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caught him completely on the wrong foot, unprepared and unbriefed on the subject.
After that experience, Wilson would let the Private Secretary know beforehand the
subjects he proposed to discuss with Elizabeth and he spent some time going over them
with him before he went in to see her. He also used to bring his Private Secretary with
him so that the two could liaise while the audience was going on and then, after it was
over, Wilson would come down to the Private Secretary’s room for a quick drink and
another discussion. Elizabeth soon took to Wilson, enjoying his cosy manner, his wit and
the expertise with which, as a born teacher, he could present the issues. ‘Harold did get
on very well with the Queen and she was very fond of him,’ an aide recalled. ‘His
Audiences got longer and longer. Once he stayed for two hours, and was asked to stay
for drinks. Usually prime ministers only see her for twenty or thirty minutes, and it is
not normal for them to be offered drinks by the Monarch.’ 19 ‘I think the Queen talked
very freely to Wilson,’ one of her former Private Secretaries said. It was a rapport on a
personal level which had nothing to do with shared interests, for they had none in
common. Wilson never went racing, he neither rode nor shot; yet he offered Elizabeth a
window on a world of which she had no experience, of provincial life, Labour beliefs
and trades union politics. He made her feel in touch with her people in a way which his
aristocratic predecessors could not. In return Wilson found in her a confidante whom he
could trust. ‘Harold was very fond of her and she reciprocated it,’ his colleague Barbara
Castle said. ‘He made her feel at ease, kept her well-informed, probably quite racy in his
reports. He really enjoyed his visits to her and reporting to her.’
In Barbara Castle’s view his fondness for Elizabeth could obscure his political
judgement and the detachment a Labour Prime Minister should maintain vis-a-vis the
throne. When it came to discussions on an increase in the Civil List in 1975, Wilson
agreed to the Palace proposals without even putting it to the Cabinet, she recalled.
‘There was rumbling on the Labour side.’ 20 When he finally left office in 1976, his
Tuesday meetings with Elizabeth were the thing that he was to miss most about politics
at the top. Richard Crossman, one of Wilson’s ministers, also felt that sometimes
relations between Queen and Prime Minister were too close, to the latter’s
disadvantage. When Emrys Hughes, Labour MP for South Ayrshire, wanted to put
forward a bill for the abolition of hereditary titles, Crossman considered that it would be
better to let him go ahead as no one took him seriously and any attempt to gag him
might be misunderstood. Elizabeth, however, took a different view. Adeane went to see
Wilson, who then made it clear he wanted the bill stopped. ‘This is a good example of
the Queen and the PM hobnobbing together,’ Crossman wrote on 15 February 1967.
(Later, however, Roy Jenkins and Crossman managed to persuade Wilson of the dangers
of this course and Hughes was allowed to go ahead.) Elizabeth, ever alert to any
potential threat to the monarchy, saw the abolition of titles as the first step towards an
egalitarianism which could eventually threaten the throne, telling Crossman when he
went to see her on Privy Council business at Windsor at Easter that she had ‘looked
through all the Sunday papers rather anxiously’ for a report of the session in which the
Bill had been introduced. Crossman could not resist saying that there had been two