A RARE and revealing glimpse of the Royal Family’s true feelings about politicians has been made possible by the emergence of a letter from Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother to a confidante two years after the end of the Second World War.

After an arduous 14-week tour of South Africa, in which the young Princess Elizabeth had declared in a radio interview her lifelong vow of duty on accession, the Queen Mother, who was then the Queen, recorded her pleasure at returning home.

In the newly discovered letter dated May 17, 1947, from the royal Lodge at Windsor, the Queen reveals to her lady-in-waiting, Lady Harlech, her decided lack of enthusiasm for the socialist government of Clement Attlee.

She also expresses sympathy for the “half-educated” British people who had put Attlee into No 10 in place of Sir Winston Churchill, the victorious wartime leader.

The Labour Party had won a landslide victory over Churchill’s Conservatives in 1945, paving the way for the creation of the welfare state.

The Queen was returning from South Africa to an austere Britain on the verge of bankruptcy, with rationing and coal shortages still in force, and a 30 per cent devaluation of the pound looming, but despite it all Attlee remained popular.

In the letter the Queen tells Lady Harlech how pleased she is that the noise and heat of the tour is behind them. In her distinctive, elegant handwriting, she wrote: “We came here for the weekend and found the silence about more heavenly than one could bear. The surface of England is so truly peaceful and green and lovely. I am not so sure about the rest! Everyone seems restless and disgruntled.

“I suppose that the high hopes of a socialist heaven on earth are beginning to fade a little — poor people, so many half educated and bemused. I do love them.”

The manuscript is remarkable as it is one of the most revealing from a reigning King or Queen about a government of the day. The letter is signed Elizabeth R, complete with the ER crest on the notepaper.

The election, held months after VE Day, was the first to be held since 1935 as all polls were suspended during the war. Attlee won a majority of 145 seats. The result was almost totally unexpected, given Churchill’s heroic status, but reflected the voters’ belief that the Labour Party was better able to rebuild the postwar country than the Conservatives.

The letter will give rise to speculation that the Queen was echoing the view of George VI, who had ascended the throne in 1936 after the Abdication crisis, who met Attlee regularly at Buckingham Palace. George VI had been opposed to Churchill becoming Prime Minister and had unwisely taken Chamberlain on to the balcony of Buckingham Palace after his return from Munich when he prematurely declared “peace in our time”.

The letter, which was found in Canada and was bought privately, has been seen by Argyll Etkin, the highly regarded London-based dealers in royal manuscripts. Ian Shapiro, the joint managing director, said: “It’s historic value is its rarity in that it is written when she was Queen. The fact that it was written as Queen makes it far more significant than any other letters of recent years.

“She was close to those at the highest level of the Government and was she really sharing the views of her husband, who happens to be King?” Historians later said that any reservations the King and Queen may have had changed when they realised that Attlee’s radicalism made the Royal Family more, rather than less, useful in that it became a counterbalance to the forces of political upheaval.

The only other insight into the thoughts of the late Queen Mother came second-hand via the diaries of Lord Wyatt of Weeford, a long-time confidant, who revealed that she was a devoted Thatcherite who would often toast Britain’s first woman Prime Minister after dinner.

Lord Wyatt, the former Labour MP Woodrow Wyatt, who died in December 1997, described the Queen Mother in his journal, which was published posthumously, as the most right-wing member of the Royal Family.

ATTLEE'S LIFE IN POLITICS

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