Royal bad-brother syndrome
We hear “nobody is above the Law” more in hope than expectation. So it is heartening to hear today that the Thames Valley Police arrested Mr Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, younger brother of King Charles, former inglorious Duke of York, and former Special Representative for Trade and International Investment, 2001-2011, on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
The mighty are rarely pulled down from their thrones as the Magnificat recommends. Despite almost a rule of omerta , efforts to cover up some of the worst incidences of royal misbehaviour in the past — misplaced patriotic instinct? — have rarely succeeded. This is a very British news bombshell.
Wikipedia already knew of several surprising incidents of commercial wheeler-dealing by “Air-miles Andy”. He was also something of a royal gun-runner on our behalf, and was close, so Chris Bryant MP claimed, to Libya’s Gaddafi and allegedly to a notorious Libyan arms dealer. Bryant noted in the House of Commons as long ago as February 2011 how “it was very difficult to see in whose interests he was acting“. For at least some of the time, the suspicion must be: his own.
So could all this have been averted? Could the Security Services, via the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, have warned the Queen that making Andrew a Special Trade Representative, let loose globally, was a bad risk? Perhaps they did. Then again, Peter Mandelson was elevated to the House of Lords so that he could serve as Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills in October 2008 in Gordon Brown’s cabinet, just a few months before Epstein’s conviction for procuring a child for prostitution. Was it considered improper then to intervene or, indeed, to build up files on ministers and members of the royal family involved with Epstein’s rich and powerful network? We may never know.
Between 2017 and 2025 the British Security Services stopped 43 late-stage terrorist attacks. They deserve recognition for getting it right first time, and most times: a rare accomplishment in today’s British state. Unsurprisingly, much of what else they were doing is not in the public domain. But it would be interesting to know how they handled the rumbling Epstein scandals and the goings-on of the Duke of York.
In mitigation, despite the Good Friday agreement in 1998, our Security Services didn’t suddenly have time on their hands. Osama Bin Laden had bobbed up in 1996 with some worrying suggestions about what jihadists needed to do to the “corrupt West” and not just its “lackeys” in the Middle East. Even before 9/11, his terrorists went on to bomb American embassies in Africa with huge casualties. But it was only in late October last year that, amidst the fall-out from the Epstein affair and the Palace’s distancing itself from the Duke of York, that The Telegraph reported that the intelligence agencies had come out and declared Andrew a potential national security risk.
The royals have suffered twice in living memory from the bad-brother syndrome. In his 10 December 1936 letter of abdication, Edward, the eldest son of King George V, let his “irrevocable determination to renounce the throne” be known. Then, using the title Duke of Windsor, Edward travelled to France and married the twice-divorced woman for whom he had sacrificed his throne.
After his brother Albert became King George VI, Edward visited Germany in 1937 on the steamship Bremen at the invitation of the Nazi Labour Front. Preparations for war in Europe were well underway. Buchenwald concentration camp had opened a few months earlier. British tourists were still going to Germany, but this was a royal, even a semi-state visit, and different. The Duke of Windsor dutifully visited factories, inspected an SS unit, had tea with Goering, dinner with Goebbels, and made a friendly private visit to Hitler in his lair at the Berghof, outside Berchtesgarden, Bavaria. A thank you letter survives, plus photographs.
After Hitler’s invasion of France in May 1940, the couple were given Nazi safe-passage south to Spain then, in July 1940, went on to stay with a rich banker in Lisbon. The Marburg files reveal Operation Willi , discovered by US troops in 1945 in abandoned vehicles near Marburg Castle, near Hesse. Correspondence between the German ambassador to Portugal and Berlin reveals an attempt to co-opt Edward which ultimately failed. Under Churchill’s pressure, Edward accepted a post as Governor of the Bahamas and sailed from Lisbon.
What to make of all this? In 1936 a Joint Intelligence Committee was added to supervise the tiny and somewhat ineffectual predecessor to MI5. Baldwin, Churchill plus the Security Service, such as it was, handled the critical period 1937-1940 with diplomacy and skill. Edward fancied himself as mediator between Britain and Germany and was correspondingly vulnerable to his pro-Nazi wife, the German ambassador to London and later Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, who was described as her “close friend”, and his own anger at his brother becoming king. Like Andrew many decades later, Edward became a national security risk.
Both Edward and Andrew seem to have had no sense of what might be meant by unacceptable company and association for a representative of the State. Both had to leave their desirable residences in Windsor Great Park. Both lost their royal titles and, perhaps unfairly, gained a reputation for treachery. Both were provided with a cover-up costing money and time – to little avail – to retain the royal family’s image: a £12 million settlement for Virginia Giuffre, for example. Edward, cheap at the price, received an annual allowance of £1.4 million, in today’s equivalent, and a Governor’s hat in a warm climate. (He also realised some £250 million by selling two private royal residences to King George VI.)
The details of what exactly needed covering up is difficult to pin down. The Marburg papers have Edward talking privately to a Spanish diplomat in 1940 contemplating the coming Blitz, pushing Britain into peace negotiations. But German counter-intelligence was playing games, and possibly putting their spin on his words reported back to Berlin.
Fast forward, considerable efforts went into covering up the degree to which Andrew was compromised and, other than Epstein, who knew what. There are reports of pin-hole cameras for filming visitors’ activities found in rooms on Epstein’s island. Kompromat is to recruiting intelligence assets as an Arsenal match is to a ticket holder. Were Epstein’s obsessively extensive archives for self-protection or for remunerative transactions with intelligence agencies, and if so, which ones? We may never know.
Given the magnitude of the Epstein scandal, the other big question is could victims, and others, have been spared the consequences of the failings of its rich and powerful elite by swift and decisive action by the Security Services? What did the FBI/CIA have on Epstein and did they share it with the UK? And is the clandestine surveillance of those in authority the proper and necessary role of our Intelligence agencies? Political “policing” of Left-wing activists became routine in the Cold War. NGOs have not been spared their attention and, sometimes, infiltration in the past. In democracies, effective parliamentary systems for the maintenance of standards in public life with appropriate monitoring, and less gullible political leaders, should obviate such surveillance. But do they?
We now have one of the best Intelligence services in the world. Lets hope our parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee are finding ways forward with them on such critical issues.
A Message from TheArticle
We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout these hard economic times. So please, make a donation.
