The age of enlightenment was a beautiful thing. People cast aside dogma and authority. They started to think for themselves. Natural science flourished. Understanding of the natural world increased. The hegemony of religion slowly declined. Eventually real universities were created and real democracy developed. The modern world was born.
People like Francis Bacon, Voltaire and Isaac Newton changed the world for the better. Well, that’s what most people think. But not Charles, Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall.
In 2010 he said: ‘I was accused once of being the enemy of the Enlightenment,’ he told a conference at St James’s Palace. ‘I felt proud of that.’
Then he added: ‘I thought, “Hang on a moment”. The Enlightenment started over 200 years ago. It might be time to think again and review it and question whether it is really effective in today’s conditions.’
It seems that the Prince preferred things as they were before 1650. That’s a remarkable point of view for someone who, if he succeeds, will become the patron of that product of the age of enlightenment, the Royal Society, a venture that got its Royal Charter from King Charles II in 1662.
I suppose that the Prince cannot be blamed for his poor education. He may have been at Trinity College, Cambridge, but his 2.2 degree is the current euphemism for a fail (it seems that he even failed to learn the dates of the enlightenment).
His behaviour has brought to the fore the question of the role of the monarchy.
A constitutional monarch is purely ceremonial and plays no part in politics. But in the UK it isn’t quite as simple as that. The first problem is that we have no constitution. Things haven’t changed much since the 19th century when Walter Bagehot said ‘the Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy… three rights – the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn’.
These are real powers in a country which is meant to be run by elected representatives. But nobody knows how these powers are used: it is all done in secret.
Well, almost all. The Prince of Wales has been unusually public in expressing his views. His views bear directly on government policy in many areas: medicine, architecture, agriculture and the environment. These all involve at least an elementary knowledge of science. But that is something that he lacks. Worse still, he seems to have no consciousness of his ignorance.
The Royal family should clearly have no influence whatsoever on government policies in a democracy. And they should be seen to have no influence. The Queen is often praised for her neutrality, but nobody has the slightest idea what happens at the weekly meetings between the Prime Minsiter and the Queen. I doubt that she advises the prime minister to create a National Health Service, or to tax the rich. We shall never know that. We should do.
Almost the only light that has been thrown on the secret activities of Charles was the release, yesterday, of 27 letters that the Prince wrote to ministers in the Blair government between 2004 and 2005. It has take 10 years of effort by The Guardian to get hold of the letters. It was like getting blood from a stone. When the Information Commissioner ruled that the letters should be made public, the decision was vetoed by the Conservative attorney general, Dominic Grieve. He said, of the ‘particularly frank’ letters:
‘Disclosure of the correspondence could damage The Prince of Wales’ ability to perform his duties when he becomes King.’
That, of course, is precisely why the documents should be revealed. If Charles’s ability to perform his duty as king is damaged, should his subjects be kept unware of that fact? Of course not.
In this case, the law prevailed over the attorney general. After passing through the hands of 16 different judges, the Supreme Court eventually ruled, in March, that the Government’s attempts to block release were unlawful. The government spent over £400,000 in trying, and failing, to conceal what we should know. The Freedom of Information Act (2000) is the best thing that Tony Blair did, though he, and Jack Straw, thought it was the worst. I expect they are afraid of what it might reveal about their own records. Transparency is not favoured by governments of any hue.
You can read all the letters on the Guardian website. They give the impression of being written by a rather cranky old man with bees in his bonnet and too much time on his hands. The problem is that not all cranky old men can write directly to the prime minister and get an answer.
Not all the letters are wrong-headed. But all attempt to change government policy. They represent a direct interference in the political process by the heir to the throne. That is unacceptable in a democracy. It disqualifies him from becoming king.
Some letters verged on the bizarre:
21 October 2004 To Elliot Morley (Minister for the Environment)
I particularly hope that the illegal fishing of the Patagonian Toothfish will be high on your list of priorities because until the trade is stopped, there is little hope for the poor old albatross.
No doubt illegal fishing is a problem, but not many people would write directly to a minister about the Patagonian Toothfish.
Others I agree with. But they are still attempts to influence the policies of the elected government. This one was about the fact that supermarkets pay so little to dairy farmers for milk that sometimes it’s cheaper than bottled water:
To Tony Blair 8 September 2004
‘… unless United Kingdom co-operatives can grow sufficiently the processors and retailers will continue to have the farmers in an arm lock and we will continue to shoot ourselves in the foot! You did kindly say that you would look at this… ‘
He wrote to the minister of education to try to influence education policy.
22 February 2005 Ruth Kelly
I understand from your predecessor, Charles Clarke, that he has spoken to you about my most recent letter of 24th November, and specifically about the impact of my Education Summer School for teachers of English and History. This Programme, which involves up to ninety state school teachers each year, has been held over the past three years in Dartington, Devon, at Dunston, in Norfolk and at Buxton, in Derbyshire. I believe that they have added fresh inspiration to the national debate about the importance of English Literature and History in schools.
Despite having made substantial progress, as you may be aware I remain convinced that the currect approaches to teaching and learning need to be challenged.
It’s interesting that the meeting was in Dartington. That’s near Totnes (‘twinned with Narnia’) and it’s a centre for the bizarre educational cult promoted by the mystic and racist, Rudolf Steiner.
Then we get a reference to one of Charles’s most bizarre beliefs, alternative medicine:
24 February 2005 Tony Blair
Dear Prime Minister,
We briefly mentioned the European Union Directive on Herbal Medicines, which is having such a deleterious effect on complementary medicine sector in this country by effectively outlawing the use of certain herbal extracts. I think we both agreed this was using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. You rightly asked me what could be done about it and I am asking the Chief Executive of my Foundation for Integrated Health to provide a more detailed briefing which I hope to be able to send shortly so that your advisers can look at it. Meanwhile, I have given Martin Hurst a note suggesting someone he could talk to who runs the Herbal Practitioner’s Association.
Yours ever, Charles
In this he opposes the EU Directive on Herbal Medicines. All this directive did was to insist that there was some anecdotal evidence for the safety of things that are sold to you. It asked for no evidence at all that they work, and it allowed very misleading labels. It provided the weakest form of protection from the deluded and charlatans. It was put into effect in the UK by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA). They even allowed products that were registered under this scheme to display an impressive-looking ‘kite-mark’. Most people would interpret this as a government endorsement of herbal medicines.
This got a sympathetic response from Tony Blair, someone who, along with his wife, was notoriously sympathetic to magic medicine.
30 March 2005 Response from Tony Blair
Dear Prince Charles
Thanks too for your contacts on herbal medicines who have been sensible and constructive. They feel that the directive itself is sound and the UK regulators excellent, but are absolutely correct in saying that the implementation as it is currently planned is crazy. We can do quite a lot here: we will delay implementation for all existing products to 2011; we will take more of the implementation upon ourselves; and I think we can sort out the problems in the technical committee – where my European experts have some very good ideas. We will be consulting with your contacts and others on the best way to do this we simply cannot have burdensome regulation here.
Yours ever, Tony
Note ‘absolutely correct in saying that the implementation as it is currently planned is crazy. We can do quite a lot here: we will delay implementation for all existing products to 2011’.
We got a preview of the Prince’s letters last month when Max Hastings wrote in The Spectator:
I have beside me a copy of a letter allegedly written by him some years ago to a cultural institution, asserting the conviction that ‘there is a DIVINE Source which is ultimate TRUTH… that this Truth can be expressed by means of numbers… and that, if followed correctly, these principles can be expressed with infinite variety to produce Beauty’.
You can’t get much barmier than that.
Are the letters harmless? That has been the reaction on the BBC. I can’t agree. In one sense they so trivial that it’s amazing that the Government thought it was a good use of £400,000 to conceal them. But they are all the evidence that we’ll get of the Prince’s very direct attempts to influence the political process.
The Prince of Wales is more than just a crank. He has done real harm. Here are some examples.
When the generally admirable NHS Choices rewrote their advice on homeopathy (the medicines that contain no medicine) the new advice took two years to appear. It was held up in the Department of Health while consultations were made with the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health. That’s Charles’s lobby organisation for crackpot medicine. (The word ‘integrated’ is the euphemism for alternative medicine that’s in favour with its advocates.) If it were not for the fact that I used the Freedom of Information Act to find out what was going on, the public would have been given bad advice as a direct result of the Prince’s political interference.
The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health (FIH) folded in 2010 as a result of a financial scandal, but it was quicky reincarnated. It was originally going to be named the College of Integrated Medicine, but it was soon decided that this sounded too much like quackery, so it was given the deceptive name ‘College of Medicine’. It appears to be financed by well-known outsourcing company Capita. It’s closely connected with Dr Michael Dixon, who was medical advisor to the FIH, and who tried to derail the advice given by NHS Choices.
Perhaps the worst example of interference by the Prince of Wales, was his attempt to get an academic fired. Prof Edzard Ernst is the UK’s foremost expert on alternative medicine. He has examined with meticulous care the evidence for many sorts of alternative medicine.
Unfortunately for its advocates, it turned out that there is very little evidence that any of it works. This attention to evidence annoyed the Prince, and a letter was sent from Clarence House to Ernst’s boss, the vice-chancellor of the University of Exeter, Steve Smith. Shamefully, Smith didn’t tell the prince to mind his own business, but instead subjected Ernst to disciplinary proceedings. After a year of misery, Ernst was let off with a condescending warning letter, but he was forced to retire early in 2011 and the vice-chancellor was rewarded with a knighthood. His university has lost an honest scientist but continues to employ quacks.
The Prince’s influence seems to be big in the Department of Health. He was given £37,000 of taxpayers’ money to produce his guide, and an astonishing £900,000 to prepare the ground for the setting up of the hapless self-regulator, the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC, also known as Ofquack).
The Prince of Wales’ business, Duchy Originals, has been condemned by the Daily Mail (of all places) for selling unhealthy foods. And when his business branched into selling quack ‘detox’ and herbal nonsense it found itself censured by both the MHRA and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for making unjustifiable medical claims for these products.
The Prince of Wales is not the only member of the Royal family to be obsessed with bizarre forms of medicine. The first homeopath to the British royal family, Frederick Quin, was a son of the Duchess of Devonshire (1765-1824). Queen Mary (1865-1953), wife of King George V, headed the fundraising efforts to move and expand the London Homeopathic Hospital. King George VI was so enthusiastic that in 1948 he conferred the royal title on the London Homeopathic Hospital.
The Queen Mother loved homeopathy too .
The present Queen’s homeopathic physician is Peter Fisher, who is medical director of what, until recently was called the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital (RLHH). In 2010 that hospital was rebranded as the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine (RLHIM) in another unsubtle bait-and-switch move.
The RLHIM is a great embarrassment to the otherwise excellent UCLH Trust. It has been repeatedly condemned by the Advertising Standards Authority for making false claims. As a consequence, it has been forced to withdraw all of its patient information.
The patron of the RLHIM is the Queen, not the Prince of Wales. It is hard to imagine that this anachronistic institution would still exist if it were not for the influence, spoken or unspoken, of the Queen. Needless to say we will never be told.
Ainsworths homeopathic pharmacy is endorsed by both Prince Charles and the Queen: it has two Royal Warrants, one from each of them. It sells ‘homeopathic vaccines’ for meningitis, measles, rubella and whooping cough. These ‘vaccines’ contain nothing whatsoever, so they are obviously a real danger to public health.
Ainsworths, ordered to stop advertising quack remedies, still bears Royal Warrants
Despite the fact that Ainsworths had already been censured by the ASA in 2011 for selling similar products, Ainsworths continued to recommend them.
The regulator (the MHRA) failed to step in to stop them until it was eventually stirred into action by a young BBC reporter, Sam Smith who made a programme for BBC South West. Then, at last, the somnolent regulator was stirred into action. The MHRA ‘told Ainsworths to stop advertising a number of products’ (but apparently not to stop making them or selling them).
They still sell Swine Meningitis 36C and a booklet that recommends homeopathic ‘vaccination’.
Ainsworths’ sales are no doubt helped by the Royal Warrants. The consequence is that people may die of meningitis. In 2011, the MHRA chief executive Prof Kent Woods, was knighted. It was pointed out, justly, that ‘children will be harmed by this inaction. Children will die. And the fault must lie with Prof Sir Kent Woods, chairman of the regulator’.
But the regulator has to fight the political influence of the Queen and Prince Charles. It lost.
The attorney general, while trying to justify the secrecy of Charles’s letters, said:
It is a matter of the highest importance within our constitutional framework that the Monarch is a politically neutral figure.
Questions about health policy are undoubtedly political, and the highly partisan interventions of the Prince in the political process make his behaviour unconstitutional.
The Prince’s petulant outbursts not only endanger patients. They endanger the monarchy itself. Whether that matters depends on how much you value the tourist business generated by the Gilbert & Sullivan flummery at which royals excel.
The least that one can ask of the Royal family is that they should not endanger the health of the nation. It would help if they refrained from using their influence on matters that are beyond their intellectual grasp.
If I wanted to know the winner of the 2.30 at Ascot, I’d ask a royal. For any other question I’d ask someone with more education.
Prof David Colquhoun is former holder of the A J Clark chair of Pharmacology at UCL and is a Fellow of the Royal Society
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