for granted, but her familiarity adds to the idea that we “know her” – so much so that this week, I heard people considering her as their own granny.
She’s unchanging in appearance and habits, even as she constantly adapts to and accepts change. Until recently, the annual rituals were unchanging, and mostly recognisable to her ancestors – Royal Ascot, state openings of parliament, Maundy Thursday, the rotating residencies in Balmoral, Windsor and Sandringham, wringing the necks of wildfowl, Remembrance Sunday, the Christmas broadcast, foreign visits. She’s had the same hairdo since 1960. The corgis have been around since the 1940s. She’s on the stamps, the coins and the banknotes, as idiosyncratically celebrated in The Jam’s 1978 hit “Down in the Tube Station at Midnight”: “I fumble for change and pull out the Queen / Smiling, beguiling…”
Far more important, though, is that innate understanding that the monarchy rules with the permission of the people, and not the other way round. It requires a dash of humility. After the death of Diana, and marking her own golden wedding anniversary in 1997, the Queen offered this reflection to Tony Blair and the wider nation:
“Despite the huge constitutional difference between a hereditary monarchy and an elected government, in reality, the gulf is not so wide. They are complementary institutions, each with its own role to play. And each, in its different way, exists only with the support and consent of the people. That consent, or the lack of it, is expressed for you, Prime Minister, through the ballot box. It is a tough, even brutal system, but at least the message is a clear one for all to read.
“For us, a royal family, however, the message is often harder to read, obscured as it can be by deference, rhetoric, or the conflicting currents of public opinion. But read it we must. I have done my best, with Prince Philip’s constant love and help, to interpret it correctly through the years of our marriage and of my reign as your queen. And we shall, as a family, try together to do so in the future.”
“Brutal” is right, and she in turn has also had to be brutal in response to public pressure. When her sister wished to marry Group Captain Peter Townsend, a divorced man, back in the 1950s, it was a sensational story that divided the nation. The Queen told Margaret that she could go ahead, but she’d lose her royal status. Margaret carried on instead.
Much later, and much more serious, is the case of Prince Andrew: it’s widely said, for example, that Andrew is her favourite son, and she certainly did expend money, “political capital” and time trying to save him from himself in the aftermath of the appalling allegations that emanated from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. She probably went too far at times, but in the end still excommunicated him, stripping him of titles and even his HRH. It sounds silly to those of us who won’t still be able to enjoy a highly comfortable (if low-profile) retirement, but in her own antique world of medals, garters and flummery, it must have hurt her, too.
The Prince Andrew problem also provides another lesson. When things have gone wrong for the Queen over the decades, it has usually been down to members of her family. Three of four children have been divorced, as was her sister Margaret – a woman who tried to balance protocol and partying, and failed.
For the sake of brevity, we may as well use shorthand for the litany of other events that every so often violated the Queen’s peace – including Charles’s affairs, Diana’s affairs, Charles and Diana’s public warfare, the Bashir interview, Squidgygate, It’s a Royal Knockout, Philip’s gaffes, the Queen Mother’s extravagance and gambling debts, phone hacking (not their fault, obvs), Anne’s rudeness, Edward quitting the Royal Marines, and “Megxit”. Rolf Harris painted her portrait, and a Russian spy, Sir Anthony Blunt, looked after her pictures. Her poets laureate wrote some awful rhymes, and photographers tried to catch her pulling a face, which happened with surprising frequency. There were many more such episodes so minor that they are lost to memory.
The Queen has survived all of these scrapes and scandals because whatever happened, her judgement was usually by the public (to the extent that anyone really cared).
She has also taken some of the criticism on board. Early in her reign in 1958, for example, she and her stuffy “tweedy” court was criticised by John Grigg (aka Lord Altrincham) for being out of touch, and her public statements were described as a “pain in the neck”: “The personality conveyed by the utterances which are put into her mouth is that of a priggish schoolgirl, captain of the hockey team, a prefect and a recent candidate for Confirmation. It is not thus that she will be enabled to come into her own as an independent and distinctive character.”
Now forgotten, it caused a huge storm at the time, but it was well meant – and indeed, soon after, the old custom of the “debutantes” being presented to Her Majesty was abolished, and from the vantage point of today, she took his advice to heart:
“When she has lost the bloom of youth, the Queen’s reputation will depend, far more than it does now, upon her personality. It will not then be enough for her to go through the motions; she will have to say things which people can remember, and do things on her own initiative which will make people sit up and take notice. As yet there is little sign that such a personality is emerging. But time, though no longer clearly on her side, is not yet her enemy.”
The Queen has also dealt with the constant attacks on her family’s subsidised lifestyle, notably by Labour MP Willie Hamilton (who called her “a clockwork doll”); having a safety pin put through her nose in artwork for the Sex Pistols; mocked as “Brenda” by Private Eye; constant press intrusion; a recent dose of Covid-19; minor operations; being made into a squeaky puppet by Spitting Image; appearing to jump out of a helicopter with James Bond for the 2012 London Olympics (a risky but winning move); dramatisation by Alan Bennett and Netflix; and portrayals by the likes of Prunella Scales, Helen Mirren, Olivia Colman, Claire Foy and Stanley Baxter.
She seems to think that she overdid the openness in the 1969 BBC “fly on the wall” documentary The Royal Family, where they’re seen barbecuing sausages and watching television in an unreal way (Margaret pointed out they usually watched the TV in their own respective palaces). It’s never been repeated in full, though it’s quite harmless. She’s also somehow got through being outed as an unlikely but long-term Arsenal fan, in a land where football is still a tribal affair.
There was the curious instance of the visit in 1999 to Dougrie Gardens on Glasgow’s Craigdale estate, where she met, almost at random, a Mrs Susan McCarron, who gave her tea and biscuits. Hobnobbing though she was, the Queen declined the offer of an actual McVitie’s Hobnob. Mrs McCarron said: “It went well. I wasn’t nervous at all. She was asking about the house and how long I had lived here, where I lived before. I found her very easy to talk to.” The press photo of the pair was thought by some to capture a “declining and disconnected monarchy” and was described as “one of the most important artefacts of the Elizabethan reign”. The palace explained that it was “the first of her more intimate meet-the-people visits”. It also proved to be the last.
Everyone who meets her seems to have relished it, and liked to gossip about it – whoever they were. Richard Crossman, for example, an acerbic Labour minister and avid diarist, recorded this lively encounter with her in July 1968 after a meeting of the Privy Council:
“The Queen was in tremendous form. After the council, when the drinks were circulating, she began to describe to me a television programme she had seen of a wrestling match. An all-in wrestler had been thrown out over the ropes, landed on his feet, and after writhing in agony has suddenly shot back into the ring, seized his opponent and forced him to resign… It was interesting to hear what a vivid description she gave of the whole scene, writhing herself, twisting and turning, completely relaxed. It was quite an eye-opener to see how she enjoyed it. Afterwards, each of the ministers had a good long chat with her alone before we all slipped off.”
The British, or at least many of them, are obsessed with the tiniest details of her personal habits – how she likes her tea (Earl Grey, loose-leaf, milk last); where she gets her underwear (Rigby & Peller, until they revealed the secrets of the regal bra); and her favourite colour (blue, and she dislikes beige). It is another constant of her reign.
Malicious or affectionate, the constant attention and promotion have all probably helped her become a British “soft power” super-weapon. That is also something the country seems to like, a rare global asset for Global Britain.
She has also been fortunate in her biographers, from Richard Dimbleby to Robert Lacey, Ben Pimlott and Andrew Marr, who have also helped cement the image of the model constitutional monarch. While plainly dating back to the long-gone age of deference and the dawn of her reign, when the mood was of a second Elizabethan Age – and people really did think she was chosen by the grace of God – Dimbleby’s rather sycophantic book ended with some romantic and poetic flourishes, but ones that presciently captured the abiding sense that a monarch only governs in the manner the people dictate:
“‘Kings cannot reign unless their subjects give’, wrote Dryden; and as Princess Elizabeth, the Queen made it clear that her 21st birthday vow of dedication to the service of ourselves and the ‘great imperial family to which we all belong’ was possible only if the people themselves shared in it. Her throne must find its foundation in the hearts of subjects if the burden of monarchy is to be made bearable for her, and her functions as sovereign are to have a real and practical value… So let it be.”
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