Great Britain: A Foolish Display

For three days London's genteel West End looked like a battlefield. Near Buckingham Palace, squads of police grappled with leather-jacketed toughs, while chauffeured Bentleys delicately inched their way through. Wild-eyed girls with straggly black hair and blue-jeaned boys with golden tresses were frog-walked into paddy wagons. Some 200 people were jailed. Taking advantage of the chaos, a six-man gang waylaid the Dowager Duchess of Northumberland, sped off in a white Jaguar with her jewels, worth $200,000. Most shocking of all, for the first time in her eleven-year reign, Queen Elizabeth II was booed by her own people.

Cause of the trouble was the long-expected, long-disputed state visit to Britain by Greece's King Paul and Queen Frederika. Fearing precisely the kind of left-wing demonstrations that occurred last week, Greek Premier Constantine Karamanlis advised against the trip, resigned when the royal couple refused to bow to pressure and decided to go anyway. British political critics base their case against the King and Queen largely on the fact that Greek jails still contain about 1,000 prisoners seized more than a decade ago during the civil war; most are believed to be Communist, and the Greeks point out that they are being gradually released anyway (the original number of prisoners was 4,000). The Queen is also accused of Nazi sympathies, an old and absurdly exaggerated charge,* and of meddling too much in Greek politics, hardly a British concern. The anti-Greek chorus is made up of a motley collection of Communists, Socialists, antimonarchists, vague crusaders in search of new causes, ban-the-bombers (including that foolish sage, Bertrand Russell), all of them joined in the London streets by joyriding beatniks. Amazingly, they were also joined, in spirit, by Labor Party Leader Harold Wilson and Deputy Leader George Brown, who chose to boycott a banquet for the visitors—which could only raise questions about the mental health and stability of British politics.

Agents in Overalls. For the royal visit, the Macmillan government mounted a security force that outdid even the Bulganin-Khrushchev welcome in 1956. On hand were 5,000 police, including plainclothesmen disguised in everything from morning coats to overalls. As the royal procession of carriages clip-clopped from Victoria Station, where Elizabeth greeted them, to Buckingham Palace, a woman burst from the crowd and shrieked: "Release my husband!" She turned out to be Mrs. Betty Ambatielos, 45, the English wife of Antonios Ambatielos, a Greek Communist serving a life term for his part in the cival war.

That night, while the royal couples and 156 other guests dined in Buckingham Palace, 2,000 demonstrators poured into Trafalgar Square with banners proclaiming "Down with the Nazi Queen." The crowd seemed bent on storming the palace but encountered massed lines of bobbies blocking the way. Police helmets clattered across sidewalks, fists flew, traffic stalled, and prancing police horses bowled over crowds. Rioters fought off cops from atop a doubledeck bus. A few youths who made it to the Mall were stopped by flying tackles.