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suggesting a royal commission into the financial position of the monarchy. This,
however, was a can of worms which no Government felt prepared to open.
All this inquisition was hardly a pleasant experience for Elizabeth. Facts emerged
from the Select Committee evidence which were seized upon by the press. The cost of the
royal yacht had provided abundant ammunition for any editor who felt it his duty to cut
the monarchy down to size. During the 1950s and 1960s the Beaverbrook press had been
particularly hot on the subject; the Canadian press lord’s newspapers were then as
frequently accused of being anti-monarchist as the Australo-American Rupert Murdoch’s
titles were to be in the 1990s. Evidence to the Committee revealed that Britannia had
cost £2.15 million to build and that its running costs had risen from £29,188 in 1953–4
to £757,300 in 1970–71, and that it required 189 crew on an everyday in-harbour basis
and 279 when the royal family was on board. Unfortunately, despite the attention
lavished upon it by Mountbatten and Philip, who had been closely involved in the nontechnical
side of its design, the yacht’s construction had not proved long-lasting and it
was subject to relatively frequent refits at very considerable cost to the Ministry of
Defence. In 1960, only seven years after she was commissioned, Britannia already
needed a refit costing £9 million. (Elizabeth summoned the Minister for Defence when
this was mooted. ‘I see,’ she said wryly. ‘You pay and I get the blame.’) She was always
very conscious of the effect of the royal yacht as a floating symbol of privilege and used
it as rarely as possible for any trip which could be construed as for private pleasure
only. The Snowdons’ honeymoon cruise on Britannia had met with very little criticism,
but when Anne and Mark Phillips were to do the same there was an outcry. Questioned
about it on television, the royal bride rudely dismissed it as ‘none of their business’, and
justified its use on the grounds that the Queen intended to travel on it from the West
Indies to New Zealand where she was to open the 1974 Commonwealth Games. None
the less, Elizabeth, a creature of habit, continued to use Britannia once a year on holiday
in Scotland; sailing on board the yacht to visit the Queen Mother at her Castle of Mey
on the remote coast of Caithness became an annual ritual. The Queen Mother was also
given use of Britannia for three weeks every summer, often for holiday trips to the
Mediterranean.
Whatever criticism there might be of the monarchy in the press, Elizabeth knew that
she could count on the support of her Prime Ministers, be they Conservative or Labour.
Not one leading politician who has worked with her has anything but admiration and
fondness for her; admiration for her total professionalism, her dedication to her job, the
friendliness and support she offered them and her total absence of partisanship. Her
relationship with Wilson’s successor, Edward Heath, lacked the warmth of her
relationship with the Labour leader. Heath’s biographer, John Campbell, has described it
as ‘correct but cool’. 3 Partly this was a result of the Conservative Prime Minister’s
personality. ‘Ted’ Heath, as he is always known, has no small talk and little time for
women; wives of his colleagues seated next to him at dinner have found conversation
with him uphill work. Politics apart, Elizabeth and Heath had nothing whatsoever in
common. He came, like Wilson, from a background with which she was utterly