FORUM: Illtyd Harrington: ‘As I Please’

Main Image : 

Published: 9 June, 2011

THE fag-in-residence at the Hope and Heart informed Sunday drinkers: “It is a shame and disgrace. The Queen should have won Britain’s Got Talent. That Simon Cowell fixed it.” 

To make matters worse, Prince Philip got the secret service to loosen one of the shoes of the Queen’s horse – the favourite. Ignoring my claim that she was an agent of Fayed of Harrods, she concluded in triumph: “Philip’s always been jealous of her.”

I’m afraid I have to make a public confession: I know and like him. And for the past 40 years and through more than 100 letters and meetings, my views remain.

I recall with glee a private dinner given by him in 1982 amid the grandeur of Buckingham Palace. He had set up a table of four royal dukes, Thatcherites, like Shirley Porter, not yet unmasked, Lord Hailsham, the Lord Chancellor, Sir Trevor Jones, the Liverpool City Council leader, Lord Zuckerman government scientific adviser, the chief constable of Greater Manchester, James Anderton, and me. 

The subject was the future of inner cities. The temperature rose and I challenged Anderton to say what area of the inner city he lived in. He blushed, he huffed and puffed, and said he lived 35 miles outside. With the flourish of an Old Bailey prosecutor I said “I rest my case”.

Philip, to keep the peace, interjected: “Illtyd is right. He lives in a council flat. And I live in Buckingham Palace.” 

Jones “the vote” blabbed to the media that red Ken’s deputy had attended this select gathering. Soon the BBC World at One pursued me. I broke all the rules of protocol and congratulated the prince on his knowledge and insight. 

A few years earlier I had joined him on an architectural TV programme. When it came to my notice that a magnificent example of Georgian architecture, Swakeleys, near Uxbridge, and a GLC property, was threatened, he came quickly to back me up. They filmed Tom Jones there with Albert Finney. 

During my brief career, Barbara Castle and I paid recurring visits to the dramatic decaying locks on the Kennet and Avon canal. They are a superb tribute to 19th-century navvies, and determination. After he found out that I had not been invited to the ceremonial opening of these two projects he expressed his dismay to the cluster of sycophants. 

Perhaps most memorably in August 1979, when I was enjoying the Clapham horse show, a GLC annual function, news came through of his uncle Lord Mountbatten’s murder in Ireland. Mountbatten was a virtual father to him and a supporter of the Labour Party would you believe.

His private grief must have been deep yet, in answer to my private condolences, he replied in moving terms of conciliation, and the hope that he might mark a step towards reconciliation. 

Mountbatten, his mentor, was disliked by the Establishment. As was Edwina, his wife, who had pillow talk with Paul Robeson and that elegant first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru. She was not one to hide her views. They both influenced Philip. 

A rather intrusive 80-year-old member of the Harrington family recently lectured me on the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme: “It adjusts quickly like the Boy Scouts and Salvation Army.”

A practical example of this I saw again at the Colne Valley regional park, which stretches from Heathrow to Aylesbury. 

I was the chairman, and large of sums of GLC money were invested in tree growing. Walking through some fields one day with him we stumbled across two ardent students of love. The boy, naturally confused, said: “You look familiar.” Philip smiled, and said: “So sorry I disturbed you!” 

A young Alastair Campbell once lobbied him for an interview on the problems of the world environment. Ten years earlier, at a Westminster reception, he cornered me and said the environment was the biggest political issue and I ought to go and look at the destruction of the rain forest, that’s the real political agenda. 

We continued this discussion in letters, after he dismissed as inconsequential, the UN meeting in Rio De Janeiro. “No teeth.” Again, when the UN called a report in Copenhagen, on Earth-warming, two years ago, he wrote: “God’s got a sense of humour.” The entire continent was frozen solid during the conference.

Among the letters I discovered a mild rebuke. I had asked for his influence to clear some heavy vessels that had been scuttled during the war at the mouth of Malta’s Valletta harbour, to frustrate any enemy approach. As a Lord of the Admiralty, he intervened, and the Royal Navy set to work. But with a gentle hint that I must “not get too close” to Dom Mintoff. 

This naval practicality came in a letter putting me right about the dismantling of the royal yacht Britannia. To my mind, a London tourist attraction; to his, a decaying old girl of the sea, whose body parts and beauty spots were not worth replacing. 

I saw him argue about the heating system and design of middle-class houses in Docklands. The developers did not like it. I steered him off to a yacht club, which was teaching East End kids to sail and take care in the water. 

Those of the Left will be surprised to know that he is a former honorary member of the lightermen and stevedores union. To end a boring lecture at the Docklands Museum, I said: “Can you give us that dockers’ hook that that transport union gave you?” He said “no”. 

The Queen only strayed into politics twice. Once over the Chiswick Family Rescue, and secondly when she was accused indirectly of supporting the rising SDP. 

Farooq, the last king of Egypt, physically gross, and mentally putrid, once slumped over the gaming tables in Monte Carlo, looking through his blood-stained eyes at the cards. His one memorable phrase in a life of indulgence was: “Soon, only five kings will be left. Hearts Diamonds, Clubs, Spades – and England’s”.

I think we’ve had a king since 1952.