By Mark Langabeer (Hastings and Rye CLP)
Channel 4’s investigative programme, Dispatches (Monday, 10th May) delved into the murky world of royals profiting from their status. According to a You Gov poll, 68% of the 2000-plus people questioned opposed members of the royal family using their position for private profit. The programme interviewed Sir Alastair Graham, a former Chair of the Public Standards Select Committee, who felt that royals who traded their status for private gain were not meeting the standards required in public life.
Apparently, there are few rules which prevent members of the royal family cashing in. Peter Phillips, a grandson of the Queen, appeared in an advertisement for a Chinese dairy company and Prince Harry has lucrative deals with Netflix and Silicon Valley companies. Dispatches and the Sunday Times set up a fake South Korean Company that offered investments in gold. They contacted five members of the royal family and they all declined, except Prince Michael of Kent. A friend and business associate of Prince Michael, Lord Harding, set up a meeting where it was agreed that that the company would pay £200,000 for a speech by the Prince, stressing the importance of gold for the royals. The speech would also be held at Prince Michael’s home, Kensington Palace.
Found out
Recordings of the interviews with Harding and Prince Michael also included links to Putin and Russian oligarchs. Since 1998, Prince Michael has been the Patron of Russo-British Chamber of Commerce and could assist in promoting this fake company with Putin. Harding stated that this should be kept quiet, for obvious reasons, and that a five-day trip to Russia would cost around £50,000. When they discovered that they had been duped, statements from both Harding and the Prince claimed that they’d had no recent contact with Putin and Harding suggested that he hadn’t had his eye on the ball, due to a recent kidney transplant. As the film showed, it was more a case of being found out.
Dispatches presenter, Antony Barnett, stated that the majority of the British public hold the royals in high regard. This is no surprise, given the favourable coverage given by the mass media. The coverage of Prince Phillip’s death is an illustration of this fact. It appears strange that those that speak endlessly about efficiency and cost should support an institution that costs a great deal and offers little in real value. They enjoy privileges that have been bestowed as a result of their birth. We saw the hysteria whipped up against Corbyn because he didn’t give the Queen due respect (he didn’t bow sufficiently and his attire was criticised).
There is a reason why the establishment desire to maintain this feudal relic and it’s not to do with tourism. They are not neutral, as some like to suggest. They are there in order to preserve the interests of the bosses and prevent the transformation of society along socialist lines.
