OUTSPOKEN PRINCE WHO’S NOT AFRAID TO LOBBY GOVERNMENT
HIS letter writing is so prolific and his views so strident that he has been dubbed the ‘Prince of Wails’ and ‘Angry of Windsor’.
Prince Charles himself admits to being an ‘interfering busybody’ and he has deluged ministers with missives on every subject close to his heart from architecture to fox hunting and farming.
Unlike the Queen, whose utterances on political matters are rarely revealed, the prince is unafraid of intervening.
He once described a proposed extension to the National Gallery in London as a ‘monstrous carbuncle’.
Ministers in the last Labour government were said to dread the arrival of one of his ‘black spider’ letters – so-called because of the prince’s distinctive scrawled hand and frequent underlinings and exclamations.
The prince was even credited with using the phrase ‘grey goo’ to describe the threat to civilisation from nano-technology – although this was later denied.
Ahead of a large pro-hunting march in 2002, he wrote to Tony Blair complaining fox hunters were being treated worse than other minorities. ‘If we, as a group, were black or gay we would not be victimised or picked on,’ the letter reportedly said.
Another memo, revealed at an employment tribunal in 2004, exposed his views on the education system, which he said was making people ‘think they can all be pop stars’. He wrote: ‘What is wrong with everyone nowadays? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities?’
This prompted Charles Clarke, then education secretary, to label his views as ‘old fashioned and patronising’.
During the foot-and-mouth crisis, the prince urged ministers to opt for a policy of vaccination instead of the cull of cattle that ultimately went ahead. The prince admitted to ‘pestering’ the PM on the issue. He wrote: ‘The long-term devastation that (policy) delay is wreaking is almost beyond price ... I am so grateful to you for being prepared to converse with an interfering busybody during this immensely difficult time.’
Other topics said to have provoked one or more letters include eco-towns, hospital buildings and housing developments.
In 2010, it emerged the prince had written to the Qatari prime minister asking him to withdraw from the £3billion development of Chelsea barracks because he disliked the plans drawn up by Lord Rogers.
In the letter he complained of ‘the destruction of so many parts of London, with one ‘Brutalist’ development after another’.
In his diaries Alastair Campbell complained that Charles had written ‘menacingly’ over the removal of most of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords and also wrote memos on GM food.
The recent revelation that the Queen raised the subject of Abu Hamza with ministers is among barely a handful of views reportedly expressed during her reign.