Below is the story of my day touring Tema with Prince Philip, in this chapter from my book “The Catholic Orangemen of Togo”. You may be surprised to read that I rather liked him.
The African Queen
One morning I was sitting in the lounge at Devonshire House, with its fitted wool carpets and chintz sofas. I was drinking the tea that our steward, Nasser, had brought me. I heard movement in a corner of the room, and thought it must be Nasser cleaning there. But looking round, I saw nobody. Puzzled, I got up and walked towards that corner. Rounding a settee, I nearly stood upon a thin, green snake. About four feet long and just the thickness of your thumb, it was a bright, almost lime green colour. There was not much wedge shape to its head, which rather tapered from its neck. Its tongue was flickering toward me, perhaps a foot away, its head raised only slightly off the floor. I took a step backwards. In response it too retreated, at surprising speed, and zipped up the inside of the curtains.
I stood stock still and yelled “Nasser! Nasser!”
This brought Nasser hurrying into the living room with Gloria, the cook.
“Nasser, there’s a snake in the curtains!”
Nasser and Gloria screamed, threw their arms in the air, and ran together into the kitchen and out the back door of the house. This was not altogether helpful.
I remained where I was to keep an eye on the snake, not wanting it to be lurking inside the house unseen. After a while the front door opened and somebody, presumably Nasser, threw in Nasser’s scruffy little dog. The dog was normally banned from the house, and celebrated this unexpected turn of events by immediately urinating against the hall table. Then the dog too ran into the kitchen and out of the back door.
Abandoning my watch, I went out and recruited the reluctant gardeners and gate guards. They armed themselves with long sticks and came in and beat the curtains until the snake fell onto the floor. As it sped for cover under a sofa, Samuel the youngest gardener got in a solid blow, and soon everyone was joining in, raining down blows on the twitching snake. They carried its disjointed body out on the end of a stick, and burnt it on a bonfire.
Everyone identified it as a green mamba. I was sceptical. Green mambas are among the world’s deadliest snakes, and I imagined them to look beefy like cobras, not whip thin and small headed like this. But a search on the agonisingly slow internet showed that indeed it did look very like a green mamba.
The important question arose of how it had entered the house. With air conditioning, the doors and windows were usually shut. Nasser seemed to have solved the mystery when he remarked that a dead one had been found last year inside an air conditioner. The unit had stopped working, and when they came to fix it they found a snake jammed in the mechanism. That seemed the answer; it had appeared just under a conditioner, and it seemed likely the slim snake had entered via the vent pipe, avoiding the fan as it crawled through the unit.
This was very worrying. If anti-venom was available (and we held a variety in the High Commission) an adult would probably survive a green mamba bite. But it would almost certainly be fatal to Emily, and possibly to Jamie.
A week or so later, I was constructing Emily’s climbing frame, which had arrived from the UK. A rambling contraption of rungs, slides, platforms and trampolines, it required the bolting together of scores of chrome tubes. I was making good progress on it and, as I lifted one walkway side into position above my head, a mamba slid out of the end of the tube, down my arm, round my belly and down my leg. It did this in no great hurry; it probably took four seconds, but felt like four minutes.
There was one terrible moment when it tried an exploratory nuzzle of its head into the waistband of my trousers, but luckily it decided to proceed down the outside to the ground. It then zig zagged across the lawn to nestle in the exposed tops of the roots of a great avocado tree. Again the mob arrived and beat it to death with sticks. I persuaded them to keep the body this time, and decided that definite action was needed.
I called in a pest control expert. I was advised to try the “Snake Doctor”. I was a bit sceptical, equating “Snake Doctor” with “Witch Doctor”, but when he arrived I discovered that this charming chubby Ghanaian really did have a PhD in Pest Control from the University of Reading. As Fiona had an MSc in Crop Protection from the same Department, they got on like a house on fire and it was difficult to get them away from cups of tea to the business in hand.
He confirmed that the dead snake really was a green mamba. We obviously had a colony. They lived in trees, and he advised us to clear an area of wasteland beyond the boundaries of our house, and build a high boundary wall of rough brick at the back, rather than the existing iron palings. He also suggested we cut down an avenue of some 16 huge mature trees along the drive. I was very sad, but followed this sensible advice. That removed the mamba problem from Devonshire House. But I continued to attract mambas on my travels around Ghana.
The second half of that first year in Ghana was to be almost entirely taken up with preparations for the State Visit of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh in November 1999. A huge amount of work goes into organising such a visit; every move is staged and choreographed, designed for media effect. You need to know in advance just where everybody is going to be, who will move where when, and what they will say. You need to place and organise the media to best advantage. You need to stick within very strict rules as to what the Queen will or will not do. Most difficult of all, you have to agree all this with the host government.
I had been through it all quite recently, having paid a major part in the organisation of the State Visit to Poland in 1996. That had gone very well. The Poles regarded it as an important symbol that communism had been definitively finished. It was visually stunning, and at a time when the Royal Family was dogged with hostile media coverage, it had been their first unmixed positive coverage in the UK for ages. I had handled the media angles, and my stock stood very high in the Palace.
I am a republican personally; I was just doing my job. The Palace staff knew I was a republican, not least because I had turned down the offer of being made a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order (LVO) after the Warsaw visit. I had earlier turned down the offer to be an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) after the first Gulf war.
Rawlings was delighted that the Queen was coming. He craved respectability and acceptance in the international community, which had been hard to come by after his violent beginnings. But he had turned his Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) into a political party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), and had fought elections in 1992 and 1996 against the opposition New Patriotic Party, which had an unbroken tradition running back to Nkrumah’s opponent J B Danquah and his colleague Kofi Busia. There were widespread allegations of vote-rigging, violence and intimidation, and certainly in 1992 the nation was still too cowed to engage in much open debate.
Even by 1999, social life was still inhibited by the fact that nobody except those close to the Rawlings would do anything that might be construed as an ostentatious display of life, while Rawlings had sustained and inflated the personality cult of Nkrumah still further (he is known as Osagyefo, “the conqueror”.) Open discussion of the disasters Nkrumah brought upon Ghana was almost impossible. It is still difficult for many Ghanaians today, after decades of brainwashing. As Rawlings had gradually liberalised society, the increasing freedom of the media, particularly the FM radio station, was giving a great boost to democracy. But there was still much prudent self-censorship. The media was particularly reticent about investigating governmental corruption.
The NDC government was massively corrupt. There was one gratuitous example which especially annoyed me. A company called International Generics, registered in Southampton, had got loans totalling over £30 million from the Royal Bank of Scotland to construct two hotels, La Palm and Coco Palm. One was on the beach next to the Labadi Beach Hotel, the other on Fourth Circular Road in Cantonments, on the site of the former Star Hotel. The loan repayments were guaranteed by the Export Credit Guarantee Department, at the time a British government agency designed to insure UK exporters against loss. In effect the British taxpayer was underwriting the export, and if the loan defaulted the British taxpayer would pay.
In fact, this is what happened, and the file crossed my desk because the British people were now paying out on defaulted payments to the Royal Bank of Scotland. So I went to look at the two hotels. I found La Palm Hotel was some cleared land, some concrete foundations, and one eight room chalet without a roof. Coco Palm hotel didn’t exist at all. In a corner of the plot, four houses had been built by International Generics. As the housing market in Accra was very strong, these had been pre-sold, so none of the loan had gone into them.
I was astonished. The papers clearly showed that all £31.5 million had been fully disbursed by the Royal Bank of Scotland, against progress and completion certificates on the construction. But in truth there was virtually no construction. How could this have happened?
The Chief Executive of International Generics was an Israeli named Leon Tamman. He was a close friend to, and a front for, Mrs Rawlings. Tamman also had an architect’s firm, which had been signing off completion certificates for the non-existent work on the hotel. Almost all of the £30 million was simply stolen by Tamman and Mrs Rawlings.
The Royal Bank of Scotland had plainly failed in due diligence, having paid out on completion of two buildings, one not started and one only just started. But the Royal Bank of Scotland really couldn’t give a toss, because the repayments and interest were guaranteed by the British taxpayer. Indeed I seemed to be the only one who did care.
The Rawlings had put some of their share of this looted money towards payments on their beautiful home in Dublin. I wrote reports on all this back to London, and specifically urged the Serious Fraud Office to prosecute Tamman and Mrs Rawlings. I received the reply that there was no “appetite” in London for this.
Eventually La Palm did get built, but with over $60 million of new money taken this time from SSNIT, the Ghanaian taxpayers social security and pension fund. Coco Palm never did get built, but Tamman continued to develop it as a housing estate, using another company vehicle. Tamman has since died. The loans were definitively written off by the British government as part of Gordon Brown’s HIPC debt relief initiative.
That is but one example of a single scam, but it gives an insight into the way the country was looted. The unusual feature on this one was that the clever Mr Tamman found a way to cheat the British taxpayer, via Ghana. I still find it galling that the Royal Bank of Scotland also still got their profit, again from the British taxpayer.
So while the State Visit was intended as a reward to Jerry Rawlings for his conversion to democracy and capitalism, I had no illusions about Rawlings’ Ghana. I was determined that we should use the Queen’s visit to help ensure that Rawlings did indeed leave power in January 2001. According to the constitution, his second and final four year term as elected President expired then (if you politely ignored his previous decade as a military dictator). We should get the Queen to point him towards the exit.
Buckingham palace sent a team on an initial reconnaissance visit. It was led by an old friend of mine, Tim Hitchens, Assistant Private Secretary to the Queen, who had joined the FCO when I did. We identified the key features of the programme, which should centre around an address to Parliament. A walkabout might be difficult; Clinton had been almost crushed in Accra by an over-friendly crowd in a situation which got out of control. A school visit to highlight DFID’s work would provide the “meet the people” photo op, otherwise a drive past for the larger crowds. Key questions were identified as whether the Queen should visit Kumasi to meet Ghana’s most important traditional ruler, the Asantehene, and how she should meet the leader of the opposition, John Kufuor. Rawlings was likely to be opposed to both.
The recce visit went very well, and I held a reception for the team before they flew back to London. Several Ghanaian ministers came, and it ended in a very relaxed evening. Tim Hitchens commented that it was the first time he had ever heard Queen and Supertramp at an official function before. It turned out that we had very similar musical tastes.
Planning then took place at quite high intensity for several months. There were regular meetings with the Ghanaian government team tasked to organise the visit, headed by head of their diplomatic service Anand Cato, now Ghanaian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. We then had to visit together all the proposed venues, and walk through the proposed routes, order of events, seating plans etc.
From the very first meeting between the two sides, held in a committee room at the International Conference Centre, it soon became obvious that we had a real problem with Ian Mackley. The High Commissioner had been very high-handed and abrupt with the visiting team from Buckingham Palace, so much so that Tim Hitchens had asked me what was wrong. I said it was just his manner. But there was more to it than that.
In the planning meetings, the set-up did not help the atmosphere. There were two lines of desks, facing each other. The British sat on one side and the Ghanaians on the other, facing each other across a wide divide. The whole dynamic was one of confrontation.
I have sat through some toe-curling meetings before, but that first joint State visit planning meeting in Accra was the worst. It started in friendly enough fashion, with greetings on each side. Then Anand Cato suggested we start with a quick run-through of the programme, from start to finish.
“OK, now will the Queen be arriving by British Airways or by private jet?” asked Anand.
“She will be on one of the VC10s of the Royal Flight” said Ian.
“Right, that’s better. The plane can pull up to the stand closest to the VIP lounge. We will have the convoy of vehicles ready on the tarmac. The stairs will be put to the door, and then the chief of protocol will go up the stairs to escort the Queen and her party down the stairs, where there will be a small reception party…”
“No, hang on there” interjected Ian Mackley, “I will go up the stairs before the chief of protocol.”
“Well, it is customary for the Ambassador or High Commissioner to be in the receiving line at the bottom of the aircraft steps.”
“Well, I can tell you for sure that the first person the Queen will want to see when she arrives in the country will be her High Commissioner.”
“Well, I suppose you can accompany the chief up the steps if you wish…”
“And my wife.”
“Pardon?”
“My wife Sarah. She must accompany me up the steps to meet the Queen.”
“Look, it really isn’t practical to have that many people going on to an already crowded plane where people are preparing to get off…”
“I am sorry, but I must insist that Sarah accompanies me up the stairs and on to the plane.”
“But couldn’t she wait at the bottom of the steps?”
“Absolutely not. How could she stand there without me?”
“OK, well can we then mark down the question of greeting on the plane as an unresolved issue for the next meeting?”
“Alright, but our side insists that my wife…”
“Yes, quite. Now at the bottom of the steps Her Majesty will be greeted by the delegated minister, and presented with flowers by children.”
“Please make sure we are consulted on the choice of children.”
“If you wish. There will be national anthems, but I suggest no formal inspection of the Guard of Honour? Then traditional priests will briefly make ritual oblations, pouring spirits on the ground. The Queen will briefly enter the VIP lounge to take a drink.”
“That’s a waste of time. Let’s get them straight into the convoy and off.”
“But High Commissioner, we have to welcome a visitor with a drink. It is an essential part of our tradition. It will only be very brief.”
“You can do what you like, but she’s not entering the VIP lounge. Waste of time.”
“Let’s mark that down as another issue to be resolved. Now then, first journey…”
The meeting went on for hours and hours, becoming increasingly ill tempered. When we eventually got to the plans for the State Banquet, it all went spectacularly pear-shaped as it had been threatening to do.
“Now we propose a top table of eight. There will be the President and Mrs Rawlings, Her Majesty and the Duke of Edinburgh, The Vice President and Mrs Mills, and Mr and Mrs Robin Cook.”
Ian positively went purple. You could see a vein throbbing at the top left of his forehead. He spoke as though short of breath.
“That is not acceptable. Sarah and I must be at the top table”.
“With respect High Commissioner, there are a great many Ghanaians who will feel they should be at the top table. As we are in Ghana, we feel we are being hospitable in offering equal numbers of British and Ghanaians at the top table. But we also think the best plan is to keep the top table small and exclusive.”
“By all means keep it small,” said Ian, “but as High Commissioner I must be on it.”
“So what do you suggest?” asked Anand.
“Robin Cook” said Ian “He doesn’t need to be on the top table.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Neither could Anand.
“I don’t think you are being serious, High Commissioner” he said.
“I am entirely serious” said Ian. “I outrank Robin Cook. I am the personal representative of a Head of State. Robin Cook only represents the government.”
I decided the man had taken leave of his senses. I wondered at what stage can you declare your commanding officer mad and take over, like on The Cain Mutiny? Anand was obviously thinking much the same.
“Perhaps I might suggest you seek instruction from headquarters on that one?” he asked. “Anyway, can we note that down as another outstanding item, and move on to…”
I don’t know whether Ian secretly realised he had overstepped the mark, but he didn’t come to another planning meeting after that, leaving them to me and the very competent Second Secretary Mike Nithavrianakis.
The most difficult question of all was that of meeting the opposition. Eventually we got the agreement of Buckingham Palace and the FCO to say that, if the Queen were prevented from meeting the opposition, she wouldn’t come. But still the most we could get from Rawlings was that the leader of the opposition could be included in a reception for several hundred people at the International Conference Centre.
I had by now made good personal friends with several Ghanaian politicians. Among those who I could have a social drink with any time were, on the government side John Mahama, Minister of Information and Moses Asaga, Deputy Finance Minister, and on the opposition side John Kufuor, leader of the opposition, his colleagues Hackman Owusu-Agyemang, Shadow Foreign Minister, and Nana Akuffo-Addo, Shadow Attorney General.
In the International Conference Centre the precise route the Queen would take around the crowd was very carefully planned, so I was able to brief John Kufuor exactly where to stand to meet her, and brief the Queen to be sure to stop and chat with him. As he was the tallest man in the crowd, this was all not too difficult.
Once the Queen arrived and the visit started, everything happened in a three day blur of intense activity. Vast crowds turned out, and the Palace staff soon calmed down as they realised that the Queen could expect an uncomplicated and old fashioned reverence from the teeming crowds who were turning out to see “Our Mama”.
The durbar of chiefs in front of Parliament House was a riot of colour and noise. One by one the great chiefs came past, carried on their palanquins, preceded by their entourage, drummers banging away ferociously and the chiefs, laden down with gold necklaces and bangles, struggled to perform their energetic seated dances. Many of the hefty dancing women wore the cloth that had been created for the occasion, with a picture of the Queen jiggling about on one large breast in partnership with Jerry Rawlings jiving on the other, the same pairing being also displayed on the buttocks.
After the last of the chiefs went through, the tens of thousands of spectators started to mill everywhere and we had to race for the Royal convoy to get out through the crowds. Robin Cook had stopped to give an ad hoc interview to an extremely pretty South African television reporter. Mike Nithavrianakis tried to hurry him along but got a fierce glare for his pains. Eventually everyone was in their cars but Cook; the Ghanaian outriders were itching to start as the crowds ahead and around got ever denser.
But where was Cook? We delayed, with the Queen sitting in her car for two or three minutes, but still there was no sign of the Secretary of State or his staff getting into their vehicle. Eventually the outriders swept off; the crowds closed in behind and we had abandoned our dilettante Foreign Secretary. Having lost the protection of the convoy and being caught up in the crowds and traffic, it took him an hour to catch up.
Cook was an enigma. I had already experienced his famous lack of both punctuality and consideration when kept waiting to see him over the Sandline Affair. His behaviour now seemed to combine an attractive contempt for protocol with a goat-like tendency – would he have fallen behind to give a very bland interview to a male South African reporter? He was also breaking the tradition that the Foreign Secretary does not make media comments when accompanying the Queen.
When we returned to the Labadi Beach Hotel, there was to be further evidence of Cook’s view that the World revolved around him. He was interviewing FCO staff for the position of his new Private Secretary. Astonishingly, he had decided that it would best suit his itinerary to hold these interviews in Accra rather than London. One candidate, Ros Marsden, had an extremely busy job as Head of United Nations Department. Yet she had to give up three days work to fly to be interviewed in Accra, when her office was just round the corner from his in London. Other candidates from posts around the World had difficult journeys to complete to get to Accra at all. I thought this rather outrageous of Cook, and was surprised nobody else seemed much concerned.
The port town of Tema, linked to Accra by fifteen miles of motorway and fast becoming part of a single extensive metropolis, sits firmly on the Greenwich Meridian. As far as land goes, Tema is the centre of the Earth, being the closest dry spot to the junction of the Equator and the Greenwich Meridian. You can travel South from Tema over 6,000 miles across sea until you hit the Antarctic.
There was in 1999 a particular vogue for linking the Greenwich Meridian with the Millennium. This was because of the role of the meridian in determining not just longitude but time. Of course, the two are inextricably linked with time initially used to calculate longitude. That is why Greenwich hosted both the Naval Academy and the Royal Observatory.
The fascination with all this had several manifestations. There was a BBC documentary travelogue down the Greenwich meridian. There was a best-selling book about the invention of naval chronometers, Longitude by Dava Sobel, which I read and was as interesting as a book about making clocks can be. There were a number of aid projects down the meridian, including by War Child and Comic Relief. Tema and Greenwich became twin towns. And there was the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh to Tema.
I think this was the idea of my very good friend John Carmichael, who was involved in charity work on several of the meridian projects. It was thought particularly appropriate as one of the Duke of Edinburgh’s titles is Earl of Greenwich – though the man has so many titles you could come up with some connection to pretty well anywhere. We could make it a new game, like six degrees of separation. Connect your home town to the Duke of Edinburgh.
Anyway, Tim Hitchens had warned me that the Duke was very much averse to just looking at things without any useful purpose. As we stood looking at the strip of brass laid in a churchyard which marks the line of the meridian, he turned to me and said:
“A line in the ground, eh? Very nice.”
But we moved on to see a computer centre that had been set up by a charity to give local people experience of IT and the internet (providing both electricity and phone lines were working, which thank goodness they were today) and the Duke visibly cheered up. He was much happier talking to the instructors and students, and then when we went on to a primary school that had received books from DFID he was positively beaming. The genuinely warm reception everywhere, with happy gaggles of people of all ages cheerfully waving their little plastic union jacks, would have charmed anybody.
We returned to Accra via the coast road and I was able to point out the work of the Ghanaian coffin makers, with coffins shaped and painted as tractors, beer bottles, guitars, desks, cars and even a packet of condoms. The Prince laughed heartily, and we arrived at the Parliament building in high good spirits.
There he was first shown to a committee room where he was introduced to senior MPs of all parties.
“How many Members of Parliament do you have?” he asked.
“Two hundred” came the answer.
“That’s about the right number,” opined the Prince, “We have six hundred and fifty MPs, and most of them are a complete bloody waste of time.”
The irony was that there was no British journalist present to hear this, as they had all thought a meeting between Prince Philip and Ghanaian parliamentarians would be too boring. There were Ghanaian reporters present, but the exchange didn’t particularly interest them. So a front page tabloid remark, with which the accompanying photo could have made a paparazzi a lot of money, went completely unreported.
On a State Visit, the media cannot each be at every occasion, as security controls mean they have to be pre-positioned rather than milling about while the event goes ahead. So by agreement, those reporters and photographers accredited to the visit share or pool their photos and copy. At each event there is a stand, or pool. Some events may have more than one pool to give different angles. Each journalist can probably make five or six pools in the course of the visit, leapfrogging ahead of the royal progress. But everyone gets access to material from all the pools. The FCO lays on the transport to keep things under control. Organising the pool positions ahead of the event with the host country, and then herding and policing the often pushy media in them, is a major organisational task. Mike Nithavrianakis had carried it off with style and only the occasional failure of humour. But he had found no takers for Prince Philip in parliament, which proved to be fortunate for us.
I should say that I found Prince Philip entirely pleasant while spending most of this day with him. I am against the monarchy, but it was not created by the Queen or Prince Philip. Just as Colonel Isaac of the RUF was a victim of the circumstances into which he was born, so are they. Had I been born into a life of great privilege, I would probably have turned out a much more horrible person than they are.
Prince Philip then joined the Queen in the parliamentary chamber. Her address to parliament was to be the focal point of the visit. I had contributed to the drafting of her speech, and put a lot of work into it. The speech was only six minutes long (she never speaks longer than that, except at the State Opening of Parliament. Her staff made plain that six minutes was an absolute maximum.) It contained much of the usual guff about the history of our nations and the importance of a new future based upon partnership. But then she addressed Rawlings directly, praising his achievements in bringing Ghana on to the path of democracy and economic stability. The government benches in parliament provided an undercurrent of parliamentary “hear hears”.
But there was to be a sting in the tale:
“Next, year, Mr President,” the Queen intoned, “You will step down after two terms in office in accordance with your constitution.”
The opposition benches went wild. The Queen went on to wish for peaceful elections and further progress, but it was drowned out by the cries of “hear hear” and swishing of order papers from the benches, and loud cheers from the public gallery. There were mooted cries of “No” from the government side of the chamber.
I had drafted that phrase, and it had a much greater effect than I possibly hoped for, although I did mean it to drive home the message exactly as it was taken.
For a moment the Queen stopped. She looked in bewilderment and concern at the hullabaloo all around her. The Queen has no experience of speaking to anything other than a hushed, respectful silence. But, apart from some grim faces on the government benches, it was a joyful hullabaloo and she ploughed on the short distance to the end of her speech.
Once we got back to the Labadi Beach Hotel, Robin Cook was completely furious. He stormed into the makeshift Private Office, set up in two hotel rooms.
“It’s a disaster. Who the Hell drafted that?”
“Err, I did, Secretary of State” I said.
“Is that you, Mr Murray! I might have guessed! Who the Hell approved it.”
“You did.”
“I most certainly did not!”
“Yes you did, Secretary of State. You agreed the final draft last night.”
His Private Secretary had to dig out the copy of the draft he had signed off. He calmed down a little, and was placated further when the Queen’s robust press secretary, Geoff Crawford, said that he took the view that it was a good thing for the Queen to be seen to be standing up for democracy. It could only look good in the UK press. He proved to be right.
The State Banquet was a rather dull affair. Ian Mackley’s great battle to be on the top table proved rather nugatory as, in very Ghanaian fashion, nobody stayed in their seat very long and people were wandering all over the shop. There were a large number of empty seats as, faced with an invitation to dinner at 7.30pm, many Ghanaians followed their customary practice and wandered along an hour or so late, only to find they would not be admitted. This caused a huge amount of angst and aggravation, from which those of us inside were fortunately sheltered.
Mrs Rawlings had chosen a well known Accra nightclub owner named Chester to be the compère for the occasion. His bar is a relaxed spot in a small courtyard that features good jazz and highlife music, and prostitutes dressed as Tina Turner. It was a second home for the officers of the British Military Advisory and Training Team (BMATT).
Chester himself was friendly and amusing, but amusing in a Julian Clary meets Kenneth Williams meets Liberace sort of way. Chester says he is not gay, (regrettably homosexuality is illegal in Ghana) but his presentation is undeniably ultra camp. It is hard to think of a weirder choice to chair a state banquet, but Chester was a particular pet of Mrs Rawlings.
Chester was stood on the platform next to the Queen, gushing about how honoured he was. His speech was actually very witty, but the delivery was – well, Chester. I turned to Prince Philip and remarked:
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen two Queens together before.”
To give credit to Chester, I gather he has been telling the story ever since.
High camp was to be a theme of that evening.
Fiona and I accompanied the Royal party back to the Labadi Beach Hotel to say goodnight, after which Fiona returned home to Devonshire House while I remained for a debriefing on the day and review of the plans for tomorrow. By the time we had finished all that it was still only 11pm and I retired to the bar of the Labadi Beach with the Royal Household. The senior staff – Tim and Geoff – withdrew as is the custom, to allow the butlers, footmen, hairdressers and others to let off steam.
The party appeared, to a man, to be gay. Not just gay but outrageously camp. The Labadi Beach, with its fans whirring under polished dark wood ceilings, its panelled bar, displays of orchids, attentive uniformed staff and glossy grand piano – has the aura of a bygone colonial age, like something from Kenya’s Happy Valley in the 1930s. You expect to see Noel Coward emerge in his smoking jacket and sit down at the piano, smoking through a mother of pearl cigarette holder. It is exactly the right setting for a gay romp, and that is exactly what developed after a few of the Labadi Beach’s wonderful tropical cocktails.
We had taken the entire hotel for the Royal party, except that we had allowed the British Airways crew to stay there as always. Now three of their cabin stewards, with two Royal footmen and the Queen’s hairdresser, were grouped around the grand singing Cabaret with even more gusto than Liza. Other staff were smooching at the bar. All this had developed within half an hour in a really magical and celebratory atmosphere that seemed to spring from nothing. I was seated on a comfortable sofa, and across from me in an armchair was the one member of the Household who seemed out of place. The Duke of Edinburgh’s valet looked to be in his sixties, a grizzled old NCO with tufts of hair either side of a bald pate, a boxer’s nose and tattoos on his arms. He was smoking roll-ups.
He was a nice old boy and we had been struggling to hold a conversation about Ghana over the din, when two blokes chasing each other ran up to the settee on which I was sitting. One, pretending to be caught, draped himself over the end and said: “You’ve caught me, you beast!”
I turned back to the old warrior and asked:
“Don’t you find all this a bit strange sometimes?”
He lent forward and put his hand on my bare knee below my kilt:
“Listen, ducks. I was in the Navy for thirty years.”
So I made my excuses and left, as the News of the World journalists used to put it. I think he was probably joking, but there are some things that are too weird even for me, and the lower reaches of the Royal household are one of them. I have heard it suggested that such posts have been filled by gays for centuries, just as harems were staffed by eunuchs, to avoid the danger of a Queen being impregnated. Recently I have been most amused by news items regarding the death of the Queen Mother’s long-standing footman, who the newsreaders have been informing us was fondly known as “Backstairs Billy”. They manage to say this without giving the slightest hint that they know it is a double entendre.
The incident in parliament had made the Rawlings government even more annoyed about the proposed handshake in the International Conference Centre reception between the Queen and John Kufuor. My own relationship with Ian Mackley had also deteriorated still further as a result of the Royal Visit. I had the advantage that I already knew from previous jobs the palace officials and Robin Cook’s officials, and of course Robin Cook himself, not to mention the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh. All in all, I suspect that Ian felt that I was getting well above myself.
As the party formed up to walk around the reception in the International Conference Centre, Ian came up to me and grabbed my arm rather fiercely.
“You, just stay with the Queen’s bodyguards” he said.
I did not mind at all, and attached myself to another Ian, the head of the Queen’s close protection team. I already knew Ian also. Ian set off towards the hall and started ensuring a path was clear for the Queen, I alongside him as ordered. Suddenly I heard Sarah Mackley positively squeal from somewhere behind me:
“My God, he’s ahead of the Queen! Now Craig’s ahead of the Queen.”
If I could hear it, at least forty other people could. I managed to make myself as invisible as possible, and still to accomplish the introduction to John Kufuor. The government newspaper the Daily Graphic was to claim indignantly that I had introduced John Kufuor as “The next President of Ghana.” Had I done so, I would have been in the event correct in my prediction, but in fact I introduced him as “The opposition Presidential candidate”.
As always, the Queen’s last engagement on the State Visit was to say farewell to all the staff who had helped. She gives out gifts, and confers membership of the Royal Victorian Order on those deemed to merit it. Only once in the Queen’s long reign had she ever been on a state visit and not created our Ambassador or High Commissioner a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order – that is to say, knighted him. Ian and Sarah were to become Sir Ian and Lady Sarah. This seemed to me to mean the world to them.
The day before, Tim Hitchens had turned to me as we were travelling in the car:
“Craig, I take it your views on honours have not changed.”
“No, Tim, I still don’t want any.”
“Good, you see that makes it a bit easier, actually. You see, the thing is, we’re trying to cut down a bit on giving out routine honours. The government wants a more meritocratic honours system. We need to start somewhere. So, in short, Ian Mackley is not going to get his K.”
I was stunned.
Tim continued: “And as well, you see, it hasn’t exactly escaped our attention that he has … issues with the Ghanaians, and some of his attitudes didn’t exactly help the visit. Anyway, if you were to want your CVO, then that would be more difficult. Ian Mackley is going to have one of those. So that will be alright.”
No, it won’t be alright, I thought. You’ll kill the poor old bastard. For God’s sake, everyone will know.
I wondered when the decision had been taken. The kneeling stool and the ceremonial sword had definitely been unloaded from the plane and taken to the hotel: that was one of the things I had checked off. When had that decision been reached?
We were lined up in reverse order of seniority to go in and see the Queen and Prince Philip. I queued behind the Defence Attaché, with Ian and Sarah just behind me. She was entering as well – nobody else’s wife was – because she was expecting to become Lady Mackley. Tim was going to tell them quickly after I had entered, while they would be alone still waiting to go in.
You may not believe me, but I felt completely gutted for them. It was the very fact they were so status obsessed that made it so cruel. I was thinking about what Tim was saying to them and how they would react. It seemed terribly cruel that they had not been warned until the very moment before they were due to meet the Queen. I was so worried for them that I really had less than half my mind on exchanging pleasantries with the Queen, who was very pleasant, as always.
If you refused honours, as I always did, you got compensated by getting a slightly better present. In Warsaw I was given a silver Armada dish, which is useful for keeping your Armada in. In Accra I was given a small piece of furniture made with exquisite craftsmanship by Viscount Linley. Shelving my doubts about the patronage aspect of that (should the Queen be purchasing with public money official gifts made by her cousin?) I staggered out holding rather a large red box, leaving through the opposite side of the room to that I had entered. Outside the door I joined the happy throng of people clutching their presents and minor
medals. Mike Nithavrianakis and Brian Cope were Ian Mackley’s friends, and they were waiting eagerly for him.
“Here’s Craig” said Mike, “Now it’s only Sir Ian and Lady Sarah!”
“No, it’s not, Mike”, I said, “He’s not getting a K”
“What! You’re kidding!”
It had suddenly fallen very silent.
“Ian’s not getting a K, he’s only getting a CVO.”
“Oh, that’s terrible.”
We waited now in silence. Very quickly the door opened again, and the Mackleys came out, Ian with a frozen grin, Sarah a hysterical one beneath the white large-brimmed hat that suddenly looked so ridiculous. There was a smattering of applause, and Sarah fell to hugging everyone, even me. We all congratulated Ian on his CVO, and nobody ever mentioned that there had been any possibility of a knighthood, then or ever.
Personally I don’t understand why anyone accepts honours when there is so much more cachet in refusing them.
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P.S. Craig Thanks for the very vivid story telling!
but still shame about the snakes!!
A while back you made this book available free and I found it highly entertaining and also informative.
I hope one day you have time to write more memoirs like this but appreciate that you are engaged in a bitter struggle with an increasingly authoritarian UK/Scottish government/judiciary and it takes all your time and energy.
Thanks for posting this extract. I am minded to dig out my copy of The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and reread it.
I did buy your book on Alexander Burnes, but have not managed to finish it yet. I will get back to that at some point too.
Regarding getting rid of a political system, always personalise.
If this isn’t obvious, refer to Saul Alinsky.
Personalise?
You’ll be blaming the poor for their own poverty next.
It’s the rich who are responsible for the poor’s poverty.
So…a funeral service in an order chapel, the one that is physically located in the monarch’s castle.
Be aware that certain loonies take the notion of reincarnation very seriously.
And there will be eight days of national mourning. (Will it be like this?
Perhaps people can wave flags with little pictures of Lord Lucan on, or Stephen Ward. Or the tunnel under the Pont d’Alma in Paris?
If someone really wants to throw the cat among the pigeons, how about publishing the headless man photo featuring the Duchess of Argyll and an “unknown man”? Even as recently as 2013 the Daily Mail was still circulating fake info.
Some Tories are saying it’s eight days because the number eight was chosen as a “wind-up”.
(“Wind-up” and “chip on the shoulder” are two concepts that come reflexively to the Tory “mind” whenever the ruling class’s rule ever begins to be challenged in a conversation. If a third one arrives, it’s the idea that the left are an elite who have everything handed to them on a plate.)
How many Members of Parliament do you have?” he asked.
“Two hundred” came the answer.
“That’s about the right number,” opined the Prince, “We have six hundred and fifty MPs, and most of them are a complete bloody waste of time.”
The irony was that there was no British journalist present to hear this, as they had all thought a meeting between Prince Philip and Ghanaian parliamentarians would be too boring.
Craig, Andrew Marr must have read your book or your blog , he has just repeated your anecdote above, whilst interviewing John Major .
N_
It’s the rich who are responsible for …
Jealousy is curable. The cure is to count one’s blessings and be content with not having to live in the appalling circumstances many rich people endure.
Billionaires lose half their wealth per bimbo every time they get divorced, and as you also said, never know who is the father of their children. The rich live miserable personal lives, saturated by lies which plethorate like viruses on whatever they touch.
Those who seek wealth but not inner contentment are on a hiding to nothing. Communism is the misconception that if wealth and power were equally distributed, then happiness would also be equally distributed.
But that is pure fantasy. I once started to train in social work, but if I personally don’t believe that contentment is to be found in wealth and power, how can I recommend it to others?
Politics, the pursuit of wealth and power , is incompatible with the food of the soul. I really really don’t believe that running a system that necessitates that Craig and Alex Salmond or Julian Assange are encarcerated, can be anything other than a miserable existence. A miserable waste of 99 years.
N_
I just as passionately believe that a life spent in the pursuit of Islamic wealth and power , which necessitates the entire population of Syria to be refugees, or the citizens of Afghanistan or Libya to be compelled by zealotry to hate their religion , is anything other than a miserable existence. A waste of a life and a total dereliction of the cause in whose name it is done.
I am equally appalled at the encapsulation of injustice that is British Royalty and the encapsulation of injustice that is Islamist terror. Unfortunately for the world , these two encapsulations of criminal ignorance are allies, finding much in common with each other.
Together these monstrous carbuncular viruses of political and financial greed represent human waste on a vast scale, vaster even than the ravages of US pilgrim father Puritanism and your lovely Communism put together. Imho.
Due to British privateering imperialism English became a dominant language around the globe – these pirates were royal towards their kings and were royally endorsed in return. The English language itself if fairly easy to learn for non natives with good memory skills to record the totally unphonetic spelling – but in return the widest vocabulary, again due to a lot of piracy.
What stays long a mystery are the weird Judicial dress ups, the 4 Inns of Court and the made up on the go laws. The whole Sir and Lady circus to reward lackeys being used in the 21st century is also strange. Having to call these jokers ‘my Lord’ or ‘my Lady’ is quite diminishing towards English Gods like Christ or Mary. I prefer an original Shakespearean play for Theater.
The large lexicon in English is to do with having lineage both in Germanic and Romance tongues. English has more words than any other language, except if one bends the definition and starts counting all possible joined-together words in German.
(Actually Spanish and Maltese also have a lot of lineage in two groups – Romance and Arabic – but I’ve never thought before about why they don’t have such large lexicons as English. Maybe someone can help with this? It might be something to do with universities.)
“the made up on the go laws” – Glad you mentioned this. The classic royalist line on it is to say Britain has a “constitution” that a person has to be really “clever” (i.e. indoctrinated by royalism) to see, because it’s “unwritten”. If one dares to have ideas above one’s station and say “OK, let’s start by defining ‘constitution’ and then let’s consider seriously whether we can find a British one”, the only sensible conclusion is that Britain does NOT have a constitution, and the situation is exactly as you describe it. The culture is based on capdoffing respect to the levels above oneself in the social hierarchy, and at the top of that hierarchy is the royal family.
“I had been through it all quite recently, having paid a major part in the organisation of the State Visit to Poland in 1996.”
so enviably written, and ‘paid’ being the only typo I noted, I am wondering if deliberate, —
a clandestine reference or tease ?
I was just watching the TV news detailing how Canada is overrun with SARS-2 variants (BC has the highest number of Brazilian P.1 variant cases outside Brazil) and how doctors “may soon be faced with incredibly difficult decisions… about which of their patients will be offered critical care” (Message from the Registrar governing doctors).
I had just finished reading the ‘Message’, when I read your post, Craig, which transported me to Ghana for a full half hour of reading pleasure. Your exquisite writing skills glide the reader through the hills and valleys of a delightful tale without experiencing so much as a hesitation of a misplaced comma or an awkward word or phrase. I flowed through that witty article with a constant smile on my face. It was the pure, delightful escapism that I so needed tonight. Thank you.
Agreed Susan! I only disagreed with the many ‘taxpayer’s money’ comments. No Craig. Richard J Murphy is the one I agree with on that, but Craig the rest of the time! Thank you Craig! All the best x
That the British Government was so relaxed about losing all that money on the non-existent Ghanaian hotels suggests that the architect was a cut out for the real intended recipient of the money.
I’m anticipating a major show of strength from the “Rules based international order”. Scottish patriots must stand fast. NEVER underestimate the malevolence that they are facing.
There will be the Knights of the Garter, that is the Kings and/or Queens of Europe.
There will be the Freemasons, that is the Scottish Rite in North America and the Great Eastern in France.
There will be the Commonwealth Heads, that is the General Assembly of the United Nations.
And at the centre of these three overlapping circles will be the poor Widow. And next to her, the Widow’s son.
I doubt that Russia, China and Iran will be guests of honour
Sighs of relief being heard across the highlands and bye ways of the land no doubt.
Grouse , grouse beaters, pedestrians , road users …
So does Chuck get to become the next grand huhhah at the top of the Grand Order of top table monkeys ? Whilst the zoo keepers carry on above them?
I think he does, anyone have the latest on that?
A society that vilifies its best and venerates its worst, afloat yet again this weekend on a fresh tidal wave of bullshit.
Sarge@11:46-beautifully put. Almost poetry.
Folk are sick to the stomach with all this nauseating coverage of Phil the Greek, but this is what happens when a foreign country owns your terrestrial media channels.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/19223583.bbc-flooded-complaints-too-much-tv-coverage-death-prince-philip/
Our relationship with the Monarchy (according to the polls).
On the binary question; would you prefer a Monarch as Head of State or an elected Head of State.
England and/or UK a 70 : 30 split, so a 40 point margin of victory for anti-democratic subservience.
Scotland a 60 : 40 split, so a seemingly healthy 20 point margin of victory for knowing our place and deferring to our betters.
But the binary question doesn’t inform as to enthusiasm.
2012, the year of the Queen’s Diamond jubilee the Government encouraged communities to hold street parties in the specially created long weekend. In all, there were around 9,500 permits submitted to local councils to close streets to vehicular traffic, to facilitate the trestle tables and the jelly and ice cream for the kiddies. On a pro rata basis this would result in 800 permit applications in Scotland. In the event, there were around 90, a full third of which were in Edinburgh (and it ain’t difficult to figure that one out). Much of the rest were in the usual suspects of Larkhall, Cowdenbeath, Kilwinning, … etc..
Buckfast in the trifle?
I enjoyed that post Vivian – knowing our place and deferring is now somewhat ‘old school’ – bowing, buckling and ‘give in to’ is now an anathema or capitulation to brain-washing torture.
The only problem with having an elected head of state is that you just know it will be a clapped-out old has-been like Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher. In any case, if the UK got rid of the monarchy, what makes you think that the new head of state won’t simply be co-opted like the vast majority of the upper chamber of the legislature?
Brexit should be a lesson for not supporting change under the impression that the result will be the one that you think best, but I suppose it is human nature to think that if things had gone or would go differently, they would have gone or would go better, not worse.
Granted, most ceremonial heads of State are dull, conservative types, but at least the public are offered a choice. In 1990, Ireland was offered the choice between Mary Robinson representing the Labour Party and two uninspiring old apparatchiks from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. The sofa debate on the Gay Byrne show was frankly an embarrassment with Robinson outclassing her conservative, male opponents.
Robinson was an established campaigner for social liberalisation. As such she captured the zeitgeist of the emerging Celtic tiger (nonsense I know). The point being, an elected head of State at least offers the possibility of signalling social direction of travel. The alternative is a nation’s outward “character” being conditioned by the personality of the first sprog to emerge from the last Monarch’s uterus.
“The point being, an elected head of State at least offers the possibility of signalling social direction of travel. “
Well, at the moment the social direction of travel in the UK is to the right: you can vote for Blue Tories, Red Tories, Orange Tories or Tartan Tories if you live in Scotland. One thing you could be certain about if we had an elected president is that for the forseeable future, they would be a Tory. In any case, there is no guarantee what happens in Ireland would happen here, this is not Ireland, they have their own political parties there.
You are still making the mistake of thinking that any change would be for the better, when in fact it could easily be for the worse.
Its more that they don’t fancy ‘an elected head of state’.
An elected head of state is all very well, but who gets to choose the candidates?
Note that the question is bent, it should be “Do you want Britain to stay a republic?”
The actual choice is between an oligarchy and a dictatorship.
RoS: They appear to have taken the page down which specifically was there to register complaints (as noted in your link):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/death-duke-of-edinburgh-tv-coverage/
—
Sorry, this page isn’t available.
For information about programmes that we’re often asked about, check our list of Programme Information frequently asked questions.
—
The blanket coverage of the death of Prince Phillip is way out of proportion to the event. Of course it’s sad for his family, and I have nothing against him personally. But the idea that nothing else matters to British people for the duration is absurd. This looks like state propaganda that North Korea or China would be proud of.
Whatever happened to that famous call for “balance” the BBC has always used, in order to always go to the middle ground?
Any story yet about the British queen’s late husband ever being kind to another person, at any time throughout his almost 100 years of life? Or ever learning something from someone? Or was he too busy defecating on the unemployed and non-whites?
It’s not like you to express negativity about anyone or anything! Sure you’re feeling OK?
He should confine it to respectable, officially-approved objects of hate, like Travellers.
Not trying to pretend all travellers are the same, are you? Or are you simply going for a very weak tu quoque fallacy?
Your hatred seems to have resulted in rather childish hyperbole. Or is Mr Trump your model?
N_
I’m not sure if this was cheating in sport , humour, or both. Philip was sailing in a race too close to another yacht for the other person to tack/turn.
‘You’re in my bit of sea’
I think you’ll find that belongs to my wife’ he replied.
Here was a man who would set up a joke and crack it, while standing at 45 degrees to the floor in a gale in the open sea.
You have been known , yourself, to crack a joke.
You seem to be taking yourself a bit too seriously.
Some of the headlines in the British media are hilarious:
“Prince Philip dead latest: Gun salutes ring out across UK in tribute to Duke of Edinburgh”
(The Independent brings us the latest news on a man being dead. But if he’s dead, he’s dead; that’s a state of finality – no news will arrive about any variation to that state.)
“Northern Ireland: Another night of unrest despite calls for calm in wake of Duke of Edinburgh’s death”
(Sky News conjures up an image of blue-rinse Tories striding through the Shankill in East Belfast, sternly telling youths “Put that Molotov cocktail down. Show some respect for the Duke!”)
(Various other news organs report calls for “calm” in Belfast out of respect for the queen. At times like this, remember her poor Majesty, eh, suffering for all of us!)
Look on the bright side Mr N_egative, it’s one less on the tax Payer funded gravy train.
There is no such thing as ‘tax payer funded’.
The biggest ripoff they do – rentierism and ownership of natural resources above, below and beyond our shores – has not been affected at all by this princely fly ending a full and hearty life as the windscreen of inevitability sends him on his way into the history books.
The question is will he become reincarnated almost immediately by some token new prince of Scotland?
On how that issue can be made into an election issue could rest the outcome of how the voters decide.
I expect the swift of foot can align their tactics following the funeral to turn it into a political football in the final weeks and force the SNP leadership to finally admit as the not-so-secret unionists they have mutated into since 2014.
Another window on the importance of the monarchy in Britain (as if one were needed) is the way Labour politicians get talked about who are considered insufficiently keen on consuming posh spittle and saying it tastes really goooood. Thus when Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour party, much of the Tory media questioned the appropriateness of allowing him to join the Privy Council . Articles were published suggesting that he didn’t have the right look of obedience in his eyes when he attended a ritual singing of “God Save the Queen”, the song that functions as the “British national anthem”. This is a REAL case of the word “British” standing in for the word “Tory” – the song might as well be called the Tory Party Anthem – but unfortunately very few supporters of Scottish independence say anything about this. Thus both Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon are members of the Privy Council – and none of the Tory press kicked up a fuss about their appointment to that body. They didn’t baulk about Harold Wilson either, who had been sufficiently vetted by the time he got his degree at Oxford University not to be blackballed. That’s even if the way Wilson was viewed did change in the 1970s, which was AFTER his first six-year stint as prime minister. Many of the ruling class felt a big “accident” happen in their trousers in 1968 and by the mid-1970s they were itching to impose a “Chilean” solution in Britain. Note that Wilson himself even when the rulers put tanks at Heathrow to send him a message and then forced him out of office in 1976 (the head of the CIA was in London that day, just to make sure) STILL didn’t have it in him to fight back. Jeremy Corbyn, however, was made of more solid stuff and in a similar position he would have said something, I’m sure. So he wasn’t allowed to get into a similar position.
The rule is that if you are a leading politician who is non-Tory then you are welcome to apply to be on the stage, and you may even get asked to do something on the stage, so long as you realise you are somewhere between a house guest and the head gardener.
The Tory party is a deeply monarchist outfit and yes, for those who hadn’t worked it out yet, the queen is a Tory. That’s why “insiders” “reveal” bullsh*t such as that she had a special spot for Harold Wilson, and maybe they even say it about Tony Blair too, and that oh there was great feminine rivalry over dress sense between her and Margaret Thatcher, blah blah. All of that rubbish is misdirectional. Tories are trusted and Labour politicians aren’t. Tories are “sound”. Labour are OK for employment in head gardener roles.
Corbyn was, in short, viewed as a traitor. That’s why the monarchist BBC altered a photo to make his hat look very Russian.
Note that no similar question mark has been raised about, say, Jeremy Hunt, who made his fortune doing business in China, or indeed about the association of members of the royal family with Russian-area mafia bosses such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky or Boris Berezovsky – nor for that matter about Boris Johnson’s “friendship” with Evgeny Lebedev. In fact if a leftwinger were to mention these associations in a critical way, it’s the leftwinger who would get called the traitor for disrespecting the royal family.
The hatred directed at Corbyn for not belting out the words to “God Save the Queen” like a drunken Tory landowner at an Anglican church service was all about the monarchy, and the principles that the monarchy represents, namely
1) subservience to whoever is above you in the social hierarchy, as if society were an army, and
2) subservience to the principle of inherited wealth, which implies the prior acceptance of course of the principle that the rich should keep what they’ve got. (If they didn’t keep it they wouldn’t be able to pass it on to their offspring.)
^^^ That’s what the monarchy is all about.
Are you sure about that? Corbyn is a craven poltroon who abased himself into oblivion.
What would N do without the royal family to serve as a prop for his theatre of armchair revolution? He is very invested in them for that purpose. lol
You told us so (“many times … many, many times”), and you weren’t wrong! But don’t you think that he meant well? If so, why do you seem to exult in his downfall? Don’t you see it as a tragedy?
Gosh Squeeth are you sure he was such an abject coward?
In what way? Be precise and provide actual links if you want to be taken seriously.
Thanks, Craig, that’s a wonderful story. Philip was lucky to be shown round Tema by such an excellent host. But did he know you were a republican? On a previous royal visit (to West Berlin in May 1978) Lizzie and her husband were being shown round Charlottenburg (a former Prussian royal palace) by a group of local Social Democrat politicians including a certain Frau Gerda Misch. .Phil soon made it clear that he thought the palace was boring. Like Lizzie, Frau Misch was accompanied by her husband, Herr Rochus Misch, who saved the day by offering to show Phil round the baroque garden of the palace – an offer that was promptly accepted. It is not known what passed between the two men, but it’s not likely that Rochus told Phil much about his own past, which included serving for almost 5 years (May 1940 to April 1945) as Adolf Hitler’s personal bodyguard and telephonist. Source: Misch, R. 2013. Der Letzte Zeuge (The Last Witness). Piper Verlag. Munich.
Coldish
Nobody knows what Herr Misch might have said to Prince Philip, but they had one thing very much in common being in service to an institution they didn’t much like. If, like the Duke your entire personality is moulded in childhood to do this, voicing objections to the institution seems to.me quite a lot more healthy than aspiring to the institution’s gongs, like the consul in Craig’s enjoyable yarn above.
“The whole Iraq war isn’t about Saddam Hussein, it’s about Israel. Israel can’t exist on avocados and oranges! A nation lives from business. They have to have money. And the Americans always pay in. This is just my opinion, but why did they occupy Iraq? Supposedly because of atomic bombs? [Laughs.] In my opinion, Iraq is a wealthy oil region, and with this money they can support Israel. They can’t keep pumping their own money in forever. “
Herr Rochus Misch
http://www.salon.com/2005/02/21/nazi_3/
Mark Golding
What an extraordinary interview. Thanks. According to Herr Misch, the ranting propaganda generated by and around Hitler was completely absent in the bunker , where he himself was just doing his job. He was an orphan, then wounded badly, and ended up in a job which obviously he couldn’t leave for security reasons. Then tortured , then ignored by those who wanted to tell a different narrative to the testimony of the actual witness.
The American movie take on Hitler is the same as the American take on Saddam Hussain, moral outrage. But in reality, Germany was fighting a war of supremacy against the Soviet Union, not Britain, a war that eventually the US saw as an opportunity for advancing its own global interests.
Unfortunately my only knowledge of WW2 is the Amercanised version.
Yes Giyane you are very welcome; all is not what it seems and insha’Allah our intention will prevail.
“In my opinion, Iraq is a wealthy oil region, and with this money they can support Israel.”
Herr Misch turned out to be wrong there, as the US didn’t make a penny from Iraq, indeed it cost them more than a trillion. Though obviously Bush and Cheney went in with dollar signs in their eyes, even if unsaid.
Laguerre
I don’t know why you don’t just change your name to that horse piss Laguvalin.
The US has been charging Iraq for ‘ protection ‘ from the extreme dangers they had created in 2003 and later in creating Daesh in 2015. Not to mention unmetered oil wells and licences to print money called oil franchises.
Full marks for perseverance though.
Your knowledge of Iraq is remarkably limited for someone who claims to love Kurds. If I were you, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to criticise others. If Iraq paid the US (link please, for the actual figure), it was not a lot, compared to the massive loss the US had over the occupation, when they thought they were going to be reimbursed by oil contracts they never got.
Laguerre, when you talk about “the US” you have to distinguish between the state, which was always going to lose a packet, and private interests, which were always going to make out like bandits. War is the most time-honoured way of transferring public money into private pockets in extremely large amounts.
The British monarchy is an anachronism that must go. These social parasites who demand deference from the rest of the population are offensive in the extreme. Like a bunch of stuffed dummies in costume for some Ruritanian historical tableau, they bear no relation to the 21st century. As for Prince Phillip, his family were lovers of Hitler and the Nazis, as was Edward VIII. Good riddance, I say.
Indeed, good riddance.
Jonathan Cook, as ever, right on target.
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2021-04-10/media-royal-death-propaganda/
Ingwe
Jonathon Cook’s target for criticism is the billionaire right wing Tories’ ability to dictate to the BBC. Not just about Prince Philip, but about many unjust causes. He says Philip is irrelevant to the younger generations, but I am irrelevant to the younger generations at 66, so how would a 99 year old not be?
Personally I think this bile attack against a person who died yesterday is obscene.
Poor things, it’s been nineteen years since a royal last dies, that’s a lot of shit that’s been building up. I’m sure they’ll feel better when they’ve got it out of their systems and can begin to save up for the death of the Queen, when it can all burst forth again. Luckily, they won’t have so long to wait, this time.
If Britain didn’t have a bogus defamation law, there would have been lots more while he was alive.
Giyane-glad I don’t share your view of what constitutes obscenity!
The only essential reading I have seen about the death of the D of E. Thanks.
Very good article, thank you Ingwe
– When is the queen going to VOLUNTARILY resign from her post and simply retire ?
Maybe she’s more familiar with the guy lined up to replace her than you are. What’s your hurry, Willy?
Nicola Sturgeon has plans to replace her …….
Willy2
The queen was master or rather mistress of femininist passive aggression long before Nicola Sturgeon. Living with it may have contributed to Philip’s short fuse and remarkable longevity. It certainly seems to have galvanised Alex Salmond and Craig Murray into purposeful action.
The Lordy Avocado ain’t called Queens Counsel for nothing. I’m positive Her Majesty would prefer Nicola Sturgeon as an heir to her own brood. By the time Nicola Sturgeon has finished, all male heirs will be either in utero finished or , like Philip, kicked out at birth.
I agree with Earwig N_ that the Queen is a political target, but not her husband who died 2 days ago. ‘Ere we go, ‘Ere we go , ‘Earwig O.
More likely Johnson has plans to achieve his childhood ambition of becoming World King. Prime Minister is not top of the tree.
Laguerre
Some politicians put their forefinger to their chin to indicate when they are lying, like Sturgeon. Johnson’s fake naivete is the equivalent in audio format. I can’t listen to a second of him exercising his fake posh drawl.
He deliberately created tension in Northern Ireland to mock them. Then the BBC has to cover his ass by saying that the tension there is caused by the older generation.
I hope you Scottish Indy supporters are listening to the man.
‘“How many Members of Parliament do you have?” he asked.
“Two hundred” came the answer.
“That’s about the right number,” opined the Prince, “We have six hundred and fifty MPs, and most of them are a complete bloody waste of time.”’
Still rather pertinent, eh?
‘I decided the man had taken leave of his senses. I wondered at what stage can you declare your commanding officer mad and take over, like on The Cain Mutiny? Anand was obviously thinking much the same.
“Perhaps I might suggest you seek instruction from headquarters on that one?” he asked. “Anyway, can we note that down as another outstanding item, and move on to…”’
Marvellous piece of ‘off the Richter Scale’ diplomatic suggestion that one….
A great story about the “Duke of Edinburgh” from Cryzine, posted here with permission. The author nails it in less than 200 words.
“What one royalist capdoffer’s attitude towards the “Duke of Edinburgh” taught me about modern capitalist “life”“
“About 30 years ago, a friend and her 18-month old son were staying with me. The delightful little lad was keen on Mickey Mouse, and he had a running joke with his mother that featured the famous cartoon character. This was that when he had filled his nappy he would often say “Mickey’s got a poo-y bum”. With adorable humour, he was distancing himself from the sticky issue of bodily waste by communicating an occurrence of the “issue” with reference to a shared cultural figure. Of course his Mum and any other adults present knew exactly what he meant, and he knew that we knew. The distancing was humorous.
Later that day I heard a man on the radio, who by the sound of it was probably aged around 60, give or take a decade. He was from the lower orders of society – petty bourgeois or working class. “I like the Duke of Edinburgh,” he said. “He takes all the knocks. Doesn’t complain.” This he said in a grim “suffering” voice, and without any humour.
I learnt a lot that day.“
N_
Well if you will listen to vox pops on that bourgeois thing, you will get taken in by actors working for the BBC. I wondered if he was chauffeured in and home again like the good old days, or Ubered in.
@Giyane – Many real people talk and think like that! I don’t the guy was an actor.
An interesting essay in Lobster concerning the 1940 “visit” of Rudolf Hess. A fascinating cast of characters in Hess’ speculative “welcoming committee” including Reginald Dorman-Smith, Minister of Agriculture 1939-40. Dorman-Smith was a member of English Mystery, advocating total power residing with the Aristocracy while the remains of the pure AngloSaxon population were to be reduced to peasantry and the impure races would be subjected to brutality and extermination. Dorman-Smith was, like Himmler, a strong advocate of Steinerite (unscientific ritualism) organic farming. Little wonder Hitler believed a negotiated settlement could be reached with the British elite.
https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster81/lob81-scotland-churchill-hess-1941.pdf
Apparently the Royal household were up to their ears in the conspiracy, the backbone of which was formed by the Scottish, lowland aristocracy (Dukes of Hamilton, Buccleuch, … )
The link between English Mistery (note spelling) and Steinerism is fascinating. In his book “Famine in England”, Viscount Lymington (aka Gerard Wallop), a big cheese in English Mistery, proposes letting tuberculosis rip in the lower orders. (Some may be interested in the fact that Lymington also inherited Isaac Newton’s alchemical papers.) English Mistery didn’t get on well with Oswald Mosley because they thought he was dirtying himself by seeking support among the great unwashed. The fact that Dorman-Smith who had also been head of the National Farmers’ Union became Tory minister of agriculture sheds light on one element in Tory opposition to the NHS later in the 1940s.
Gloucestershire is a centre of Steinerism right now, and Prince Charles on his farm in that county allows only “organic” agriculture. In his book “Harmony” he praises the “philosopher” Rudolf Steiner. They could hardly make it much clearer. Organic. Natural Order. Rudolf Steiner. The population problem.
The current Steinerite line regarding Heinrich Himmler is “You say he was an anthroposophist? Then show us his membership card! We admit he had an anthroposophical farm but that was his private business, totally separate from his job.” I thought of that yesterday when thinking about the queen and the Tory party. It’s easy to imagine a Tory supporter responding “Of course she’s not a member of any political party. Where’s your proof?” as if one were talking about literal membership.
Have you ever looked at Hans Merkel, @Viv? He was Walther Darre’s secretary. The possibility of a family connection with Angela Merkel’s first husband Ulrich Merkel, a molecular biophysicist, is tantalising. Angela Merkel’s “quadrilateral” hand sign must surely mean something.
It’s almost certainly true that Himmler really did think he was the reincarnation of Henry I, “Henry the Fowler”. Prince Charles will also almost certainly have notions as to who he believes himself to be a reincarnation of. Rudolf Steiner saw spreading the idea of reincarnation in the West as his major task.
And nobody can deny that St George’s Chapel at Windsor is literally an order chapel.
The Steinerites take a similar line about Sigmund Rascher, their man who carried out murderous experiments on human beings in Dachau for the Steinerite company Weleda. “Prove he was a member”.
A few months ago I heard on BBC Radio 4 a representative of one of the British farmers’ organisations (not sure which one) going on about Alcuin, the English scholar who tutored Charlemagne and who is another major Steinerite point of reference. What’s he got to do with agriculture? Well arguably nothing, so why mention him…
Thank god Oswald Mosley had nothing to do with galvanising the establishment Nazis marching in their lovely Oxford Street outfits
How history can change in a jiffy.
Then there is the “Round Square” at Gordonstoun.
An SS man with meaningful experiences at Wewelsburg would feel so at home there.
As Hans Merkel realised after 1945, the way that things have to be put changes.
Another question is this: was the royal family involved in bringing down the first majority Labour government in 1951?
Labour had performed very badly in the 1950 election, but they still had a Commons majority of five seats. The standard explanation is that Attlee decided to call a general election in 1951 because King George VI was worried the government might fall when he was away on a Commonwealth tour. The other explanation is that Attlee called a “snap election” because he wanted to increase his majority. Both smell like a complete load of codswallop. It’s not as if Labour had been losing seats either in by-elections or because of defections. In fact no seats changed hands during the 1950-51 parliament! So who were these three Labour MPs who were getting ready to drop dead and be replaced by Tories, or who were planning to support the Tories in a vote of no confidence? I suggest they were non-existent. After losing so many seats in 1950, why would Attlee want to risk losing a few more and being replaced by a Tory the following year? More likely the king decided to give Labour their marching orders so he could have a Tory government. (Medics having realised by that point that there was more money for them in keeping the NHS than in getting rid of it, but certain other Labour projects being rapidly reversed and buried.)
This is another example of the monarch and the people around the monarch being deeply involved in political events in Britain and the “historians” and “commentators” not having the guts to say so or to notice, even 70 years later.
Over to you, Vladmir Putin: “The name of His Royal Highness is associated with many important events in your country’s recent history”, he wrote in a telegram to the British queen.
So we have a standard account that says the reason why an unexpected general election was called which brought down what (for all its faults) most socialists will agree was the best government Britain had ever had, was because the king wanted to go on holiday the next year.
That’s the line that’s spouted by “historians” and “politics experts” at Britain’s universities, almost all of which have royally-decorated or nobly-titled personages as their chancellors.
Well … all very historically relevant. As Misty (not Mistry) said, If you don’t know your history you are just a …vegetable.
Gordonstoune – I’ll just ask if anyone knows of Kuensbergs’ association with that establishment?
Yawn.
Britain’s love for royal arse-licking is truly pathetic.
Where are the tributes to the really useful human beings, the garbage collectors and toilet cleaners of the world?
I really cannot think of a worse subject to spend so much time and money honoring.
Have any newspapers asked what the cost is of the North Korean-style “public mourning” for the “Duke”?
That’s probably like asking “How much profit have AstraZeneca and Pfizer made out of SARS vaccines?”
No journalist gets promoted for pushing his luck on such matters.
The eight days of national mourning for
Emperor Franz-Joseph“the Duke of Edinburgh” vividly shows just how tight the control is in Britain over what is considered OK for those in public office or the media to say, and what is certainly not OK for them to say. (Wall-to-wall vaccination propaganda does too.) The same was true in 2016 when the monarch did her utmost to swing the referendum to Brexit. That happened right in front of everyone’s face, but mention it now and people have either forgotten it or they will rapidly think up reasons why it didn’t mean what patently obviously it did mean. The culture in Britain is deeply monarchist and the monarch is not just a figurehead, and the monarch and royal family will not fall unless they fall into big-time disrepute personally.How many days of mourning have been prepared for when Duke-face’s widow snuffs it?
Expressing affection for Prince Phillip looks a lot less transgressive now than it probably felt on Friday. A deluge of ruling-class propaganda will do that. He has gone from being an “edgy” “truthteller” — a cult figure for “anti-PC” warriors — to a secular saint beloved by all decent people.
A very nice story, Craig, well told. A worthwhile diversion in these very strange times. I was sorry to hear of Prince Philip’s death, not in his dying per se, he lived a full and long life, and with no regrets, I’m sure. But you know he, and his wife of course, have been part of a background to my life, to all our lives, for so long – I was born in 1946 so that’s 74 years of knowing just a bit of a family I’ve never met, may be occasionally seen in some cavalcade or meeting the people, both in the UK and even here in NZ. So I felt sad, a tiny little piece of me has gone, and in his own mortality he’s telling me to make sure you make the most of what you have, even 99 years isn’t that long, really. I think that’s the achievement we should acknowledge, he did make the best of what he was and what he became – he was basically an honest and honourable man. There are many people in charge of the country now who would seriously fail on that simple, but fundamental, measure. The Queen in falling in love with this rather handsome young Greek sailor when she was just 13, made a very wise choice in her life’s partner. Cheers from someone with a serious case of cognitive dissonance, a left-wing socialist and old fashioned monarchist! I strongly believe that a wise citizenry can manage to reconcile both to the country’s advantage.
Those of you curious as to the bio of Robin Cook I can tell you shortly before his demise he told me at a meeting that his wife told him to “get out of politics now” as she feared for his life.
Robin knew of Britain’s Collaboration with pro-Jihadist Forces in Kosovo. Britain in fact supported the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), essentially Western proxies in this war, carrying out some of the dirty work that NATO could not.
Robin Cook was concerned that mujahideen fighters had been seen with KLA forces in Kosovo. Foreign Office Minister Baroness Symons claimed, however, that the government had ‘no evidence’ that Bin Laden was funding the KLA.
Tony Blair told parliament that ‘our position on training and arming the KLA remains as it has been – we are not in favour of doing so … We have no plans to change that… Under scrutiny from the Sunday Telegraph Blair used the terms ‘no firm evidence’ or ‘no reliable information, feigned ignorance of issues that he was perfectly aware of. One reason for secrecy was that such training was in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1160, which forbade arming or training forces in all Yugoslavia.
Robin Cook told parliament in March 1998: ‘We strongly condemn the use of violence for political objectives, including the terrorism of the self-styled Kosovo Liberation Army.’ Robin knew Britain was recruiting terrorists and in a related manner he had extraordinary insight into the London Tube bombings… R.I.P.
I recall that shortly after the death of Robin Cook, a member of staff from the local hostelry in Scourie was interviewed by the press. They expressed their surprise that a doctor should appear so quickly on the scene, when days could pass without anyone being seen on the hills.
In my world this is Robin Cook’s finest moment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgD2JJsclBM
mark golding. Indeed, very emotional seeing and hearing a tower of strength stand high above the little nobody’s and have the audacity to utter simple truths.
Yes, as a man, Prince Philip always struck me as an individual of unusual integrity, and I was sorry to hear of his passing.
Sadly, the Royal Family as an institution has allowed itself in recent years to become simply a fig-leaf for a deeply unpleasant government and their right-wing controllers in the USA. If ever a country needed a genuinely independent monarchy (or indeed a President) it has been the UK since 2015 as we’ve staggered from one disaster to another under an increasingly corrupt, incompetent and authoritarian government.
Dear All,
If we are to take seriously Craig Murray’s commentary and then place same within the context of a serious historical assessment and reference back to the findings of economic historians – then here is the picture we might find ( with a measure – more than – a measure of honesty):-
Murdering minorities in America: ‘The white man’s burden’ | Racism News | Al Jazeera
The link:-
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/4/8/murdering-minorities-in-america-the-white-mans-burden
Here’s another al Jazeera article on racism
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2017/8/13/the-priceless-racism-of-the-duke-of-edinburgh
Gord bless im
Mr. Murray,
Your unique viewpoint has been, as I am reading this mid-morning, my brief day’s highlight. That you felt bad for Ian and Sarah speaks well of you. Republican, eh? Rather different from my political affiliation, or as my wife says, my affliction. Thank you for sharing this insight.
John – I take it you’re American? By “Republican”, Craig does not mean a supporter of the American Christian Fascists calling themselves “Republicans”. In the UK, a republican is one who would prefer a republic, rather than the monarchy that currently besets us. Craig is in fact a democratic socialist, as far as I can tell.
More social democrat, actually. To quote Craig himself, « My own political thought springs entirely from the Liberal tradition. I am a Radical, not a socialist. »
Sad to learn that Ramsey Clark has died at the age of 93. A man of great integrity of a kind no longer common in the USA he will be missed.
Am I imagining it, or in 2011 when the Earldom of Wessex was given to the monarch’s youngest son, Edward, didn’t the official line say that Edward would also get the Edinburgh dukedom when Prince Philip died? I thought it did. (For those who don’t already know, a duke is two levels higher than an earl, with a marquess being in-between.)
But now the media are saying that the Edinburgh title “has” to go to Prince Charles because of what was written in “letters patent”, and Edward “will” get it “when” Charles “becomes King”. If I’m right about what was said in 2011, what may have actually occurred is that the deranged Charles has had a massive Trump-style tantrum.
The idea that the dukedom “has” to go to Prince Charles sounds like the kind of BS you get in this country, e.g. the flag “has” to be flown like this or that, and never mind Princess Diana, because Henry VIII always got his manservant to put his right sock on before his left one – or some other complete nonsense that was made up about five minutes ago, and all the media editors act as if it were some longstanding truth that they have known all their lives, and that the authorities in the country are simply following “tradition” or “protocol”.
It looks as though I am not imagining it. The Wikipedia article on the Duchy of Cambridge says
“Prince Edward was created Earl of Wessex, and it was announced that he would eventually be created the next Duke of Edinburgh after his father.”
That is sourced to a page archived from the royal family website at royal.gov.uk, dated 3 March 2016 and marked as retrieved on 30 April 2012, but which for some reason seems to be unavailable now.
Clearly Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia and in a friendly alliance with Eurasia!
Where exactly is this Duchy of Edinburgh of which we have been hearing so much lately?
It’s close to Peebles.
Would that not be the Peebles Republic?
Thank you, Mr. Murray,
You are a treasure, in all Swiftian subtlety–(double-entendre intended).
If this nation is ever to evolve, as it must do, away from the theocratic monarchic system, it will never happen if left to the personal decision of the reigning monarch – whoever/whenever that may be – it will not happen by a woke King/Queen declaring it to be so.
It would not last generation or two, never mind forever. Many claims would be made.
If we want that new Indy state, it is the Crown that needs to disassemble. The forever aristocracy, the scaffolding that supports the monarch of the day.
The sheer exceptionalism and entitlement.
When the ex Bullingdon boy says he shouldn’t have approached the Treasurer or other ministers directly as if it was like taking a shortcut through someone’s house! And that is put in the way that it was just inadvertent not illegal. Did he not talk to his fellow schoolboy Bullingdon pal? Gideon even? He wasn’t PM or related to Betty or anything.
But it’s ok, he isn’t the King or anything… they say just a naughty PM.
And here is the British public happily eating any amount of literal shit because posh boys are talking and their media whores are on their knees setting an example to us all.
If the future ex-Monarchy is to come about we need to start planning it NOW.
Planning or plotting?
Plotting as in a route from here to there, yes.
It must carry us all there.
The upper classes must bet party to that course unless they want to insist on a chaotic disaster in the ‘icefields’ we are currently set on.
It is a matter of rearranging the upper decks so that more people can travel in greater comfort, whilst these posh passengers must accept the rearrangement – partake in it even, to guarantee their new settlements. I am not talking communism. Just greater egalitarianism and a level playing field in terms of Power.
As I said it is an inevitable Evolution of human culture on this planet.
WE collectively can be part of it evolving or we can be dinosaurs – because the change will come like a tidal wave from beyond our tiny shores – and they will be cataclysmic for the ancient culture – like the Romans washed away with only some artefacts left in a thousand years. Maybe even football and Cricket and Rugby will have gone. And even the language through multiple bastardisations replaced by some new tongue.
That is the likely FUTURE.
Let us plan to get there under our own course, that is all.
I’m afraid that’s a lot of wishful thinking that will never happen. Why do you think the Establishment is so called?
Lord Greville Janner comes to mind. Greville Janner enjoyed “the halo effect” of being a prominent politician, which meant he was in effect protected for years from being prosecuted over allegations he abused vulnerable children.
https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/powerful-politician-greville-janner-protected-4599424