Seeing as how Queen Elizabeth II is technically commander-in-chief of the British armed forces, is she privy to the country’s military and intelligence secrets? I know that during World War II, King George VI was one of the few people who was made aware of the Manhattan Project. I was wondering if Queen Elizabeth gets anything like the classified intelligence and national security briefings that the President of the United States recieves or if she has access to the country’s nuclear codes.
According to many reports, for example Mrs Thatcher, the Monarch is ‘extraordinarily well briefed’. Make of that what you will.
Beyond that, the Monarch is the Head of State, and would step in if the civilian government were destroyed (say Parliament got nuked during a vote of No Confidence).
Regarding this, there’s an interesting comment I ran into about the proper role of a Head of State or other chief executive who doesn’t run the day=to-day operations, in a story I ran into.
“So, what are you doing?”
“Looking like I’m in charge.”
“But besides that, to actually get work done?”
“Nothing.”
"So everyone else is doing the work and you’re just standing there?’
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Because everything is running smoothly. They don’t need me meddling. But things run more smoothly when people know that there’s someone in charge. I’m being, visibly, that person in charge, so they’re relaxed and doing their jobs.”
“So because the work’s getting done, you’re just standing here doing nothing.”
“No, I’m doing something important – I’m being the person in charge. If it’s working OK, I don’t need to step in – so I’m not doing any actual labor. But I am doing something important – I’m letting them know that someone is making sure it’s all running smoothly.”
Sometimes the most important thing you can do is – nothing. Just let what’s supposed to happen, happen smoothly – but be prepared to act if things go amiss."
In 50 years, Elizabeth has intervened three times. Her father, other than deciding to stay in England during the Blitz (which was moral leadership of the highest caliber), nothing. Her grandfather, I believe intervened twice.
But that’s the way the British government is supposed to work. A party gets a majority in Commons, and its leader forms a Government – or if no majority, a coalition is hammered out, with a leader chosen (normally the leader of the largest party in the coalition). The monarch has Hobson’s choice – she picks her Prime Minister from a list with one name on it. But she stays informed of every major action her Government takes – and if a crisis looms, there’s an experienced, knowledgeable person who has immense respect from most of the public, there to step in and smooth things over, put things back on an even keel again. Almost everything she does is ceremonial, giving the cachet of monarchy and history to the acts hammered out by the politicians. But it’s being that person that everyone knows is there to take charge in times of crisis that makes it work smoothly the rest of the time. As long as Elizabeth or one of the 1,800+ people named off in the line of succession survives the brokered election, constitutional crisis, nuclear attack, Martian invasion, giant asteroid impact, or whatever, Britain has a government.
Of course the queen knows. Who do you think put those clues in the crossword in May of 1944. It wasn’t FDR.
During WW II at first there was a plan for the King and his family to go to Canada to be safe. But they realized that would look bad so they stayed in London. I think a few of the children went to Canada. I guess they were being briefed back then too.
There were plans to move them, but the King, the Queen and both princesses stayed in the British Isles throughout the war. They sometimes spent the night at Windsor Castle, though, I’ve read, during the worst of the Blitz.
I don’t know this for sure, but I suspect the Queen knows at least the broad outlines of every significant British military secret. I doubt, probably because she just doesn’t have a need to know, that she knows the operational detail of each and every SIS operation and the like.
The King’s younger brother, the Duke of Gloucester, was sent to Australia to serve as Governor-General.
Of course Queen Elizabeth II is privy (horrid vulgar word, privy, don’t you think?) to British military secrets! She’s running the whole show over there!
Not only that, the Queen runs Canada, Australia and the U.S. too. She’s privy to everything (the linked site is a bit outdated, but that’s because the Illuminati realized they were onto the truth). Here’s a more updated site on the doings of the Black Nobility (dominated by the British royals). It all ties in to foreign intrigues, the Knights of Malta, the Drakos Reptilians and the Rolling Stones. 
I hadn’t known that. However, I see that wasn’t until late 1944, when the risk of a German invasion was nil. Doesn’t look like it was a continuity-of-government move: Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester - Wikipedia
Nope - the entire Royal Family stayed in the UK. There was a plan for the Queen and the Princesses to go to Canada, but the Queen nixed it with the famous comment: “The children won’t go without me. I won’t leave without the King. And the King will never leave.”
Princess Elizabeth did military service in 1945:
She and Princess Margaret also joined, anonymously, in the crowds celebrating VE Day:
HRM is on a need to know basis of state secrets, just in case she gets captured while performing a mission in her capacity as a double-oh agent. You think that Daniel Craig is the best James Bond ever? You need to see the version of Casino Royale with Woody Allen and Brenda.
Maybe I was thinking of some other kids ( cousins? ) who left town or else I just got confused about the plans for leaving when it did not happen.
What happened to cause them to intervene?
In two cases for Queen Elizabeth, the Prime Minister died without having a clear successor within the party, so the Queen made the choice of whom to appoint for Prime Minister, from the contenders within the party.
For King George V, one of the instances concerned the bill to strip the Lords of their veto. A substantial number of the Lords opposed the bill, leading to the possibility that the hereditary peers would defeat a major constitutional proposal put forward by the elected Commons. The King gave his commitment to the Prime Minister, in advance, that he would appoint the necessary peers to ensure passage of the bill in the Lords. As it turned out, that wasn’t needed, as the bill passed the Lords as well, but the King’s commitment to appoint, before he was formally advised to do so by the Prime Minister, was a departure from the normal process and likely influenced the course of events in the Lords.
I’m not sure what the other instance Polycarp is thinking of. Poly, do you mean the decision not to send a Royal Navy vessel to rescue the Russian royal family?
From Wiki:
On three occasions during Elizabeth’s reign, she has had to deal with constitutional problems relating the formation of her UK government. In 1957, the absence of a formal mechanism within the Conservative Party for choosing a leader meant that, following the sudden resignation of Sir Anthony Eden, it fell to the Queen to decide whom to commission to form a government. Eden recommended that Elizabeth consult Lord Salisbury (the Lord President of the Council). Lord Salisbury and Lord Kilmuir (the Lord Chancellor) consulted the Cabinet, Winston Churchill and the Chairman of the 1922 Committee, as a result of which the Queen appointed their recommended candidate: Harold Macmillan. Six years later, Macmillan himself resigned and advised the Queen to appoint the Earl of Home as Prime Minister, advice which she followed. In both 1957 and 1963, the Queen came under criticism for appointing the Prime Minister on the advice of a small number of ministers, or a single minister. In 1965, the Conservatives adopted a formal mechanism for choosing a leader, thus relieving her of the duty. In February 1974, an inconclusive general election result meant that, in theory, the outgoing Prime Minister, Edward Heath, whose party had won the popular vote, could stay in office if he formed a coalition government with the Liberals. Rather than immediately resign as Prime Minister, Heath explored this option, and only resigned when discussions on forming a cooperative government foundered, after which the Queen asked the Leader of the Opposition, Labour’s Harold Wilson, to form a government.
Another related thread: Does the Queen or the PM really control British nuclear weapons? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board
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At the time of the 1910 budget crisis, King Edward VII died, and George V took the throne with a constitutional crisis on his hands. The House of Lords was blocking a budget that the House of Commons had overwhelmingly passed. After efforts to work out a compromise failed, George V allowed the threat of creating sufficient new peers to give the Liberals a majority in the Lords be used to induce the existing Lords to pass the budget (and, sjortly after, the first law depriving hte Lords of power to block a budget and to exercise only delaying, not vetoing, power over other legislation. While there were two precedents for doing this, dating back to Stuart times, it was, by convention, the King’s personal choice as to when and how the power of new peerages could be used as a threat – his ministers could recommend but could not formally “advise” in the sense that he was obliged to act as they advised.
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In 1931, the Depression had caused a major financial crunch, and Labor Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald’s party refused to back him in what he believed was necessary to combat it. The P.M.'s choices were to resign or to ask for new elections. Instead, the King used the precedent, heretofore only employed during wartime, of forming a National Government, a multi-party coalition under the P.M. While there were party negotiations to put it together, it was the King’s call to refuse MacDonald’s resignation and commission the National Government (P.M. and a corporal’s guard of Laborites, the majority of the Conservatives, and about half the Liberals forming the coalition).
3 and 4. In 1957 and again in 1963, the Conservatives had a majority in Commons but the existing Prime Minister had lost the confidence of his party members owing to controversies – and was severely ill to boot, and there was no designated successor. The Queen sounded out a variety of Tory leaders tp figure out who would best be able to bring a majority behind himself, and then unilaterally chose Macmillan and then Douglas-Hume as the P.M. In both cases, she was doing her job as Head of State to make the system work in a situation where precedent and political practice had not provided for a solution prior to the crisis.
- I’m not totally clear on what went on behind the scenes during the Three Days Week, but it appears that the Queen brokered a solution to the crisis.
In all five cases, the monarch let the political system do its job until it ran into a stone wall, then stepped in to resolve the problem with a minimal use of arbitrary authority to get the political end past the crisis and on to running a stable government again. This is what a Head of State is for, beyond the symbolic value of having someone “above the political fray” to symbolize continuity of governance while Governments change.
Nitpicks: it was Edward VII, and Douglas-Home.
Right – “Home”, pronounced Hyoom as if written Hume. If anyone is wondering what Elendil’s Heir and I were on about, I’d originally mistyped “Edward VIII” (AKA the Duke of Windsor), rather than his grandfather Edward VII, as the King who died in 1910.
An interesting story about ol’ Alec, also from Wiki:
In 2008, it was revealed that a plot to kidnap Home in 1964 was foiled by the Prime Minister himself. Two left-wing students from the University of Aberdeen had planned to kidnap him. Home had even encountered the two students earlier in the day when he gave them £1 for a charity in return for not kidnapping him, which the PM took as a joke. The students tailed his car as he drove to meet a Scottish Minister. They had intended to force his car to crash or block it then kidnap him; however, they lost their nerve. Instead they just decided to go to the home of the couple Home was meeting. Home was alone and when they rang the bell he answered. The kidnappers told Home that they planned to kidnap him. Home’s response was to say, “I suppose you realise if you do the Conservatives will win the election by 200 or 300.” After packing several things he offered them some beer which the kidnappers accepted and Home convinced them to abandon their plot. Home never spoke of the kidnapping because he did not want to ruin the career of his bodyguard. Home relayed the story in 1977 to the former Lord Chancellor Quintin Hogg and it is recorded in his diaries.