Princess Margaret's not so Private Affair
Newspaper coverage of the Princess's love affair triggered a privacy scandal but it also revealed a dramatic change in social attitudes
This is the third in a four part long read on royal privacy scandals—and what they can tell us about the rise and fall of private life. Read the first, Harry and Meghan’s Privacy Paradox, here; the second, Prince Albert’s Private Etchings, here.
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After the coronation of her sister Queen Elizabeth II, on 2 June 1953, Princess Margaret left the royal retiring room and found Group Captain Peter Townsend, equerry to the Queen, among the crowd of special guests. As they talked, she lifted her white gloved hand to brush a bit of fluff off the courtier’s uniform, which had probably floated down from a fur coat of one of the dowagers in Westminster Abbey. Her touch was momentary, but for those watching closely, it was confirmation: ‘I never thought a thing about it, and neither did Margaret,’ Captain Townsend told the journalist, Jean Rook, dubbed the First Lady of Fleet Street, years later, ‘But that little flick of her hand did it all right. After that, the storm broke.’
Rumours were already circulating about the romance between Margaret, who was 22, and Townsend, who was 38, and recently divorced. Her understated gesture, which could only have happened between intimates, was a huge story. The day after, the New York media flooded its pages with the news. Other international newspapers followed.
The more reserved British press refrained from printing anything, but couldn’t keep silent for long. On 14 June, The People, a Sunday tabloid, broke the omertà, stating that it was ‘high time for the British public to be made aware of the fact that scandalous rumours about Princess Margaret are racing around the world.’ Tongue in check, it said ‘The story is, of course, utterly untrue.’— a marriage between the two of this sort would fly in the face of Royal and Christian tradition. The paper demanded the Palace should ‘end the official silence’; ‘They must deny it now’.
Behind the scenes, a full blown royal crisis was in play. Townsend had proposed to Margaret, but as she wasn’t a layperson but part of a public institution, her answer had to be guided by the rules set by others. The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, instructed the Attorney General, Sir Lionel Herald, to examine the constitutional position, and to informally find out the views of the British Cabinet of the match: the Church of England and Churchill were opposed to divorce. Additionally, as Margaret was under the age of 25, under the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, the union could only take place with the permission of her sister, the Queen. Whilst officials deliberated, Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother swiftly departed on a tour of Rhodesia. Palace advisers sent Townsend abroad and he was given seven days in which to remove himself to Brussels as air attache at the British Embassy.
No newspaper editor could resist the story of the separated lovers. The British press reported on their romance with headlines that today seem tame but at the time caused a sensation. The Daily Mirror splashed with: ‘Princess Margaret’s Friend Posted Abroad’ and ‘The Sad Princess’. When it ran a public poll: ‘If Princess Margaret, now 22, so desires, should she be allowed to marry him?’, it cast aside all pretence at deference.
Dr. Donald Soper, president of the Methodist Conference, complained, aghast that the poll was an ‘unwarrantable and disgusting intrusion into the affairs of that royal personage.’ The playwright, Noel Coward, known for his comedy of matters, despaired:
The Daily Sketch, a tabloid newspaper, was also affronted. Its leader, titled ‘Private Lives’, blustered:
‘If the Daily Sketch launched a ballot on Never’s [the editor of the Daily Mirror] private life he would be furious. And rightly so. He would be justified in howling blue against intrusion into private lives.’
But the public didn’t appear to feel the same way as Noel Coward, Donald Soper or the leader writers of The Daily Sketch. They were relatively relaxed about her romance affair and comfortable intruding upon it.
The Mirror reported that the questionnaire had broken the ‘world record entry for newspaper polls’. The record number of 67,907 votes (to 2,235) in favour of allowing the marriage, suggested that a large number of readers felt entitled to comment and were tolerant and supportive of a young woman’s search for love. The newspaper surmised as much:
it ‘had launched the poll in the belief that the views and feelings of the British people on the problem confronting a beloved Princess should be given expression,’— the response ‘more than justified the holding of the poll.’
The Times, however, strongly condemned the interest in and gossip surrounding Princess Margaret, but it explicitly rejected what some MP’s had started to call for: restrictions on the press: ‘Only public opinion can impose a check upon the cure business of prying into private life’, the paper concluded. The press was required in a democracy to ensure important checks and balances, it argued.
As Margaret grew closer to the age of 25, the media continued to speculate on whether she would choose to marry Townsend and weighed up the issues at stake.
The Manchester Guardian pointed out that the question of divorce was no longer an issue, after all, Sir Antony Eden, Churchill’s successor as Prime Minster, had been through a divorce: ‘we can without feeling disturbed… give the same latitude to the Queen’s sister.’ However, whilst growing ever more comfortable about the relationship, the newspaper was adamant that it was— due to who the Princess was—a matter of public interest:
‘Whatever our distaste for sensationalism and emotionalism, we also have to recognise that in the affairs of the Queen’s sister we touch matters of State - and Church - that are of public concern.’
The extensive and for many scandalous coverage would soon be cited as a prime example of why Britain needed a privacy law. As when in 1961, the Conservative Peer Lord Mancroft called for a Right of Privacy Bill, the first time the British parliament had heard such a request. He argued it was necessary:
‘to give every individual such further protection against invasion of his privacy as may he desire for the maintenance of human dignity, while protecting the right of the public to be kept informed in all matters in which the public may be concerned.’
Though he conceded, “I readily admit that it may be an attack on the freedom of some Pressmen—I repeat, some Pressmen—who bully the private citizen.” It wouldn’t affect them all. “My Bill is designed only to give the individual the right to protect himself from unwarranted prying into his personal affairs.” It was difficult, he acknowledged, but the “But the line between public and private interests can, and I think should, be drawn”.
As privacy scandals continued to erupt, the demand for a privacy law grew louder. But as we shall see in the next post, ‘The Defeat of Private Life’, British society, a country once renowned for its reserve, was no longer in thrall to the Victorian notion of privacy. While the clamour for privacy legislation escalated, privacy itself was losing its charm, and the private sphere was under attack.