Can Charles and Camilla save the Commonwealth?
The reputation of a nation is riding on the royal couple’s visit to Canada, says Camilla Tominey
No one could have foreseen that a short Royal pitstop in a small village in Belize would kick start a debate over the entire future of the Commonwealth. Yet when the indigenous Q’eqchi Maya people of Indian Creek were not consulted over the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s plan to land a helicopter next to their cocoa farm, as part of the week-long Royal Caribbean tour in March, a touchpaper was lit.
The villagers had already been in open conflict with Flora and Fauna International, a charity which owns an adjoining, contested property at Akte’il Ha in the foothills of the Maya mountains. Prince William had been the charity’s patron since 2020, the latest in a line of royals stretching back to George VI. But times had moved on and the villagers were no longer willing to sacrifice their rights to lands lost during the colonial era.
The reactions that followed – from both people and palace – came to sum up what is being increasingly referred to as the Commonwealth Question. Is there a place for the old-style royal patronage of Britain’s former colonies? Indeed, will the United Kingdom’s cheery family of nations hold together as the entity of the Commonwealth once Charles is on the throne, and if not what, or perhaps who, can save it?
In 10 days’ time, Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall will be flying to Canada to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee – but will it be enough to turn around a wave of negative public opinion about the Firm?
Certainly, Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge were caught by surprise in Belize. They were expecting a genial set of events in a Caribbean setting on their first post-covid overseas visit. But that is not the reception they received.
As Sebastian Shol, chairman of Indian Creek village, explained: “We don’t want them to land on our land, that’s the message that we want to send. They could land anywhere but not on our land.”
Youth leader Dionisio Shol reveals that while the villagers had been told someone was visiting, they didn’t know it was members of the Royal family until the very last minute. “For us it really hits right at home because of the treatment. The organiser said we had to let them use the football field and that people were coming to our village and it had to look good,” he says.
“But they didn’t want to divulge who. Eventually somebody said it was Prince William coming to our village. That’s where the first issue arose. These are high-profile people, we respect them, but they also have to be giving respect. Giving community leaders commands did not sit well.”
Indeed not. When Kensington Palace took the decision to cancel the visit altogether, rather than address the issues that had arisen, it set the tone for a tour that appeared out of touch with the modern era.
Described as “tone deaf ”, the royal couple were lambasted on social media for an unfortunate photograph which showed them greeting hoards of Jamaican children through a fence in Trench Town in the capital, Kingston. Sharmaine Lovegrove, publisher at inclusive Dialogue Books, was among those to post the image on Twitter, adding: “Everything about this is wrong.” It did not seem to matter that footballer Raheem Sterling had previously greeted fans in exactly the same way – here were a pair of privileged white people being paraded before their subjects.
The couple’s decision to replicate the moment the Queen and Prince Philip drove through the crowds on the back of an open top Land Rover in 1962 – in the very same car they had used and with the Duke in full Tropical Dress – was criticised as “imperialist” even though the Jamaican military had requested it. Questioning the decision to repeat what had happened in Sabina Park, home of West Indian test cricket, 69 years ago, the historian Dr Tessa Dunlop tweeted: “Who is advising #williamandkate?”
Yet recent criticism hasn’t been solely directed at the Cambridges. Prince Edward and Sophie, the Countess of Wessex faced similar complaints during their own Caribbean sejour last month. With protestors in St Lucia demanding “reparations now” and an apology from the Queen, it seemed to signal the end of the royal tour as we know it.
So how can the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall expect to be received when they visit Canada on May 17 and how might this longstanding royal tradition need to adapt to a world no longer willing to accept HM’S “never complain, never explain” mantra?
It is perhaps worth noting that despite recent events, Charles and Camilla are expected to be given a warm reception during their two-day visit to mark the Queen’s 70 years on the throne. They will travel to St John’s and Quidi Vidi in Newfoundland and Labrador before moving on to Ottawa, and then the Northwest Territories to visit Yellowknife and Dettah.
Although the full schedule has not been published for security reasons, the royal couple are almost certain to meet with Justin Trudeau after the Canadian prime minister embraced the trip, saying it would give them “the wonderful opportunity of seeing first-hand the diversity and kindness of Canadians and the beauty of our abundant natural landscapes that make us proud to call our country home.” Such is the strength of the bond between the 96-year-old monarch and the country she has visited more than any other (27 times during her reign) that Mr Trudeau was the first person to meet the Queen in person in March, almost a month after she tested positive for Covid.
Diversity is clearly going to be the buzzword of the tour, not least after Mary Simon, Canada’s first indigenous governor general, declared: “This visit is a chance for us to showcase the
evolution of our country, our diverse and inclusive society, as well as the resilience of indigenous communities.”
According to one royal source: “When you’ve got the first nation Wet’suwet’en community, who have got a wide range of issues they’re upset about, including mining on their land in British Columbia, then there will probably be more protests. The question is, how does the institution find ways to avoid looking like they are ignoring these debates but not making them the only story of the tour either?”
“There were royal tours to Canada in the 1960s, particularly on the issue of Quebec, that got rather nasty,” says Professor Philip Murphy, director of history and policy at the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London. “The British High Commissioner at the time started to send memos back to London, predicting it was the beginning of the end for the monarchy in Canada.
“Pierre Trudeau, the prime minister’s father, didn’t seem keen to disguise his republican sympathies when he was in office. But the royals have always ridden out these storms.”
When it comes to royal tours, Australia has also witnessed its fair share of controversy, while there have been flying eggs in New Zealand. In 1994, Charles was shot at during a speech at Sydney’s Darling Harbour by David Kang, 23, who fired blanks in protest at the treatment of Cambodian asylum seekers held in detention camps in Australia. Yet a republic referendum held five years later in 1999 landed in the monarchy’s favour.
Times, however, have changed – and not just as a result of the pandemic. The Black Lives Matter protests – and even the Sussexes’ Oprah Winfrey interview last year – appear to have altered our world view on what a royal tour should look like.
As one palace insider put it: “It was always going to be a bit of a hospital pass to be the first royals to go out on the road after events like George Floyd’s death. There were some who were determined for William and Kate to be brought down, no matter what they did, and to point the finger and say: ‘They don’t understand.’ You only have to look at the critics on social media who were so vocal as soon as you had an image that could be weaponised.
“From the people I’ve spoken to, that tour was a success if you ask anyone who went on it or was on the ground. So there’s a disconnect between the emerging stories and what actually happened.”
There was criticism of the Cambridges’ “inexperienced” entourage, which included a private photographer with expertise in sub-aqua filming in order to capture those shots of the couple swimming with sharks. As respected royal author Robert Hardman pointed out at the time: “What they really needed on the team was a wily old Palace veteran to scout for political landmines.”
While reluctant to single out private secretaries Hannah Cockburn-logie and Jean-christophe Gray, their relative greenness was compounded by the fact that there hadn’t been a royal tour for two years.
“You have got to be match fit for these tours,” the source adds. “With the lockdown, it meant that the natural rhythm was disrupted. It meant that the people who were doing them were out of practice. What the royals need is a team plugged into international affairs and a closer dialogue with the people on the ground.
“Maybe everybody would accept that in hindsight, the shot of them in the Land Rover was a bit discordant, even if it was the Jamaicans’ idea. I don’t think it’s a case of younger royals not being able to replicate what the Queen has done in the past. It’s not the Queen versus everyone else – it’s about post and pre-lockdown.”
Pointing out that Charles and Camilla “probably wouldn’t get away” with giggling through an Inuit throat-singing performance, as they did when they last visited Canada in 2017, the source explains: “You’ve got to rebuild tours from the ground up. I don’t think they’ve had their day – governments like them, the cultural ties are as valid as they always were – but it’s evolving all the time and the monarchy has to keep up.”
But do the principals understand this? “Without a doubt, they are not behind the pace at all. They will continue to adapt because they are experienced. Even William has been doing tours since he was a child.”
So the consensus – seemingly even among the Royal family themselves – is that tours need to change. But how?
Professor Murphy believes that a good start would be for the palace to make it clearer that members of the Royal family aren’t foisting themselves on these Commonwealth nations but accepting their invitation to pay a visit.
“Quite a lot of the rhetoric on the back of the Cambridges’ and the Wessexes’ visits suggested these were vanity tours almost entirely in the interests of the prestige of the Royal family,” he says. “But actually, Charles and Camilla will be going to Canada at the direct request of the Canadian government. That must be made clearer. Even in the Caribbean these visits go ahead at the invitation of the realms. Hosts should do more to shield the royals from embarrassment.”
When William and Kate first arrived in Jamaica they appeared blindsided when the prime minister, Andrew Holness, declared his intention to “fulfil our true ambitions and destiny as an independent, developed, prosperous country”.
The shock move prompted William to joke in his end-of-tour statement: “Foreign tours are an opportunity to reflect. You learn so much. What is on the minds of prime ministers…”
The Wessexes were left similarly wrong-footed when Antigua and Barbuda’s prime minister, Gaston Browne, said his country wants to “one day become a republic”, telling Edward and Sophie: “You will have noticed there are no protestations here.” He added the decision not to protest was because islanders believed in having an “open and very objective discussion”.
Encouraging words, perhaps – when you consider that Barbados cut all ties with the monarchy last November without even holding a referendum.
Although, as Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of government at King’s College London, points out: “Monarchy today rests on consent both in the monarchies of the Commonwealth and in Britain. I think the real problem is that many of the Commonwealth realms, partly because of slavery and partly because of national independence, don’t want to remain realms but they do want to stay in the Commonwealth.”
Prof Murphy agrees that the transition from the Queen to her more polarising son could prove a turning point but suggests Charles and Camilla’s “rather low key style might work better than people might expect”.
“With the Cambridges there was almost an assumption that because they were young and glamorous everyone would fall over themselves in support and that wasn’t the case,” he says. “I was in Perth for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in 2011. It was the Queen’s last visit to Australia and despite the referendum on the republic, there was a real sense of affection for her.”
According to Alexander Downer, who was Australia’s high commissioner to the UK between 2014 and 2018, the future of the country’s links to the monarchy has since become “a 20th order issue” for Australians.
“Some of them still have affection for the Royal family – that’s a minority,” he says. “Another minority desperately want to break the links, but in the middle are those who don’t want any constitutional upheaval – only a fool would take it on.”
Prof Murphy adds: “It’s always difficult to predict the future, because the death knell of these sorts of things has been sounded before. What is clear is that activists, particularly focusing on colonial reparation issues, have realised royal tours are an ideal way to get extra recognition for their cause.
“Royal visits may well go ahead in the future but they might have to be rethought. That very traditional playbook is not working any more, partly because it’s so dull. In the era of 24-hour rolling news, journalists will always look for a juicier story. The palace and the households should really make it much more explicit on what basis these tours are taking place.
“The Sussexes, in their slightly touchy feely way, were able to do that. They did an event with the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust in 2020 when they talked about colonialism and slavery. It’s more difficult for William. When he spoke recently in the Caribbean, he repeated almost exactly the same form of words that Charles had used in Barbados in November last year. It was regarded as being slightly insulting; seen as a bit cut and paste on a very emotive issue. But the royals don’t have the freedom of expression that others do.”
Yet William has clearly resolved to leave “less unsaid,” according to a source close to the Duke.
As the source explains: “William is not going to start tearing up the royal rule book. But his view is slightly different to the view of bygone days when you left things unsaid. When he released the statement at the end of the Caribbean tour it was about saying: ‘We didn’t get everything right’. Don’t just say nothing but put your hands up and encourage a discussion. I think what he wants are healthy debates.”
If recent controversies are anything to go by, there will certainly be plenty of those as the House of Windsor redraws the map on royal tours.