By Vernon Bogdanor 6:52PM GMT 06 Mar 2013
As the weekly audiences between the Queen and her prime minister are turned into an acclaimed West End play, Vernon Bogdanor, who advised on the script of The Audience, explains a uniquely British tradition
Paul Ritter as John Major and Helen Mirren as the Queen in 'The Audience’. James Callaghan said the confidential meetings were like visits to a psychiatrist Photo: Johan Persson
When I taught at Oxford, I came across the definition of an Oxford secret. It was something one told to just one other person.
Most people in public life would find that a hard promise to keep now. We live in an age when almost nothing is private. Cabinet secrecy has become a contradiction in terms; civil service anonymity has almost disappeared. There are perhaps just four exceptions: the doctor’s surgery, the psychiatrist’s couch, the Catholic confessional – and the Queen’s weekly audiences with her prime ministers, held every Wednesday when both are in London. It is these encounters that have been dramatised by Peter Morgan in his West End play The Audience, which has opened this week to great acclaim, including a five-star review from Charles Spencer in this paper.
It is not clear when these audiences began. During the Second World War, George VI invited Winston Churchill to regular lunches at Buckingham Palace to monitor progress. Churchill sometimes took liberties with the monarch. In October 1942, worried about the campaign in North Africa, he left the lunch table to go to the telephone. His telephone conversation evidently pleased him, since, as the King’s private secretary has written, “he walked back along the passage singing Roll out the Barrel with gusto, but with little evidence of musical talent…”
Regular weekly audiences, however, did not begin until the reign of the present Queen. Their purpose is to enable the Queen and the prime minister to discuss matters of high policy in perfect confidence, and with the sure knowledge that their comments will not reach outside ears.
Edward Heath felt that one could speak with complete confidence to the Queen: “You can say things that you would not say even to your Number Two.” James Callaghan used to say that the weekly audiences were like visits to a psychiatrist. He could use the Queen as a sounding-board for his views on policies and personalities, knowing that she would never divulge what he thought.
To ensure confidentiality, no private secretaries are present, and no minutes are taken; nor do freedom of information laws apply. If that were not so, the audiences would lose their value. While the Queen would never obtrude her own political views upon her prime ministers, she might well want to inquire into the aims and purposes of proposed government legislation. Such an inquiry could easily be misconstrued as criticism of the government, and would compromise the Queen’s position, which depends upon her political neutrality.
She must always remain free from the slightest taint of partisanship. That is because she is not only head of state, she is also head of the nation – or rather of the multi-national state that Britain, since devolution, has become. In this role, the Queen must represent all of her people, not just those who adhere to a particular political creed. She and the other members of the Royal family are the only people in the country who have no political history.
But this does not mean that the Queen has no influence, that she is a mere automaton. Queen Victoria’s favourite prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, once said, “The principles of the English [sic] Constitution do not contemplate the absence of personal influence on the part of the Sovereign; and if they did, the principles of human nature would prevent the fulfilment of such a theory”.
The Queen’s longest-serving prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, wrote in her memoirs that “Anyone who imagines that they [the audiences] are a mere formality or confined to social niceties is quite wrong; they are quietly businesslike and Her Majesty brings to bear a formidable grasp of current issues and breadth of experience.”
Edward Heath told Panorama in February 1993 that the Queen can exert influence through an “exchange of views”, but that she would never tell a prime minister what he or she should or should not do. Her methods would be more subtle.
A dean of St Paul’s once asked the Queen what she could do if a prime minister submitted a name for an ecclesiastical appointment with which she was not happy. “Nothing constitutionally,” she replied, “but I can always say that I should like more information. That is an indication the prime minister will not miss.” Perhaps the Queen uses the same technique in audiences.
James Callaghan recorded in his autobiography how in early 1976 the Queen encouraged him, as foreign secretary, to take an initiative, which he already had in mind, to resolve the Rhodesian problem.
“Inevitably, the Queen’s opinion was enough to tip the scales, for she is an authority on the Commonwealth and I respected her opinion,” Callaghan wrote. “I have always thought that the Queen’s initiative on Rhodesia was a perfect illustration of how and when the monarch could effectively intervene to advise and encourage her Ministers from her own wide experience and with complete constitutional propriety.”
Precisely because the privacy of the audiences is respected, no one can know what is said there. There is and can be no evidence that anything in The Audience actually happened. The play is an intelligent reconstruction of what might have happened, rather than what did. Peter Morgan has had to speculate. But it is fascinating speculation.
The Queen has so far been served by 12 prime ministers, two more than served Queen Victoria. Her first, when she came to the throne in 1952, was Winston Churchill, the great war leader, enjoying a second, peacetime, innings at No 10.
Churchill had first entered Parliament in 1900, when Queen Victoria was on the throne. His knowledge and experience was by now formidable and it would not be surprising if the Queen had been somewhat in awe of him. Even so, it appears that the audiences were great fun. The Queen’s private secretary at the time wrote in his diary that he “could not hear what they talked about, but it was, more often than not, punctuated by peals of laughter, and Winston generally came out wiping his eyes”.
By contrast, the current prime minister, David Cameron, was not even born when the Queen came to the throne. At the time of his birth, in 1966, the Queen had already reigned for 14 years. Indeed, she now enjoys a far longer experience of politics than anyone else in public affairs.
It would not therefore be surprising if 21st century prime ministers were somewhat in awe of the Queen. Her knowledge, based on assiduous reading of Cabinet papers, reports from ambassadors, parliamentary papers and reports of major conferences, as well as meetings with every prominent political figure over the past 60 years, must be unrivalled.
George V, who rather underrated his abilities, and who was on the throne for 26 years, from 1910 to 1936, once remarked, “I am not a clever man, but if I had not picked up something from all the brains I’ve met I’d be an idiot.”
The Queen might well say to a 21st-century prime minister: “A measure similar to the one you are suggesting was proposed around 25 years ago when you were still at university. You probably do not remember, but it did have some bad results. Perhaps you might have a look at what happened and discuss it with your colleagues.”
A prime minister is under no obligation to accept such a suggestion, but he would be unwise to dismiss it without serious consideration. It is in any case of great value for a prime minister to have to explain himself regularly to a well-informed monarch with no political axe to grind. It is a salutary reminder that the holder of political power is a temporary incumbent and that his task is to govern in the interests of the whole nation, not just of those who voted for him.
The Audience casts a shaft of light on relationships between the Queen and her various prime ministers, and therefore on the workings of modern constitutional monarchy, a system of government which, far from undermining democracy, serves to strengthen and sustain it.
And if the conjunction of monarchy and democracy may seem contradictory, it is worth bearing in mind Freud’s aphorism that it is only in logic that contradictions cannot exist.
Vernon Bogdanor is professor of government at King’s College, London. His books include 'The Monarchy and the Constitution’ (Oxford University Press)
