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would have been sympathetic. Commonwealth sources believe that whenever possible
she acted as a restraining influence on the Prime Minister, perhaps counteracting the
anti-Commonwealth attitudes in the Thatcher entourage. ‘The Queen could have been
concerned about the Commonwealth,’ a Thatcher aide said, ‘but it didn’t make sense to
say that the Commonwealth would fall apart. The practice of the Commonwealth is to
insult Britain at every turn, take its money and ask for more. Therefore there was no
chance of its falling apart.’ On one Commonwealth crisis, Elizabeth and her Prime
Minister certainly did see eye to eye: when in 1983 President Reagan ordered the US
invasion of Grenada (of which Elizabeth was Queen) with no prior consultation, Mrs
Thatcher was ‘incandescent’ over the telephone to Reagan; staff called the Grenada
episode ‘very turbulent – an Atlantic storm’.
Mrs Thatcher’s view of the Commonwealth matured over time. An aide commented:
Both of us set out with the view that the Commonwealth was something we had been brought up with,
maps on the wall at school with red patches on them, something to be proud of, the remnant of Empire that
had been painlessly dissolved and that it had something to commend it to the family of nations. But on closer
inspection we saw the extent to which it depended on British forbearance and commitment to uplifting the
world’s condition – what kind of legacy we had to endure as being an ex-Colonial power. It required
considerable forbearance and Mrs T was not very good at forbearing… She came to realize that it was a
valuable institution embracing one of the world’s smallest democracies, Tuvalu, to the world’s largest, India.
She recognized that they got a great deal out of it. Mrs T began to realize some of the problems of the New
World and of course one hit her between the eyes in 1982 with the Falklands – how do you ensure the
security of the small states? She could also see it [the Commonwealth] had a role to play in defending the
world from militant Islam. 17
That there were tensions between the Palace and Downing Street was highlighted by
what became known as the Sunday Times affair. On 20 July 1986, just before the
Commonwealth Games were to be held in Edinburgh, having been boycotted by a
number of nations in protest against Britain’s stubbornness over sanctions against South
Africa, the Sunday Times ran a front-page story that Elizabeth was deeply unhappy with
Mrs Thatcher’s policies over a wide number of issues: ‘Sources close to the Queen let it
be known to the Sunday Times yesterday that she is dismayed by many of Mrs Thatcher’s
policies. This dismay goes well beyond the current crisis in the Commonwealth over
South Africa. In an unprecedented disclosure of the monarch’s views, it was said that the
Queen considers the Prime Minister’s approach to be uncaring, confrontational and
divisive.’ Elizabeth was horrified and Mrs Thatcher, always sensitive to the multiplying
stories in the press that she and Elizabeth did not get on, was deeply hurt – so much so
that she did not even mention the episode in her memoirs. The Queen’s Private
Secretary, Sir William Heseltine, in time-honoured fashion, wrote a letter to The Times
in which he asserted the Queen’s constitutional right to counsel, encourage and warn her
ministers: ‘She is entitled to have opinions on Government policy and express them to
her chief ministers.’ Whatever personal opinions the sovereign may hold or may have
expressed to the Government, he said, ‘she is bound to accept and act on the advice of