In news which is awful but totally unsurprising, Buckingham Palace is racist. A new report by The Guardian has found that Buckingham Palace banned “coloured immigrants or foreigners” from working office jobs in the royal household until at least the 1960s. Instead, they could only work as domestic servants.
The British newspaper has uncovered documents in the UK’s National Archives where the Queen’s chief financial manager negotiated an exemption for newly-introduced anti-discrimination laws back in 1968.
The documents reveal that the staff inside Buckingham Palace fell into three categories:
- “Senior posts, which were not filled by advertising or by any overt system of appointment and which would presumably be accepted as outside the scope of [anti-discrimination laws].”
- “Clerical and other office posts, to which it was not, in fact, the practice to appoint coloured immigrants or foreigners.”
- “Ordinary domestic posts for which coloured applicants were freely considered, but which would in any event be covered by the proposed general exemption for domestic employment.”
That’s right. A country which had invaded much of the world – and, at the time the documents were written 1968, had only just recently relinquished most of its colonies – only wanted to allow so-called “coloured applicants” at Buckingham Palace to work as household servants rather than in office posts.
While the Palace couldn’t confirm when these racist rules were dropped, it said that people from ethnic minority backgrounds had been employed in office roles since the 1990s at the earliest. So that leaves a gap of 25-odd years where we don’t really know what the go was.
People are obviously drawing conclusions about how this culture may have carried into the present day, especially after Oprah‘s interview with Meghan Markle lifted the lid on how concerned the Palace was about her future child’s skin colour.
Buckingham Palace is still exempt from the UK’s anti-discrimination laws to this day. However in a statement, it said that is still chooses to abide by these laws “in principle and in practice”.
“Claims based on a second-hand account of conversations from over 50 years ago should not be used to draw or infer conclusions about modern day events or operations,” a spokesperson said.
“This is reflected in the diversity, inclusion and dignity at work policies, procedures and practices within the royal household. Any complaints that might be raised under the act follow a formal process that provides a means of hearing and remedying any complaint.”
Sounds like a great workplace.
