Each issue, The Progressive Conscience asks a retired politician to confess their greatest political regret. This edition Douglas Hurd talks of his failure to save the Royal Yacht
The Britannia has been refurbished since she left the service of the Queen and they have done a good job on her. Nevertheless I felt sad when I looked at her, and remembered the many happy days I had spent on her. There is something melancholy about a ship which has been pensioned off and is no longer in service. As I walked around her I wondered again whether, with a little more effort, we could have provided her with a happier future.
The story has complicated moments but is in essence straight forward. Towards the end of John Major’s Conservative Government questions arose about the future of the Royal Yacht. Should she be refurbished, or should a new Royal Yacht be built? The argument wandered to and fro in Whitehall as such arguments do. It was brought to a head by the Prime Minister’s need to call a General Election in 1997. The Defence Secretary was Michael Portillo and he at once announced that a new yacht would be built for the Queen at a cost of about 60 million pounds. It was a convention, which has certainly proved its worth, that the Opposition is consulted on royal matters such as this. Unfortunately, this was not done and the Labour Opposition was taken by surprise. They reacted strongly as people do in such circumstances, and in the General Election campaign when Tony Blair was asked how he would make ends meet if he won, he replied “well, one thing we won’t do is spend 60 million on a Royal Yacht”. This always earned him a round of applause.
The Royal Family was going through a difficult time following the disastrous fire at Windsor Castle and what the Queen called her “annus horribilis”. Neither she nor any of the Royal Family felt that they could, against this background, make any request for a new Royal Yacht. None of the ideas for prolonging the life of the Britannia found favour. The Royal Navy,which would carry the initial capital cost, was to put it mildly, lukewarm. Labour won the Election, and none of the new ministers had experience of Britannia. As a result, they thought of her as a royal plaything rather than a national asset.
So time passed and although there were schemes afoot for replacing Britannia, no scheme ever found favour with a Government which did not see the point. The years drifted on; Britannia completed her schedule of services and the Queen took a sad farewell of a Royal Yacht which had given her great pleasure.
None of this was inevitable – or wise. As Foreign Secretary I had spent enough time on Britannia to understand her full worth. I remember the anniversary of D-Day when the Queen, on Britannia, passed in review down a double line of allied ships, each one casting a tribute of flowers into the sea in memory of dead comrades. I stood by the Polish President, Lech Walesa, who could not hold back his tears as the Polish destroyer dropped a wreath of red and white in memory of the gallant dead. A few years later I watched the Prince of Wales take farewell of Hong Kong, when we sailed on Britannia out of that great harbour as it passed into Chinese rule.
60 million pounds is a lot of money even now, though trifling compared to the much bigger sums which Government spends on more trivial projects. Could we have saved Britannia? Could we have devised a way of using a Royal Yacht which would prove beyond doubt her usefulness?
I spent one cheerful day in the harbour outside Bombay watching Indian businessmen come on board Britannia and sign hefty orders for British goods. Could such varied uses have been extended more widely so that Britannia, or her successor, became identified not just with the Queen and the Royal Family, but with the Nation as a whole? I do not know if such efforts could have changed a Government decision; what I do know is that the attempt was not made. And so the Royal Yacht Britannia will eke out her remaining days sadly in the harbour at Leith.
