BBC’S caricature of Prince Philip was an insult
Tof us who view the British royal family with a curled lip can still, I think, offer compassion when they grieve. Like the raw ache of love withdrawn, the pain of grief doesn’t soften for the privileged. All we need to know about Prince Philip is that he was loved dearly by his family and friends and that he was a towering presence in their lives as husband, father and uncle.
On social media platforms flocks of progressive dilettantes quickly gathered to shimmer in the haze of their own wit. It’s all too easy though, and comes risk-free. It demands little in the way of originality and much in callousness: somewhere an old woman is mourning the loss of a man who had been her life companion for the last 73 years. Sympathy costs nothing and enhances us; vindictiveness reduces us.
Angela Haggerty, the left-wing media commentator who springs from a working-class tradition, encapsulated this best when she tweeted: “Having lost my Dad in June and watching him become so frail, my emotional instinct at the death of Prince Philip is to feel sad for his family. Having a political view on the role of monarchy doesn’t require you to sacrifice your personal humanity. Don’t let folk pressure you.”
Yet, there was something manufactured and contrived in the reaction of the British establishment to the announcement of Philip’s death. I’m not sure if there is a template somewhere that dictates the protocols for greeting the death of a long-standing prince consort. If such a concordat exists it surely didn’t envisage what we have witnessed over the two days.
It’s been reported that the Duke of Edinburgh didn’t want too much of a fuss to be made of his death and this seems to have been of a piece with his general approach to life. So, it’s probably safe to assume he would have greeted what’s followed it with that grimace perfected by the male royals whenever they encounter something avid (the ruling classes tend to regard enthusiasm as a character defect). Thus, an event that called for quiet and proportionate dignity was turned into something brash and braying. And the death of an old man became less of a tribute to whatever personal qualities he possessed than an opportunity to convey triumphalism.
In recent years we have seen something of this in the way that the poppy, once a universal symbol of humble sacrifice, has been distorted into a vampiric caricature. The weeks prior to November 11 now ring to the cries of poppy vigilantes hunting down those not deemed to be sufficiently enthusiastic about wearing this little red emblem of hope.
Our publicly funded broadcaster became BBC Windsor as it made a graven image of this man who, though essentially decent, probably didn’t achieve much more than many others would have if they’d had access to the resources and personnel of the state’s largesse. Their simpering coverage actually insulted those qualities they were eager to associate with him: dignity; duty; selflessness and a desire to make a quiet contribution.
It was also tone deaf to the losses borne by the hundreds of thousands of us who have seen loved ones perish as coronavirus has moved through the land. The BBC has been an exemplar of fine public broadcasting in the way it’s conveyed the quiet dignity of many ordinary families who have endured grief in this pandemic.
Many harbour a measure of affection for the royal family and the stability and fortitude they believe this institution still represents. I suspect though, that many too will be among the thousands who have registered complaints about the BBC’S gross lapse in editorial judgment.
Throughout the course of Saturday BBC presenters were made to wear black as a procession of plummy-voiced, public school Astors filed in to recreate what 1950s deference sounded like. Here was the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby describing Prince Philip as “a prophet”. And over there a chaise longue of Tatler socialites describing him as (I kid you not) a David Attenborough prototype, an icon of religious unity and a pioneer of feminism: this for not making a fuss and stamping his feet at being made to walk two paces behind the Queen.
The old fella, doubtless stiff with boredom, simply did what most of the rest of us would have chosen to do – given the resources – at the prospect of a life consorting with myriad Trumpington-llewellins and Sharpington-dinsdales: he developed a rapid interest in exotic animals and wild places… the remoter; the better. He wasn’t looking for medals, though.
But medals are what he got from the BBC and an assortment of establishment lickspittles. By the time his funeral comes along on Saturday I fully expect a couple of miracles to be ascribed to his heavenly intervention and archbishop Welby to be naming a book of common prayer in his honour.
You suspect though, that much of this stemmed from something more than the establishment getting carried away in a fugue of royalist fervour in readiness for the end of lockdown. They have made golden calves of these dysfunctional German aristocrats, not because they hold them in anything approaching genuine admiration, but because their very existence sanctifies and reinforces the class system that underpins English society. In normalising this with daily obeisance to the House of Windsor it becomes embedded in the collective consciousness of those who, in other countries, would consider such an arrangement bizarre and unacceptable.
In these countries they treat their royal families as mere state ambassadors who get to wear ceremonial dress occasionally as long as they don’t get too many ideas above their conferred status. In the UK they have been made into something much more insidious: the casual rendering of inequality and unearned privilege into something benign.
This is what has been going on these last few days. At a human level though, it merely made a ridiculous spectacle of a man who, knowing he’d married into privilege, seemed to have spent his days trying to use his advantages to spread a little decency: nothing more; nothing less.
By the time his funeral comes along on Saturday I fully expect a couple of miracles to be ascribed to his heavenly intervention
TOMORROW: ANDREW DUNLOP, UZMA MIR, NEIL MACKAY, CATRIONA STEWART, CLAIRE TAYLOR, ANDREW MCKIE & MARK EADIE