iCambria - The Blog of Wales

The last Investiture, in Caernarfon in 1969, orchestrated by the highly controversial Secretary of State for Wales George Thomas, split the nation and took place against a backdrop of widespread revulsion and protest. A number of bombs aimed at government targets exploded across the country, prominent anti-investiture protesters were arrested and arraigned in a high-profile political show-trial and the event came within an ace of being called off. What particularly rankled with a huge section of the Welsh population at the time was that the ceremony was a grotesque mimicry of an event during the reign of the English king Edward the first, the so-called ‘conqueror of Wales’. Edward styled his 16 year-old son ’Prince of Wales’ at an ‘investiture’ in Lincoln in 1301 a few years after killing off the last male heirs of the royal House of Gwynedd and incarcerating any remaining female ones. The bitter irony of this seemed to be wholly lost on the British Establishment and its representatives in Wales.

The royal family’s gaffe-prone spin-doctors have not had an easy time in recent years. Charles’s demonstrably happy marriage to the former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles seems to have bought them enough time them to embark on a new tack – this time aimed at a section of the population of the British Isles which scarcely merits any mention in the London press at all: the people of Wales. “Sounds a bit like the advice once given by English aristocrats to their wayward and dissolute sons” said one prominent opponent of the planned new investiture, “’When all else fails, go to Wales!’”

Inevitably, the popularity of the English royal family is on the wane in Wales after two decades of PR disasters. A low ebb came in the 1980s when the Queen’s car was pelted with rotten tomatoes in Aberystwyth, and revelations about Prince Charles’s extra-marital activities and the negative publicity surrounding the death of Princess Diana did nothing to improve their popularity. As far as possible, the royals stayed away. Nowadays, Welsh support for the English monarchy is confined to a dwindling band of pensioners clinging to memories of the glory days of the British Empire, sundry Tories who have failed to grasp their party’s new-found enthusiasm for Devolution and a tiny clique acting out the antediluvian rituals of their smarter English peers as ‘Lord Lieutenants’ and ‘High Sheriffs’ along with a group of thirsty freeloaders from County Council ‘chain gangs’. All are generally deemed to be pitifully out-of-touch with the times.

Prince William, it is said, is a wholesome and personable young man, who has provided a badly-needed dose of intelligence and charm to an otherwise drab and lacklustre crew, but there are bound to be objections to this alleged succession from a number of quarters. This is particularly so in a country with legitimate aspirations for devolution, and where there is an inexorable march towards ever-increasing independence. Prince William’s official title at present is ‘Sub Lieutenant William Wales’. This is widely seen as part of the overall public relations plan, and many are asking why he shouldn’t be referred to as ‘William Mountbatten-Windsor’ which is, after all, the correct form of his family name. Again, the Welsh Rugby Union’s assiduous, increasingly embarrassing and ill-advised courtship of this young Englishman - a proud supporter of the England rugby team - looks increasingly obtuse and, judging by the unfortunate outburst of booing and derisive whistling which greeted the Prince’s appearance on the Grand Slam pitch this year, appears to have backfired badly.

As part of ‘Operation PW’ William has been making a number of impromptu appearances in Wales over the past few months, and we can expect many more. One such, in May, to the Valleys Kids Project in Dinas, Rhondda Valley, displayed a revealing new strategy carefully contrived by the spin-doctors. A small crowd of children from a local primary school dutifully forced to turn out, North-Korean-style, by their teachers to welcome the Prince were all seen to be waving miniature Welsh national flags. For the first time on such occasions, there wasn’t a Union Jack in sight.

As the process of Devolution in this country continues apace and a new national consciousness emerges, the very use of the title ‘Prince of Wales’ itself becomes more and more contentious. It remains, in the eyes of an increasing number of people, an unsavoury and cruel reminder of the loss of Welsh independence, the violent destruction of Wales’s own royal family and the continuation of a distasteful, irrelevant and alien class system based on the Anglo-Norman mores of the middle ages, wholly irrelevant to life in Wales today.

The significance of Prince Charles’s recent purchase of a farmhouse in Carmarthenshire has not gone unnoticed either - although this is not actually going to serve as a real home, more an ‘investment’. Rather than opt for a grander establishment in one of the more anglicised and gentrified parts of Wales as might have been expected, Charles chose a modest dwelling in the heartland of one of the country’s most ardently nationalist areas, with both a Plaid Cymru Assembly Member and Member of Parliament! Indications are that the Prince has already started flexing his influential political muscle on planning policy in the Myddfai area in line with his controversial ideas on architecture and the environment – much to the chagrin of a number of local residents. Charles’s most enthusiastic group of supporters in the area are local estate agents convinced that the project will mean a dramatic increase in house prices.

With a growing awareness of this new public relations offensive, a petition opposing any further ‘investitures’ of ‘Princes of Wales’ launched by ‘concerned Welsh patriots’ has already been introduced on the Internet - see link.