Charles has had to deal with worse than an angry heckler

Hugo Vickers, The Independent

When the Aboriginal-Australian senator for Victoria shouted “You are not my King”, interrupting a state ceremony for Charles and Camilla in Canberra, it took everyone by surprise. Everyone, that is, except the King and Queen themselves. The royal couple were unfazed by the noisy intervention. And for good reason. King Charles — on his first longhaul royal tour since revealing his cancer diagnosis earlier this year — has always known that he would become something of a target. During his mother’s lifetime, Elizabeth II was so widely respected around the world that public protests were few. The late Queen made her last longhaul state visit in 2010, to Oman, a full 12 years before her death, which helped keep a lid on any republican sentiments bubbling away in Commonwealth countries and the farthest-flung former colonies.

It was perhaps inevitable that negative or ambiguous feelings about the British monarchy would be effectively put in storage until her passing — to be aimed squarely at her successor. During their Australia tour, the pair have faced low-key demonstrations at a number of events where protesters displayed a banner with the word “decolonise”. More hurtful, perhaps, was the refusal of state premiers to meet the royal couple during their tour, amid public debate about whether he should be removed as head of state.

Prior to the royal visit, one survey found that one in three Australians wanted to become a republic, with 45 per cent preferring to remain a monarchy. Not that you’d know it from senator Lidia Thorpe’s boisterous protest. Thorpe — the first Indigenous woman to be elected to Victoria’s state parliament for the Greens — certainly has form in this area. No stranger to unparliamentary behaviour, while taking her oath in 2022, she attempted to insult the late Queen. She was made to retake it — but the point had been made.

Taking public protests on the chin has become part of the royals’ armoury. Thirty years ago, while on a tour of Sydney, the then Prince Charles faced a more serious incident when he was thrown to the ground by security men after shots (later discovered to have been starting-pistol blanks) were fired at him by a man in the crowd. The perpetrator’s aim was to raise awareness of the treatment of Cambodian asylum seekers in Australian detention camps. But it was Charles’s sangfroid that led the nightly news bulletins.

Elizabeth II had to deal with the occasional rowdy walkabout. During a visit to Stirling University in October 1972, she was booed by students protesting about poor facilities in social areas. Twenty years later, on a tour of Dresden, eggs were lobbed at her car on account of RAF Bomber Command’s raids on the city in 1945. But the royal family are well trained to deal with such things. In the wider context, they have been brought up to accept the fear of assassination as the ultimate occupational hazard. After all, they met many heads of state who were later killed — President Sadat of Egypt, Indira Gandhi, and closer to home there was the murder of Lord Mountbatten. The King responded to yesterday’s insult with his customary reserve. To such disturbances, the royals have offered a retort through the addresses they deliver.

Throughout her reign, the Queen made the sensible point that we cannot change the past, so we must build bridges to the future. Thus in 1958, during the visit of President Heuss of Germany, she said: “The tragic events of the past half-century in the relations between our two countries are a part of history. We must now look to the future and through our alliance and our association with each other and with other countries of the West we must forge anew the bonds of amity and peace.”

In 2014, she told President Higgins of Ireland: “We shall remember our past, but we shall no longer allow our past to ensnare our future. This is the greatest gift we can give to succeeding generations.”

It was always likely that Charles would be a target in Australia because the insulters had long resigned themselves to finding little mileage in attacking his mother. But sometimes the Foreign Office advice given to the monarch can open issues that might otherwise have remained dormant. When the then Prince Charles was sent to Barbados in 2021, at the time of its independence, the Foreign Office had him emphasise the friendship between the island and the United Kingdom, then included in his speech the words: “From the darkest days of our past, and the appalling atrocity of slavery, which forever stains our history, the people of this island forged their path with extraordinary fortitude.” After that, the question of reparations in Caribbean islands has been to the fore.

Before he set off to Australia, he was widely quoted as saying that he would not stand in the way of Australia becoming a republic. His message was consistent with earlier statements made by the late Queen and himself, but it did appear to reopen the debate. Somehow, on this matter, Prince Philip said it better: “We’ll go quietly.” In other words, leave it up to the locals to decide, but let them instigate it.

The King’s visit to Australia has been lighter than might have been expected. There have been fewer engagements, none in the evening, and he did not make his hoped-for appearance at the races. But the crowds have been as enthusiastic as ever, even if a self-serving member of parliament chose to be disruptive. It has been a worthwhile visit.