Revealed: Prince Charles disputed idea Britain was a world power in the 1970s in letter to a close friend

Charles, then 28: Government needed to accept country’s influence had waned
Prince felt ill-disposed towards Foreign Office at the time, in December 1976
FO was blocking his planned pilgrimage to Africa’s Kalahari desert with spiritual mentor, Sir Laurens van der Post

Published: 00:31 GMT, 19 November 2017 | Updated: 12:41 GMT, 19 November 2017

e-mail

View
comments

Prince Charles disputed the notion that Britain was a major world power in a candid letter he wrote in the mid-1970s, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The Prince, then 28, said the Government needed to accept that the country’s influence had waned.

Writing to a close friend in December 1976, the Prince said: ‘Personally, I begin to feel that institutions such as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (and most other government departments for that matter) are still operating, and thinking, as if we were a major world power with the sort of influence and power we had years ago. That is palpably not the case at the moment.’

At the time, the Prince was feeling ill-disposed towards the Foreign Office because it was blocking his planned pilgrimage to Africa’s Kalahari desert with his spiritual mentor, Sir Laurens van der Post.

Prince Charles disputed the notion that Britain was a major world power in a candid letter he wrote in the mid-1970s, The Mail on Sunday can reveal

Charles believed officials were worried he might be abducted ‘by some guerrilla group hellbent on using me as a hostage in the struggle with Rhodesia’, which was then fighting for independence.

He adds: ‘Their [the FCO’s] outlook is far too cautious and pessimistic. Who on earth is going to pay any attention to us unless we fight and strive for it?’

Many would argue he had a valid point about Britain’s declining influence in 1976. Beset by rampant inflation and a plummeting pound, the country was facing its worst post-war economic crisis.

It culminated in Chancellor Denis Healey going cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund for a £2.3billion bailout.

The Prince’s letter to Sir Laurens, which has surfaced in a public archive, was written from the Scottish port of Rosyth where his naval career was coming to an end.

Charles makes plain his desperation to visit Botswana ‘because I know it will mean a great deal to me and to the development of my spirit. I also want to learn about the meaning of Africa from yourself and to continue the process of my search for Truth’, he says.

Worry: Our revelation last week in another Charles letter to van der Post

Sir Laurens, writer, philosopher and seer, was regarded as possibly the sole link between Western civilisation and the Kalahari bushmen, southern Africa’s first inhabitants. But after his death, he was exposed as a fraud and a fantasist who inflated his own importance at every possible opportunity.

Charles wrote: ‘I am determined to go on badgering the FCO about letting me go to the Kalahari and refuse to take no for an answer until the situation is hopeless… If they are still against it, I want to know all the reasons outlined in full.

'In other words, are they worried about guerrilla activity in Botswana, the fact that I might be a target for abduction by some guerrilla group hellbent on using me as a hostage in the struggle with Rhodesia, or are they in some way anxious about the reaction in Rhodesia and S Africa? My feeling is that it is the danger of abduction which worries them most.’

The news follows last week’s revelation in The Mail on Sunday that Charles wrote to Sir Laurens in 1986 asking who would stand up to the ‘Jewish lobby’ in America about the situation in Israel and the Middle East.

As it transpired, the Prince failed in his attempt to overturn the Foreign Office’s Kalahari travel ban, though he would eventually make the trip with Sir Laurens in 1987.

Afterwards, Charles said: ‘I came away with a sense of wonder that the bushmen, a so-called “primitive” people, had a wiser understanding of how nature worked and how to cope with it, than all the batteries of scientists and experts mobilised by more modern civilisations.’

Clarence House said it did not comment on private correspondence.