Before we start, don’t let’s forget that I’M the one, not you, who offered her blood — rhesus negative, dead rare! — to the Israeli Embassy one drunken night on the internet “for your brave boys”. And, I still maintain, ONLY had it turned down when I couldn’t resist adding “It’s full of top-class Class A cocaine, BTW — give your lads a top buzz!” Funny, they just didn’t want to know after that . . . but just so we know who’s the proper friend of the Jews round here before I continue, that’s all.
And all I want to say is, was I the ONLY person not to be too terribly shocked and appalled by THAT fancy dress costume? Come on — Diana quite rightly called them “those bloody Germans”; it’s practically a national dress, innit! The Prince of Wales can wear a kilt as much as he likes; he’ll never look half as at home in one as Prince Harry did in that swastika armband.
In fact, I didn’t find Harry’s embrace of the swastika half as shocking as the Queen’s Christmas jabber about the benefits of multiculturalism — isn’t it sweet how it’s ALWAYS the classes who don’t really have to experience multiculturalism in any capacity other than as a choice of restaurants who are so ceaselessly willing to lecture those who DO on the manifold pleasures of it? And was I alone in finding such everything-is-beautiful nonsense as offensive to the memory of the increasing number of British-Asian women who are victims of the risibly named “honour killings” each year as it is to the memories of white working-class people who are being led to believe that their culture was all but worthless before multiculturalism existed?
I didn’t find this idiot’s choice of fancy dress half as shocking, either, as I find the tendency of even supposedly intelligent, rebellious people as varied as Ben Elton, Billy Connolly and Jamelia to pander to this tribe of cosseted dinosaurs whenever the opportunity presents itself, usually through the medium of some entertainment in aid of the “Prince’s Trust”. I don’t find it as shocking as the fact that the splendid anti-monarchy organisation Republic boasts only one famous actor among the many writers and politicians who belong to it — but then, when that actor is the awesome Honor Blackman, any other thesp would automatically be something of an anticlimax. Miss Blackman — living up to her Christian name — also rejected a proffered “honour” from the Crown long ago; what a refreshing antidote to Vanessa Redgrave, who was appointed a CBE way back in 1967.
When one considers what daring outsiders, what raffish vagabonds most entertainers like to think of themselves as, it is a bit of a scream how eager 99 per cent of them are to brown-nose the Windsors, even when they’re in the soup. I really wish I could get through to people like Ben Elton and Jamelia, both of whom knock themselves out on behalf of royal charities, just what contempt these people have for anyone who isn’t exactly like them. Prince Charles can drool over the Three Degrees till he’s blue in the face, and skank alongside cheery Rasta gents at community centres at the click of a shutter till he drops, but his attitude to ethnic minorities was gloriously revealed in that extraordinary letter last year about the young black woman on his staff who, by showing ambition, was apparently both reaching for the stars and being “so PC she terrifies me”.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — any entertainer who is not prepared to offer their support and/or services to the BNP shouldn’t offer it to a monarchy, for the simple reason that most monarchies believe that an EVEN SMALLER GENE POOL OF WHITE PEOPLE are fit to be above all others than the BNP does. You can work your way up in the BNP; under Nick Griffin, even being less than 100 per cent Wasp doesn’t rule you out any more. Neither of these is true of the House of Windsor. I wouldn’t lend my support to either, but it is hardly logical to be in favour of one and against the other. I would honestly have thought that an intelligent eight-year-old could quite easily grasp that the philosophy behind both is roughly the same — that is, blatant, brass-faced exclusion of the majority of humanity due to nothing more than an accident of birth. The only difference is in degree; the Royal Addams Family exclude far more millions from being considered their equals than the BNP do. Prince Harry should be applauded rather than pilloried for revealing his sartorial preferences. (So THAT was why cautious old Bagehot said of monarchy: “We must not let daylight in upon magic” — he knew the swastika armbands would show up too well with the curtains open.)
I’ve used the word pronounced “honour” quite a bit today, covering everything from the gloriousness of Miss Blackman to the vileness of domestic murders, but in what is definitely its last outing for now, I really do believe that our Royal Family demonstrates exceedingly well that there is little honour among parasites. In a desperate scramble to save face and evade blame, some mythical “racist set” — that is, his chosen group of friends, picked from Britain’s aristocracy — surrounding Prince Harry has been blamed for his swastika-wearing. But this really is a case of locking the stable door after the red herring has bolted.
Because looking at his family history, we should be thanking our lucky stars that Harry wore only a toy Nazi uniform, not a real one. And that he wore it in public, for open japes, because then the chances are that he won’t be wearing it in private, for secret thrills. For the sad, surreal fact is that during the Second World War his grandfather had four sisters who were all married to Germans, at least one of them a rabid Nazi. Before the war, his great-grandfather considered Churchill a “warmonger” for standing up to the Nazis, and wanted to write a cosy, conciliatory letter to that nice Mr Hitler, “from one soldier to another”. His great-uncle, the kinky abdicator, was a fan of Adolf. And his father, Prince Charles, wrote That Letter about that clever young black lady, her utterly reasonable ambitions, and her refusal to know her place — picking cotton on the Highgrove estate, no doubt. With family like this, who needs bigots?
So to return to my starting point, may I say again that I adore the Jews, and I think them the cleverest race on earth; but their one blind spot is that in believing that they will ever be accepted by the English ruling class — or any ruling class — they make seven sorts of fool of themselves. Specifically, rich Jews only embarrass themselves and their supporters when they suck up to the royals. If one simple little swastika armband means that the Jewish money misdirected at royal trusts in a silly and doomed effort to be accepted by society will now go straight to noble, straightforward causes such as the RSPCA, Help The Aged, Barnardo’s and Oxfam, then Prince Harry really will have performed a great humanitarian act — for the first, and no doubt the last, time in his vacuous, wasteful life.
julie.burchill@thetimes.co.uk
