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to Hitler at Berchtesgaden, the umbrella which once ruled the world even now still
symbolizes Whitehall, the machine of government with which the Palace is closely
linked. Elizabeth is the constitutional cog in the workings of government; together, her
Private Secretary, the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary and the Secretary to the
Cabinet were known as ‘the Golden Triangle’. With the advent of Tony Blair, his
powerful special adviser Alastair Campbell played an important if unofficial part in the
equation.
Elizabeth, although she has no real political power, is the Queen Bee at the centre of
this Alice in Wonderland world of passages and mirrors. No ordinary member of the
public will reach her inner sanctum except through the carefully controlled access of the
television cameras, most recently in the television film, EIIR, made for the BBC by Ed
Mirzoeff and scripted by Antony Jay (who also wrote Royal Family). The official ‘hook’
for the programme was Elizabeth’s ill-fated fortieth anniversary and, although Sir
William Heseltine, as Private Secretary, was involved in the original discussions with the
BBC (as he had been over Royal Family when Press Secretary), the thrust of the film was
entirely different and reflected the changes which had overtaken the monarchy’s
relationship with the people in the intervening twenty or so years. Switching
understandably from the focus on the family, the Palace wanted this film to put across
the range of the sovereign’s activities. Put crudely, against the background of the Civil
List furore and the rising tide of republican grumbling the film was intended to show the
people what the monarchy was for and how they were getting value for their money.
The problem about featuring Elizabeth in her role as constitutional monarchy is that
the British Constitution, being unwritten and based largely on precedents, is almost
inexplicable and certainly not visually in a popular film. EIIR,therefore, concentrated on
Elizabeth herself in her role as head of state, receiving ambassadors, pinning on medals,
discussing the Gulf War with John Major. (Talking of her audiences with her Prime
Ministers, she said: ‘they unburden themselves – tell one what’s going on – sometimes
one can help – one’s a sort of sponge – Occasionally you can put your point of view
which they hadn’t seen from that angle…’) She was seen posing for one of the hundred
portraits painted of her since her accession, putting on the style with a state visit to
Windsor for President Wałesa of Poland, peering from an army helicopter over
rainswept Belfast, invisible under the famous ‘Hat of State’ on the White House Lawn,
where the speaker’s lectern had been set for the much taller President George Bush.
(Elizabeth’s speech to the Houses of Congress two days later was made by her opening
crack, ‘I hope you can all see me today…’) Later on the same 1991 state visit, she was
shown at a banquet on Britannia with the Reagans. Nancy looks anguished, perhaps
fearful that poor failing old Ron will make a gaffe, but in the end it is Elizabeth who,
somewhat unguardedly, made a remark about the impossible burdens the welfare state
puts on democracies, a view which has distinct political overtones. As a constitutional
monarch, Elizabeth is supposedly impartial and apolitical. This is why her Privy
Counsellors (who include all her leading ministers, past and present) are sworn to
secrecy and are supposed not to reveal the content of their conversations with her. ‘It is