https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/royals/palace-letters-from-john-kerr-show-prince-charles-was-in-the-loop/news-story/fe62ad2923332d192f4ff2b6aea7612e

Palace letters from John Kerr show Prince Charles was in the loop

Buckingham Palace has issued a rare statement surrounding the Queen after secret palace letters were finally released after 45 years.


In a move that could upend decades of Royal secrets, private letters shared between the Queen and then-Governor General that led to Gough Whitlam's sacking will finally be rel...


Buckingham Palace has issued a rare statement insisting the release of secret letters prove the Queen played “no part” in the plot to dismiss Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975.
The letters, released following a High Court battle, reveal that Governor General Sir John Kerr did not telegraph his plan to sack the Prime Minister in his correspondence with Buckingham Palace.
“At Her Majesty’s Coronation on 2 June, 1953, the Queen swore an oath to govern the Peoples of Australia “according to their respective laws and customs.”
RELATED: ‘Palace letters’ to be released this week


Queen Elizabeth II last month in Windsor, England. Picture: Toby MelvilleSource:Getty Images

Throughout her reign, Her Majesty has consistently demonstrated this support for Australia, the primacy of the Australian people, which the letters reflect,’’ the Palace statement said.
“While the royal household believes in the longstanding convention that all conversations between prime ministers, governor generals and the Queen are private, the release of the letters by the National Archives Australia confirms that neither Her Majesty nor the Royal Household had any part to play in Kerr’s decision to dismiss Whitlam.”
However, the correspondence also reveals Palace officials discussed the Governor-General’s reserve powers to sack the PM.
“It is often argued that such powers no longer exist. I think those powers do exist, and the fact that they do, even if they are not used, affects the situation and the way people think and act,” the Queen’s private secretary Sir Martin Charteris wrote in 1975.
“But to use them is a heavy responsibility and it is only at the very end when there is demonstrably no other course that they should be used.”

Demonstration against the Dissolution of Parliament by Sir John Kerr and support for Mr Gough Whitlam at Parliament House, 1975.Source:Supplied

The letters also reveal the Queen was not enthusiastic about the idea of Prince Charles becoming Australia’s governor-general until he was married.
In a letter to Governor-General Sir John Kerr, the Queen’s private secretary Sir Martin Charteris said that despite some raising the option in the wake of the 1975 crisis that it would be important for him to have “a lady by his side’’ to do the job.
“I think the point we must all bear in mind is that I do not believe The Queen would look with favour on Prince Charles becoming Governor-General of Australia until such time as he has a settled married life,” Sir Martin wrote.
“No one will know better than you how important it is for a governor-general to have a lady by his side for the performance of his duties.
“The prospect, therefore, of The Prince of Wales becoming Governor-General of Australia must remain in the unforeseeable future.”
Bombshell correspondence between the Queen and the Governor-General over the 1975 dismissal of the Whitlam Government has revealed she was left in the dark over the final decision to sack the government.
But the letters confirm that the heir-to-the-throne, the then 26-year-old Prince Charles was in the loop over the constitutional crisis and talking to the Governor-General Sir John Kerr over his fears that he would be sacked by Gough Whitlam, as previously suggested in historian Professor Jenny Hocking’s book.
The release of the letters today, nearly 45 years after the Governor-General sacked the Whitlam Government, follows a High Court legal battle launched by Professor Hocking.
In 1000 pages of documents, the key letter from Governor-General Sir John Kerr to Buckingham Palace on November 11, 1975 confirms the Queen was not consulted on the decision.

John Kerr’s letter to the palace that was released today.Source:Supplied


The letter shows the Queen did not know about the decision to dismiss the Whitlam government.Source:Supplied

“I decided to take the step I took without informing the Palace in advance ... it was better for Her Majesty NOT to know,” Sir John Kerr’s letter states.
On November 20, the Governor-General also wrote he did not warn Gough Whitlam he was considering sacking him as it would put the Queen in an “impossible position.”
“If in the period of 24 hours in which he was considering his position he advised the Queen that I should be immediately dismissed, the position would then have been that either I would be, in fact, trying to dismiss him while he was trying to dismiss me - an impossible position for the Queen,’’ Sir John Kerr wrote.
“I simply could not risk the outcome for the sake of the monarchy.”
The trove of documents also reveals that on October 2, Sir John Kerr discussed his concerns that the Prime Minister Gough Whitlam would ask the Queen to sack him as Governor-General.
“Prince Charles told me a good deal, and you’d spoken of the possibility of the Prime Minister advising the Queen to terminate your commission... at the end of the road, the Queen - as a constitutional sovereign - would have no option but to follow the advice of her Prime Minister,’’ Martin Charteris, the Queen’s private secretary, replied.
“I believe the more one thinks about them, the less likely they are to happen - the umbrella/rain syndrome.”