KING CHARLES III ‘PRAISED MI6 OPERATIONS IN RUSSIA, CHINA AND IRAN’
Charles is ‘an effective asset for the Foreign Office and the British intelligence community in certain key regions’
Image Copyright, P Winkler, 2024.
Here King Charles’ recent portrait is overlaid with a map of the Middle East. The lurid red background ‘almost alludes to some sort of massacre that he’s been part of,’ Tabish Khan, a London art critic, has said of Jonathan Yeo’s artwork. ‘"Given the royal family's history and ties to colonialism and imperialism, it's not hard for people to look at it and then make the leap that it's somehow related to that.’
Britain is a parliamentary democracy. Monarchs are supposed to stay neutral and disengage from political affairs.
But do the Royals play an active role that is more than ceremonial?
King Charles is close to Britain’s domestic and international intelligence agencies – the Security Services (MI5,) the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6,) and the electronic intelligence agency GCHQ.
How close is illustrated by a joint statement issued by all three agencies which appeared in the authorized biography, Charles the Heart of a King by Catherine Mayer (2015:)
‘His Royal Highness’s engagement with the intelligence services is hugely appreciated by the members of the three agencies and warmly welcome.’
The Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and other security agencies operate behind closed doors, so we don’t know the full extent of Charles’ ‘engagement.’
What we do know, from a former head of MI6, is that intelligence officers ‘draw on human relationships to provide government with secret information, and make things happen that would otherwise be impossible to achieve,’ in the name of ‘national security.’
Charles is uniquely positioned to draw on long term personal relationships with his peers, the world’s unelected royalty.
Catherine Mayer in her authorized biography of Charles Prince of Wales, writes cryptically, ‘Charles’s foreign missions and the deployment of royal soft power [are] not just to promote British interests and maintain the Commonwealth, but to tread where governments do not dare.’
A culture of secrecy shrouds the Royals’ treading where governments don’t. The Freedom of Information Act (2005) exempts communications between the senior Royals and public bodies from public scrutiny, if deemed not in the public interest. The idea is to maintain the public face of political neutrality of the Royal Family, and the Royal Household.
What does Charles do, that he might not want you to know?
Spy Oscars
It’s not widely known that Charles at his request became the Intelligence Services’ first royal patron.
In 2012, he initiated the Prince of Wales Intelligence Community Awards, in St James’s Palace State Apartments. The Spy Oscars, as the secretive ceremony has been dubbed, thank MI5 agents for foiling terrorist attacks and activities such as dismantling crime gangs and unearthing counter-espionage operations.
Where it gets especially murky is Charles’ access to knowledge about high level geopolitical operations. According to the Daily Express, the Spy Oscars are where ‘MI6 officers have also been honoured with the King praising them for international operations such as those in Russia, China and Iran.’
What sort of operations?
What we do know is that intelligence services carry out operations overseas that can break the law, if authorized by the Secretary of State.
Section 7 of the 1994 Intelligence Services Act is explicit: ‘A person would be liable in the United Kingdom for any act done outside the British Islands, he shall not be so liable if the act is one which is authorised to be done by virtue of an authorisation given by the Secretary of State under this section.’
This means that secret operatives are not held accountable under British law for acts which could range anywhere from bribery to murder, kidnap or torture – as long as their actions have been authorised in writing by a secretary of state.
MI6 insists its officers do not kill anyone. ‘Assassination,’ MI6 boss Sir Richard Dearlove has said, at the inquest of Princess Diana, ‘is no part of the policy of Her Majesty's government.’
It was ‘utterly ridiculous’ to suggest that Prince Charles and Prince Philip were active members of MI6.
However, spy agencies engage in plausible deniability, defined as 'the practice of keeping the leadership of a large organization uninformed about illicit actions that the organization is carrying out.’
According to the Daily Express’ report on the Spy Oscars, ‘Prince William has carried out work experience alongside spies at MI5 and MI6 and at communications hub GCHQ,’ organisations closely linked to the CIA in the United States.
Selling weapons to autocratic regimes
Another arena shrouded in secrecy is Charles’ work on behalf of the Foreign Office, and by correlation, the UK defence industry.
Weapons sales consolidate military alliances, and therefore are a key conductor of foreign affairs. It has become customary for Royals to boost UK weapons sales on official visits abroad.
According to the investigative website in 2021, declassifieduk.org, Charles held 95 meetings with eight repressive monarchies in the Middle East since the ‘Arab Spring’ protests of 2011. These visits ‘played a key role in £14.5-billion worth of UK arms exports’ to countries such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain that repress political opposition, torture and behead people, and treat women as inferior beings.
The UK has laws against arming repressive states. A licence should be refused if there is a ‘clear risk’ that military equipment might be used in violation of international law such as internal repression or against innocent civilians in external wars.
UK-made weapons have been ‘extensively used in Saudi Arabia’s devastating attacks on Yemen, which have killed thousands of civilians and created the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe,’ says the Campaign Against Arms Trade this year.
Photographs of Charles at mosques and Islamic heritage sites, show him promoting religious toleration.
Prince Charles at a dance with swords (Ardah) in Saudi Arabia in 2014 (Photo: Fayez Nureldine/AFP via Getty
Charles’ activities extend to North Africa, which occupies Western Sahara where hundreds of Sahrawi pro-independence activists have been tortured and killed. In 2011, Charles and Camilla showed British support of the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI by paying him a visit.
Sahrawi activists in 2010. Source: Upsurge in repression challenges nonviolent resistance in Western Sahara | openDemocracy
Whatever dealings Charles has with foreign leaders are too sensitive to be disclosed, argues his authorized biographer Catherine Mayer: ‘Conversations he holds for example, during his Middle East trips …would be compromised if conducted in the full gaze of the world.’
Al Jazeera reports rumours that Charles is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and was opposed to the UK’s war on Iraq in 2003.
Despite those rumours, Mayer emphatically states in her authorized biography that Charles is all Team UK. He is ‘an effective asset for the Foreign Office and the British intelligence community in certain key regions, able to transmit the British viewpoint to major players and to glean information that may not be so readily divulged to a Minister of State and diplomat. '
Ex-Minister: Charles is ‘a stain on this country’
Norman Baker was a minister in David Cameron’s coalition government and a member of the Privy Council, the formal body of advisers to the sovereign of the UK.
He broke ranks to condemn how ‘Charles’s obsession with meeting unelected monarchs from frequently dodgy regimes which show contempt for democracy and human rights is embarrassing and a stain on this country. But you can judge a man by the company he keeps.’
Baker, who wrote the book And What Do You Do? What The Royal Family Don’t Want You To Know concludes:
‘While all other European monarchies have moved on, scaled down, and become embedded in democratic constitutional arrangements, the British monarchy still sees itself, and acts, as an imperial monarchy. It is about time Charles and the rest of the royal family realised this is 2023 not 1823.’
Conclusion
World tensions are at an all-time high. Hot spots are Taiwan, Ukraine and the Middle East. A genocidal war is being waged by Israel on Gaza, which the world has been powerless to stop.
The balance of world power as it stands, is briefly: Russia, China and Iran versus the United States, UK, NATO and the European Union (the ‘Western Empire.’) Israel and the oil-rich Gulf States are under the military umbrella of the US.
Within the Western Empire, the UK is very influential. It is a major ally of the US within NATO, one of the five permanent members of United Nations Security Council and in the Five Eyes Alliance, the Anglosphere intelligence group comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It is the world’s sixth largest economy, among the top five shareholders in most international financial organisations, and wields soft power through higher education, sports and creative industries.
Clearly, the King is playing a major role on behalf of the governing class of the UK and the Western Empire.
Around the world, he’s seen not just as a figurehead but as holding a substantial constitutional role. As Mayer points out, Charles is the so-called Fount of Justice (the figure in whose name justice is carried out,) Head of the Armed Forces and Supreme Governor of the Church of England. He signs off on legislation and has the power to prorogue Parliament. He advises the Prime Minister and can choose a new premiere when the governing party has failed to do so.
Royal meetings with heads of states are meant to be polite and free of all political content. Royals are not Ambassadors. The Monarch is only supposed to play a ceremonial role with foreign dignitaries.
We need transparency, not a blurring of lines. When Royals interface with members of the public they always ask, ‘and what do you do?’ Norman Baker reminds us we have the right to ask back, ‘and what do you do?’
Further reading: