DUKE OF EDINBURGH-VII A patron not content to be a figurehead

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32639, 22 June 1971, Page 24

DUKE OF EDINBURGH-VII A patron not content to be a figurehead

“Gentlemen,” the Duke of Edinburgh, told the committee of the National Playing Fields Association at his first meeting as president, “I want to assure you that I have no intention of being a sitting tenant in this post.”

He followed with a practical demonstration gutting and reconstructing an appeal drafted to go out with his name on.

This was in 1949, an early hint that bodies capturing him for their letter-headings need not think that was all they were getting.- Involvement is two-way. He identifies with the organisation, and fights its battles as personal challenges. But, if it lapses into any ludicrosities, they reflect on him, and he can make life hot and uncomfortable for the officials and executives. The affairs of the N.P.F.A. were in a mess, and he said so. The next thing was to get them out of it. As usual, it was largely a matter of money, which he set about raising. Having raised it, he was watchful about where it went.

He’d shaken it out of the public pocket, by innumerable wiles and guiles, on both sides of the Atlantic, and it must be seen to be well spent. Takes active part

He wasn’t even satisfied to be the driving force. He had to participate. He did a stint in tlie N.P.F.A. office, walking from Clarence House to

Buckingham Gate every day like any other nine-till-fiver. By 1953 playing fields were coming, along at the rate of 200 a year. It has been his longest term of office, and will last until 1972. He doesn’t ordinarily believe in prolonged associations, thinks they make for ossification at the top, but this seemed a special case.

It is conceivable that the organisations themselves are not always too cast down at the idea of a change. During his 10 years with the Automobile Association he bom-

barded its offices mercilessly. Honorary life membership had been pressed on him a month after the wedding. Accepting the presidency four years later, he wrote that he looked forward to “taking an active part in the affairs of the association.” No idle threat.

His presidential hats are a godsend. Without them, merely as the Queen’s husband, the need for political detachment could be a paralyser. As it is, though he must appear equally delighted in the company of either a yachting or a landlocked prime minister, he can get into the ribs of government departments with no holds barred. It’s the only way.

When your lines are out in practically every teach of the nation’s life, from the chancellorship of universities through everv layer of industry and commerce, education, recreation end all the infinite permutations of youth, the arts, the armed forces, the Church, the learned societies, there isn’t much the politicians don’t loom over, if only because you have to get the money out of them, a subject on which Whitehall is notoriously coy. Useful doorbells It’s useful to have all the best doorbells to ring. “So I got on to David Exeter . . .” (6th Marquess, steel, banking, insurance, motor-cars); “So I wrote to lan pike . . .” (2nd Baron, goldfields, electricity, advertising, sales management).

Sounds pretty top-drawer. That isn’t the point. And a lot of names without handles keep cropping up as well, anyway. But we all. have our networks, and the members of this one happen to be the sort who often have networks Of their own, and in a good cause are fearless exploiters of friends. It would, be absurd—crazy, he’d say for the Duke, whose' time and energy mostly go on one good cause or another, not to exploit

them in turn. There’s not much he won’t do for a good cause. In America once, where he was fund-raising for the Variety Club, a man .of substance with a summer home at Miami Beach offered him $lOO,OOO to go and swim in his pool: he accepted with grace and came away with the cheque. A useful slice went to the Award Scheme. His commitments run to hundreds. Only half a dozen May be actively bubbling at a particular time, but a lot more are on the permanent simmer, and you daren’t really take your eye off the stove. Behind the scenes It all goes on behind the visible exterior, the public appearances that already look to be taking all the time there is. And even allowing for what’s seen and what isn’t, there’s still another layer at ordinary routine level; interviews, meetings, the estates to run, a girl from the office to say goodbye (“Medium framed photographs?” says Randle Cooke’s reminder. “Good idea. P.”), sitting for painters, sculptors, cameras. If a Commonwealth country changes its uniforms he must find time to pose for the official record in his various ranks.

Through it all, other strange threads: odd letters rushed off, something that’s seized his passing attention. And somehow, in a year, 80 or 90 speeches get written and delivered. Sometimes delivered but not written (“N.T.” says the official record: “No text”). Speeches about sewage, Dr Livingstone dancing, coal, Anglo-Leban-ese development, microscopes, astronautics, concrete, the capricorn beetle, libraries, agricultural engineering, cooking, cricket, insurance, plant diseases, education, the arts. Half of them never get reported. He couldn’t care less. "There’s no question of we just get a lump sum, and we can do what we like with it." Passport No. 1 His passport number is one, which seems about right, as the Queen doesn’t have

one. Occupation, Prince of the Royal House. Equally right, if a surprise, is that its back pages, while the currency restrictions were at their toughest, carried a note of those miserable £5O allocations just like everyone else’s.

“We don’t get away with anything,” says Leslie Treby, who has run the clerical side of his office for more than 20 years.

Still, he’s wrenched the occasional concession. Four years ago the Treasury agreed that the laundry bills should be regarded as necessary expenditure. Until then, if the Duke wanted to avoid the crumpled look at State banquets, the washing and ironing came out of his own pocket.

It is recognised for tax purposes that about two-thirds of his £40,000 “annuity” from the Treasury is spent on doing the job: no allowable expenses, because he gets the money to work with and expenses is what most of it’s for. Out of the rest, after tax and surtax, comes everything else. Im the red

! His “cat among the pigeons” remark about the state of the Monarchy’s housekeeping was simply a statement of fact. He’s more concerned about the Queen’s money troubles than his own.

His own approach is that you don’t worry about money until there isn’t any, and then , only because you need it to . do the job. No question of tucking the stuff away as reassurance, in moments of gloom, that you’re a man of , substance; and today, no possibility—the books for the last year or two show him l well on the debit side. It’s his treasurer (now ■ Lord Rupert Nevill) and office who worry. Not that he is a loose spender. He has had his Alvis convertible since 1961, which should shake the change-every-other-year boys. Admittedly, the yacht Bloodhound, recently got rid of as part of the essential cut-down, cost £ll,OOO. But that was in 1962, nearing the end of the palmy days. He seldom got more than four days sailing a year out of her; the rest of the time she was lent to clubs, acquiring prestige in competitions just by Royal association. Earning his grant “How does he earn his £40,000 a year plus perks?” asked the “Daily Mirror” at the time of those American television disclosures. Also, “Does he really have to go abroad to make bad jokes about being down on his uppers?” It wasn’t a joke, but there’s a joke of sorts in his great financial paradox. The more he does, the more he pays: For staff, office fixtures and fittings, clothes, travel, presents, tips. (He does the tipping for all who go round with him, naturally.) It’s the staff that cause the biggest crunch. That £40,000 sound all right But in 1969 the salaries swallowed £20,600 of it. And another thing. An item for household accommodation which looks surprising among his official outgoings (at'least he lives all round, otherwise things would have been impossible long ago), means the accommodation he has to find for his Household. They are lodged, with the valets and others, in handy flats round St James’ Street —five minutes’ walk to the Palace, and no unthinkable hold-up in times of transport chaos. He pays their rent and rates, also telephones. Besides paying for the maintenance and running costs of his own car, he feels he should also chip in with something toward the official limousines in the Royal Mews. He uses them for work, and he’s paid to do the work and therefore finds the upkeep of two cars, the pay of two chauffeurs, and another £l6O to keep them in uniforms, so the total chipin here is now topping the £2OOO a year mark. Salaries grow Inflation apart, as he has made more, and more work for himself, he has shelled out in proportion. In 1953, before he really started pushing out the boundaries of his separate post - accession career, the staff salary bill was a mere £6OOO or so. There were savings, which is just as well, because it is rom them, now running out like bathwater, that the yearly deficits of the seventies are being made good. Even so, a lot of those i dwindling reserves are out of, reach for any ordinary use, in what are known as the Edinburgh Trusts: under the deeds they can be used only: for good works, to meet the ever-rolling stream of charitEveryone imagines there, must be money to bum. Uni-| versity clubs, for instance, i inspired to mount expeditions! in the vacation —dig up the Inca ruins, canoe down the Zambesi—think of him as the first and readiest touch, and there’s often a faint coolness in the letter of

thanks when he comes up with only £lOO. The only infusion the trust gets these days is from such odd items as television fees. He often does not get any, but if he does, that is where they go. Personal windfall

There was once a personal windfall, for his contribution to the film about the Galapagos. After tax, it went on polo ponies. Otherwise, the “annuity” is the sole source.

The trusts were his own idea. Though he isn’t much interested in money, it wouldn’t be like him not to run a finger down the accounts and stop here and there with an inquiring stabFinding that the invested savings were only yielding a net £250 a year or so, hardly enough to paddle undergraduate canoers along the Manchester ship canal he saw that to start the trusts and scrub round some of the tax would make a lot more sense. It means that for private purposes the money has gone for good. But at least when the appeals come in he need, not plead that the cupboard’s bare. He would hate that, having a generous streak. And the chances are that the alms-hunters would not believe it, anyway. (“How nice it must be,” once mused the "Sunday Express,” "not to have to worry about a sordid trifle like money.”)

Thls article is extracted from "Philip: An Informal Biography,” by Basil Boothroyd, published by Longman. Copyright-1971 Nagrapho, Ltd.