Newly declassified documents reveal King Charles’s thought on government policies during the Cold Wa (Image: Getty)
was “not convinced” about ’s nuclear defence strategy during the , newly declassified documents have shown.
The King, who was then Prince of Wales, , as he was sceptical about the and did not “follow the logic” of the explanation he received.
As first reported by , these documents, which have been opened and placed in the National Archives, showed that Charles “requested answers when tensions between Moscow and Washington were worsening”.
They also showed that the-then prince was given access to classified documents that were meant to be seen only by senior politicians and military figures.
On December 14, 1983, the Foreign Office was made aware that Charles had requested briefings on “current arms control and disarmament issues”.
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The King questioned some of the government policies during the Cold War, it has emerged (Image: Getty)
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This, in turn, prompted officials to send policy papers “prepared for officials for meetings of ministers” to Buckingham Palace.
But internal government correspondence from the following month revealed that the monarch was not satisfied with the UK’s policy to not support a comprehensive ban on the testing of nuclear weapons, with a document saying: “The Prince of Wales did not entirely follow the logic of the section and insofar as he did not follow it, was not entirely convinced by it.”
Meanwhile, the documents revealed how Whitehall departments acknowledged there was a contradiction between statements that ministers issued in public and what they believed privately.
A memo stated: “I suspect that HRH may have found it difficult to appreciate the distinction between the government’s private view that a Comprehensive Test Ban (CTB) is not in the UK’s interests, given the need to continue testing our deterrent, and our public position that we are prepared to agree to a CTB once verification problems have been resolved.”
Another memo, from January 23, 1984, said: “I fear that the draft paper, in its present form, is unlikely to make HRH very much the wiser and may increase his apparent suspicion of obfuscation.
“We must be clearer and more frank.”
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King Charles and Princess Diana dine with Margaret Thatcher and her husband in 1989 (Image: Getty)
Another briefing written for Charles by Sir Bryan Cartledge, Britain’s ambassador to the Soviet Union, read: “We support CTB as a long-term objective, but we need a national nuclear deterrent. If it is to be both credible and safe we have to go on testing it periodically.
“In the meantime, work continues to create the basis for an eventual CTB agreement. For the time being, some ambiguity in our public stance is inevitable.”
According to the outlet, Cartledge observed that the wording was “pretty frank”, adding: “It needs to be if it is to dispel any suspicion in HRH’s mind of official flannel or obfuscation”.
It’s also been revealed that the King received papers which stated Britain felt “obliged to support unpopular American policies for fear of losing privileged access to US intelligence”.