This book was driven by the July 2020 release of the long-suppressed letters between Sir John Kerr and the Queen through her private secretary, Sir Martin Charteris before, during and after the 1975 crisis. The authors are committed republicans but their approach to the crisis is based solely on the search for historical truth and analysis of the documentary evidence.
The so-called Palace letters are probably the final significant release of material throwing light on the crisis. The letters reveal the Australia’s monarchical system during its moment of deepest trauma. They belong to another age when letter-writing was a way of life and Governors-General provided the Palace with frank and regular accounts of Australian politics. The Queen who meets the British Prime Minister on a weekly basis lives with perpetual political issues and narratives.
The letters, however, confirm beyond doubt the view previously enunciated by the authors and accepted by Whitlam and Fraser since 1975 – that the Queen had no role in the dismissal and no prior knowledge of the event. Yet this conclusion had been contested in recent years. Even when the letters were released the Queen’s critics, centred around the Australian Republic Movement, claimed the Queen was deeply implicated, that she had given the “royal green light” to dismissal and that the Palace was involved in a process of “collusion, deception and artifice.” In short, the accusation meant the Queen was lying about her non-involvement.
A principal purpose of the book was to rebut these false allegations - not to protect the monarchy but to preserve the cause of historical truth surrounding the most dramatic crisis in Australia’s political history. The further purpose was to ensure the argument for an Australian republic is based on a foundation of integrity and not on fabrications about the Queen’s improper behaviour in 1975.
The book was launched by Labor’s deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek and contained a forward by Paul Keating supporting the authors’ arguments.
Reviews
“The idea that the Queen may have wished or actively conspired in arrangements with Sir John Kerr to affect a party political outcome in Australia amounts to no more than tilting at shadows…The notion that, in some way, she was transfixed by the policies of the Whitlam Government in Australia and had to engage herself with her then Governor-General in that government’s termination is given the lie by her willingness to terminate herself as monarch and Queen of Australia in her conversation with me – another and a later Prime Minister in her long life of Prime Ministers” – Paul Keating in the forward to The Truth of the Palace Letters.
