‘I’D LOVE TO come to Ireland,” Queen Elizabeth said to me. She spoke animatedly. There was no doubting that she meant it. So President McAleese will surely get an enthusiastic acceptance when she sends that official invitation to Buckingham Palace some time soon. I hope she will forgive me for having anticipated her.
My invitation was extended almost half a century ago, long before all the present speculation about the visit. It was a much less auspicious time when the IRA was still conducting a campaign in the North and it was sometimes uncomfortable to be recognisable as Irish in London. In the circumstances, the prospects of a royal visit were remote and the queen could well be forgiven for saying that she had not the slightest wish to visit us. And yet she genuinely seemed very much in favour of it.
At the time, I was London editor of the Irish Press. As such, I was a member of an association representing journalists in similar positions for the leading British and Northern Irish provincial papers and the four Republic of Ireland dailies. Membership entitled us to be notified of upcoming events, receive official handouts, and to attend government press conferences and briefings. And, now and again, the London editors were invited to Buckingham Palace garden parties, and even more rarely to be accorded a visit from the royals.
The occasion I am describing here took place in one of the many Fleet Street offices connected with the newspaper industry in the days before Rupert Murdoch finally broke the printers’ outdated working practices and swept most of the papers out east to Wapping.
Some 15 of us, looking more presentable than was our daily Fleet Street norm, parked our briefcases in an ante-room and lined up along one side of a long table in an adjoining room. Our identities were scrupulously checked and a prissy Buck House courtier proceeded to tell us the rules.
Her majesty would enter, have a few words with the officers of the society, then pass down the line, stopping for a moment or two before each of us individually. Our names and the name of the paper we represented would be read out to her and she would shake our hand. We should not grip her hand tightly or shake it too energetically. We were not to address her directly and speak only if she addressed us. We were to call her Ma’am. On no account were we to ask her a question. We should bow slightly to her as she passed on after talking to us. All the instructions were delivered in the painful whinnying sort of accent her majesty herself was accustomed to using in her Christmas messages before some sensible PR person put her right.
The queen came into the room in which we were waiting accompanied by Prince Philip and a few secretaries and security people. We clapped politely and she began her walk past after a few preliminaries. She spoke for a minute or so with the first journalist, the Guardianrepresentative. (It had recently shed the "Manchester"). Same with the next few. Then a bit shorter as she came down the line. About number seven came "Desmond Fisher of the Irish Press, Dublin, Ma'am."
“Oh, an Irishman.”
“Yes, Ma’am. And when are you going to come over to Ireland?” It wasn’t deliberate. Without thinking, I had broken the code. Her majesty did not seem at all put out. I did not bother to look at the flunkey for his reaction.
“Oh, I’d love to come to Ireland. How do you think I would be received?”
I was off. I told her that, in my opinion, the great majority would welcome her despite the present problems. Of course, there was a minority that would disapprove. And undoubtedly there would be some danger from a very few. But had not her sister (the late Princess Margaret) been in Ireland very recently and didn’t she like it?
Her majesty had seemed to have been going through the motions with my earlier colleagues. On occasions like these, she gives the impression of being rather vague and not quite knowing what it is all about. As soon as she began to talk about Ireland, she seemed to relax and become an ordinary human and not a sort of pasteboard automaton.
“Yes, indeed,” she said. “Margaret told me all about it. She enjoyed Birr Castle immensely. She had a marvellous time there and she loved Ireland. She said it was great to feel so free.”
“That’s good, Ma’am,” I replied. “Well, does that mean you might soon follow?” The animation in her face drained away. She straightened up and tucked her handbag closer under her arm. Somewhat wistfully she replied: “It is not something I can decide very easily. I would have to take whatever advice I am given at the time about going. So I’ll have to wait and see. But I would like to come to Ireland some day. Thank you.”
Her majesty gave me a nice smile and passed on. On her heels came Prince Philip. “Ha, so you are Irish,” he boomed. And with that delicate diplomacy for which he is noted, he added, “And I suppose you have brought a bomb with you, haw, haw!” Both of us have German blood somewhere in us. So I gave as good as I got. “Of course I have, sir,” I said, “but I left it outside in the cloakroom.”
The Prince Consort looked a little askance at me. Then with a more subdued, “Haw, haw!” he moved on to a less talkative colleague on my left.
As the royal party was going out I caught the eye of the flunkey who had warned us about asking questions. His face was sourer than ever. And I thought my briefcase was not in the place where I had left it.
Next day's Irish Pressdid not carry my report on my encounter with the British royals. My editor would not like his readers to learn that one of his staff was consorting with such representatives of the British establishment.