Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts tagged as “Heseltine”

Buckingham Palace Regrets

In an article published in The Age, Tony Stephens reports that Buckingham Palace was unhappy over Sir John Kerr’s sacking of the Whitlam government.

Buckingham Palace has finally admitted on the record, after 25 years, to unhappiness over Sir John Kerr’s sacking of the elected Whitlam government in 1975.

Sir William Heseltine, assistant private secretary to the Queen during the constitutional crisis, has made it clear that the royal household was disappointed that the Governor-General did not consult the Queen.

Sir William believes that the Queen would have advised her vice-regal representative not to act when he did.

“I would hesitate to say that she, the Queen, was shocked,” Sir William says. “Shocked is a very strong word and the Queen was always very good at containing her emotions in the circumstances which might well have shocked, amazed, surprised or enraged other people.”

WhitlamDismissal.com
Malcolm Farnsworth
© 1995-2025