Hunt for ‘Nazi salute’ leak focuses on BFI
British Film Institute had been working on digitising archive of Royal family movies since 2012
THE inquiry into the leak of footage of the Queen performing a “Nazi” salute is focusing on the British Film Institute after it confirmed it has been digitising the Royal family’s home movies.
The BFI began work on the Royal family’s film archive in 2012, with the intention of making some of the material available to the public.
Since then, however, nothing more has been announced. The BFI is working closely with Buckingham Palace and the Royal Collection Trust, which looks after the Royal Archive, to establish how the footage came into the possession of The Sun newspaper.
The BBC, ITV, ITN News, Sky and Channel 4 have all said the footage has never been in their possession, suggesting it was leaked rather than being inadvertently handed over to a documentary team.
One of the possibilities being investi- gated by the BFI is that a former employee may have kept a copy of the 1933 footage, in which seven-year-old Princess Elizabeth, as she then was, Princess Margaret, the Queen Mother and the future Edward VIII all raise their arms in a “Heil Hitler” salute.
The 17-second film was shot by the Queen’s father, the future George VI, on the Balmoral estate, and the Palace believes there may have been a breach of copyright or even a criminal offence committed, though Scotland Yard has not received a complaint to date.
In October 2012, the Queen visited BFI Southbank in London on the day the organisation announced it would be working with the BBC to digitise a collection of royal footage, which the BFI National Archive has looked after since the late 1960s.
It includes a mixture of films presented to the Royal household, including newsreels, and also private family cine films which are unique to the collection and date back to the 1920s.
Some footage was already available to the public at the time the project began but more was expected to be made available through digitisation.
When the project was announced, Greg Dyke, the BFI chairman, said: “We’ve got the whole collection – we look after it for the Royal family – some of which has never been seen, they are very personal films.”
Although there have been no updates about the project since 2012, a spokesman for the BFI confirmed that “work is being done”.
It is not known where the footage showing the “Nazi” salute originated, but the BFI spokesman said the organisation was continuing to investigate.
Buckingham Palace sources would only say that it was continuing a “forensic” search for the source of the leak, which could take some time. A brief close-up of the Queen and Princess Margaret, seen at the end of the footage published by The Sun, was originally seen in a montage released by the Palace as part of the Royal Childhood exhibition last year.
A spokesman for the Royal Collection Trust said the extract featuring the salutes had not been part of the summer exhibition and had not been released to the media at the time.
The Sun said more than one copy of the footage had been made “several years ago” and that the source of the leak had it in their possession for some time before handing it over to them.