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Journalism of Courage
So what is Britain to make of a letter-writing prince with a loose pen and some leaky pen pals? Front-page news, column by column alongside Iraq, is the revelation here that Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, for years has been dashing off confidential letters to some minister or other in what is formally characterised as his mother-the-Queen’s government.
Were it not for the flourish of that single-name signature, and the royal return address, letters leaked this week to the media read a lot like something plucked from a mailbag of earnest and outraged missives to the editor, of the sort beginning ‘‘Sir’’ and ending ‘‘Yours faithfully.’’ The prince who frets about organic food and modern architecture puts pen to paper to get in his tuppence’s worth about all manner of matters, from military training and human rights to the hygienic qualities of wooden vs plastic cutting boards and the ‘‘depressing’’ case of some flourishing horse chestnut trees that were chopped down for fear that falling chestnuts would crack someone’s noggin and occasion a lawsuit.
‘‘I and countless others,’’ wrote the Prince, ‘‘dread the very real and growing prospect of an American-style personal injury ‘culture’ becoming evermore prevalent in this country.’’ In another letter, written in February to the Lord Chancellor, the Prince wrings his hands over a law stopping volunteers from cooking meals in old people’s homes unless the Good Samaritans have taken food hygiene courses. ‘‘Yet many of these sorts of volunteers are middle-aged ladies who have cooked for their families for 40 years without poisoning anyone.
In order to protect the elderly from a tiny but theoretical risk, a whole section of volunteers is in danger of being alienated.’’ Such a ‘‘proliferation of rules and rights stifles initiative,’’ Charles argues.
The letters, which reveal a writer one columnist called ‘‘an epistolary incontinent,’’ are more impressive for language than for original thinking. His spokesmen declare that the Prince is perfectly within his rights to speak his mind, as he has for years to officials from both the Labour and Conservative parties in letters that until now remained confidential.
So what’s the front-page fuss? Apart from the fact that royals sell papers, the fuss is over whether the heir to the throne is making himself — via his shortcut to ministerial mailboxes — a royal lobbyist, overstepping an unwritten but understood constitutional line. (LATWP)
