An Exemplary Life

Peter Oborne writes:

Any serious analysis of why Britain has been relatively poorly governed since the end of the Second World War must concern itself with the cult of the short-term. There are structural reasons for this modern phenomenon: the ambition of politicians to leave an instant mark; the demands of the electoral cycle; the financial markets and their extraordinary ability to anticipate and then discount the future.

Meanwhile the news media, so expert at generating artificial “crises”, with the accompanying demand for their urgent resolution, has grown stealthily in importance. It takes very wise statesmanship to discriminate between these largely bogus constructions and things that matter. Too often this has been lacking. Tony Blair, for example, created an entire methodology of government dedicated to the press officer, the focus group and the Whitehall “target”.

John Major often seemed obliterated by the power of current events. Harold Wilson would sit up till the early hours, surrounded by cronies, inspecting the first editions of the newspapers for evidence of Cabinet plots to unseat him.

But we must all bear our share of the blame, because these politicians were doing no more than succumbing to the spirit of our age. While previous generations built for the future, modern Britons are obsessed by novelty and personal gratification. Presentation matters more than substance – indeed, philosophy lecturers today inform students that the two are identical. As a result we have learnt to dismiss solidity, complexity, tradition, hierarchy and public spirit.

The colossal importance of the Duke of Edinburgh, who celebrates his 90th birthday next week, is that he has defied the spirit of his time. This is why, for most of his adult life, he has been forced to endure such hostility and contempt. In the 1960s, satirists portrayed him as a member of a bankrupt establishment. The state socialists who ran Britain in the 1970s despised the Duke as a symbol of ruling-class domination. The New Right that came to power in the 1980s could not understand him at all. He was not for sale, he was not efficient, and he was not driven by the profit motive, yet he could not really be classified as part of the public sector. He appeared to have no purpose.

The 1990s were most dangerous of all. This decade is still too close in time to be properly assessed, but I guess that historians will come to classify it as one of the nastiest in all British history. It produced a new breed of publicist whose special expertise was presenting greed and self-interest as a form of public virtue: much of the New Labour phenomenon can be explained in this way. During this period British public life was under vicious and sustained attack, and in the front line of this was the Royal family. For those too cautious personally to target the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh made an admirable proxy.

Try this in a Daily Mirror editorial: “You are an arrogant, over-bearing, insensitive, tactless, patronising, boorish, out of touch and now sickening fool.” For the Sun he was a “75-year-old aristocrat who is totally detached from reality”.

Alastair Campbell, later to be Tony Blair’s press officer, labelled him “crass” and the Royal family “thick”. Or take this, from the then Blairite columnist Anne McElvoy, writing in the Independent: “Prince Philip, whose mind remains steeped in the casually ignorant racialism of his youth, is beyond redemption and can only be regarded as an asset on the days he is kept indoors.” Elsewhere he was described as “wholly out of touch with contemporary life and thought”.

Attacks like these, which were led by the foreign-owned Sun, which made little secret of its desire to destroy the British monarchy, were common currency. But they were sanctioned by mainstream politicians. For example, the Liberal Democrat grandee Menzies Campbell, who is by no means as nice a man as he appears, exploited one press convulsion to damn the Duke as “entirely out of touch with public opinion”. It was as if the Duke of Edinburgh was not a human being. He was fair game for any kind of verbal brutality.

Mercifully, these assaults on his humanity have become rare as he has grown older, though the Guardian three years ago published an insulting and impudent article that labelled the Duke as a “homophobe and a misogynist” and concluded that he was a “disappointed man” who “covered his helplessness and anger with the rough-hewn mask of arrogance and began to self-destruct”. The author of this vicious piece of nonsense did not try to reconcile the Duke’s alleged hatred of women with the fact that for almost 60 years this very proud and ambitious man (those who served in the Navy with him have all remarked that he could have reached the very top of his profession) has sacrificed his career to be the loyal consort of the Queen.

He has always been happy to walk a step behind the British monarch. Always, he has offered her unfailing support. Never once has be caused her embarrassment or got her into trouble. At this late stage of her long reign, it can be confidently stated that Queen Elizabeth II has been one of the great monarchs in our history: that achievement simply would not have been possible without the Duke of Edinburgh.

There has never been the slightest hint of scandal, or any reproach against his personal integrity. Over a span of six decades, this is also extraordinary. And yet he never surrendered his personality while carrying out his self-effacing task. He has been one of the most vivid figures in our national life, with a unique ability to project his own personality.

It is very easy to say what he stands for: duty, service, discretion, kindness, concern, eccentricity. His commitment to the cause has been exemplary. Until last year, when he cut down for health reasons, he was still carrying out well over 300 engagements a year. No wonder the political and media classes that have gradually taken control of Britain over the past few decades have so much contempt for the Duke. Disinterested public service fits in neither with the Right-wing narrative of private enterprise nor New Labour’s conception of a centralised, domineering political class.

Each of us tends to be formed in our late teens and early 20s: those are the years when we discover the world and our own limitations. For the Duke, his formative years were the 1940s. He served in battleships and destroyers throughout the Second World War, being mentioned in despatches, was involved in the Allied invasion of Sicily and was in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrendered. Returning to Britain, he wooed and won the Queen.

That generation of the 1940s made terrible and, to us, unthinkable sacrifices. They risked their lives again and again, at home and on the frontline, and knew death and destruction in the struggle against fascism. They had very few material comforts (Prince Philip had to borrow a suit when he first visited Balmoral) and perhaps it is true that some of their humour was a little uncouth. My own feeling is that they were the greatest generation of Britons there has ever been, and that Prince Philip, like so many of his contemporaries, has a great deal to teach us as he approaches his 90th birthday.