Royal Wedding Cost Attacked

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29190, 28 April 1960, Page 6

Royal Wedding Cost Attacked

(N.Z. Press Association—Copinight) LONDON, April 26. The cost of Princess Margaret’s wedding came under fire in the House of Commons today.

A Labour member, Mr Marcus Lipion, accused the Government of “overdoing things a bit" in spending £25,000 in street decorations as well as the £lO.OOO which the honeymoon cruise in the Royal vacht, Britannia, will cost the nation.

He said that the Government had spent only £6OOO on the Queen’s wedding in 1947 <when she was Princess Elizabeth). Mrs Barbara Castle (Labour) l srid the expenditure had almost quadrupled. “I cannot remember that there was any great dissatisfaction with the preparations in 1947. but there may well be dissatisfaction at the excessive expenditure now.” she added. The Minister of Works (Lord John Hope) said comparison with 1947 was very unfair. Things were "very, very different in those days immediately after the war.”

Mr Lipton said: “While we tender loyal congratulations, isn't the disparity between these two amounts rather odd?" With the money tor decorations and the £40.000 cruise of the Britannia, the Government was overdoing things a bit. It was causing a certain amount of divided opinion and. in some quarters, critical comment. Mr Emrys Hughes, another Labour member, asked: “Does the poor old Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has been severely attacked from the Conservative benches for not reducing public expenditure, know about this? “Is it not setting a very bad example to other spending departments when we are fold that public economy is badlyneeded at the present time?”

There were Labour cries of “answer, answer” when the Minister did not get up to replv.

Later Mr R. A. Butler, the Home Secretary, announced that the Government would propose the House of Commons should not sit on the day of the wedding

Details of the main guests and wedding ceremonial were announced tonight by the Lord Chamberlain (the Earl of Scarborough). The divorced parents of Mr A.Pony Armstrong-Jones will walk immediatelv behind the Queen and her familv after his marriage in Westminster Abbeyon May 6 Mr Ronald Armstrong-Jones and his former wife, now the Countess of Rosse. will walk

behind the Royal Family in the procession leaving the Abbey. The ceremony details given by the Lord Chamberlain. head official of the Royal Household, disclosed that nine foreign "royalties” will be among the 29(18 guests in the Abbey. The only reigning house among them is Denmark, which will be represented by its Queen and bv Prince and Princess George. The other “royalties” are Prince and Princess Tomislav of Jugoslavia, Prince Karl of Hesse. Prince Maximilian of Baden, the hereditary Prince of HohenloheLangenbourah. and Prince Ludwig of Baden.

Other European royal families who were invited were unable to accept the invitation for a variety of reasons, including previous engagements.