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Elizabeth would have to face. Her immediate predecessors had been used to deferential
coverage (with the exception of Beaverbrook’s newspapers). Even the pre-Murdoch
Times was guilty: ‘it was particularly pleasing to see The Times making some amends for
their irresponsible articles earlier this year,’ the High Commissioner commented. ‘On the
other hand,’ he continued, ‘the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express, no doubt out to
prove their habitual thesis that when black men govern themselves they make a mess of
things, remained incorrigible to the end… We pay a heavy price for a free Press and it is
an appalling thought that, because a small group of British journalists are determined to
abuse the host Government, the good effects of a Royal tour which has turned out to be
an undisputed popular success, may be completely undermined…’ 5 The royal family had
been trained to ignore the press – ‘those filthy rags of newspapers’, as George V used to
call them. Unfortunately for Elizabeth, the press and the developing communications
media would become the screen though which she was interpreted to her people.
Personal contact was to be important to her as she tried to reach through the screen to
the people in an increasingly arduous series of royal tours.
Macmillan, who would have been held responsible had anything happened to
Elizabeth, had been reassured as to the tour’s success by twice-daily telegrams from
Michael Adeane detailing the warmth of her reception at the events of the day. From his
point of view the Ghana visit had been a success (it was followed by visits to other West
African countries including Sierra Leone, where Elizabeth, in response to criticism of her
unbejewelled daytime appearance, wore tiaras and diamonds at every opportunity).
Elizabeth had proved her value (and therefore Britain’s) on the international scene and
as a weapon in the Cold War. Her success in Africa, the cockpit of the Cold War during
the 1960s, gave a fillip to her Prime Minister’s hand in his wooing of President Kennedy.
He had been in touch with Kennedy over the Ghana visit underlining the risk Elizabeth
was running and implicitly connecting it with the financial one the President would
have to take with the Upper Volta dam scheme. When she returned, he telephoned the
President: ‘I have risked my Queen,’ he told Kennedy, deliberately hinting at an
international chess game, ‘you must risk your money!’ It was gambling language which
Kennedy understood. While responding to the British Prime Minister that he would
match the Queen’s courage with his own, he used the same terms to the international
economist Barbara Ward when, on 12 December 1961, the United States formally
announced participation in the Volta project: ‘We have put quite a few chips on a very
dark horse but I believe the game is worthwhile.’ 6
Elizabeth never wavered from her dedication to the Commonwealth, a view which
Macmillan did not share. With his mind focused on relations with the United States and
Europe and the invisible battlefields of the Cold War from Cuba to Berlin, the
Commonwealth to him was more an ideal to which he paid lip-service than a reality.
The crunch came with the Commonwealth Conference in London in September 1962,
when Macmillan attempted to justify to the assembled Prime Ministers the rationale
behind his approaches to the EEC. Although backed up by a very able exposition of
Britain’s negotiating position by Edward Heath, Macmillan was not surprisingly unable