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to satisfy the Conference that ‘Britain’s entry into the EEC would not be incompatible
with the Commonwealth, the two associations being complementary’. Even Sir Robert
Menzies, the Australian Prime Minister, an old and trusted friend, made what Macmillan
described as ‘a very damaging speech’. Elizabeth, having received all the Prime
Ministers individually that week, was probably better informed as to their real views
than Macmillan was. At his weekly audience with her, Macmillan found her
‘sympathetic’ but ‘worried about Commonwealth feeling’. The final communique made it
clear that the Commonwealth leaders had the gravest reservations about Britain’s
negotiations to join the EEC and thought that the price she was being made to pay was
too high, both from her own as well as the Commonwealth’s point of view.
In the end, early in 1963, de Gaulle, to Macmillan’s total dismay, issued a thunderous
veto against Britain’s entry into Europe. The Government’s response to this rebuff was
to give the General a slap on the wrist by cancelling a proposed visit to Paris in March
by Princess Margaret and her husband, now the Earl of Snowdon, to attend a charity
gala premiere of Lawrence of Arabia and lunch with de Gaulle. Sir Pierson Dixon, British
Ambassador in Paris, had strongly advised cancellation on the grounds that the French
Government would use it as an opportunity to play politics. He proposed using as an
excuse the fact that as the Queen was absent on a tour of Australia and New Zealand,
Princess Margaret’s constitutional responsibilities as a Counsellor of State prevented her
also from being out of the country. ‘The excuse might be transparent,’ the Ambassador
advised, ‘but that did not really matter…’
Across the world in Australia and New Zealand, Elizabeth’s tour was affected by the
sense of hurt and betrayal felt as a result of Britain’s approach to the Common Market.
The ‘Faerie Queene’ aura which had surrounded her almost ten years earlier on her post-
Coronation tour of 1954 was no longer there. She was older and a more familiar
phenomenon. Television had lessened the impact of seeing her and the crowds were far
smaller than they had been in 1954. Elizabeth was to find diminishing returns on all her
overseas tours of the ‘Old Commonwealth’ as her reign continued.
Back home in England Elizabeth and Philip endured for the first time the experience
of being booed in public during the controversial state visit in July of King Paul I of the
Hellenes and Queen Frederika. The visit had been intended as a symbol of reconciliation
between Greece and the United Kingdom after their protracted breach over the
independence of Cyprus. The omens for success had not been good. In April that year
Queen Frederika, in England to attend the marriage of Princess Alexandra to the Hon.
Angus Ogilvy, had been accosted outside Claridge’s by Mrs Ambatielos, British-born wife
of an imprisoned Greek politician. The Government knew that demonstrations were
planned by anti-nuclear and other left-wing groups; the Greek Prime Minister,
Constantine Karamanlis, had advised King Paul against the visit and resigned when the
King rejected his advice. A good deal of bad feeling centred on Queen Frederika,
daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Brunswick-Luneburg, who was resented by
conservative opinion in Britain for her ardent espousal of the union of Cyprus with
Greece and by the left wing for her supposed ‘Nazi’ sympathies. As a girl she had been a