Whoever does the travel planning for Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, should probably be filling out a resume right about now because if I was the Prince of Wales, they’d be looking for a new job. Last night, while heading to the Royal Variety Performance, the future King of England and his Queen were driven directly into a rioting mob of violent protesters. The same group of protesters who, earlier, set fire to the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square. It does without saying that the situation got out of hand in a hurry.
“The police cars at the front of the convoy drove straight into crowds at the top of Regent Street. They got trapped in that mob and it meant that Charles and Camilla were on their own further down the road except for a Jaguar travelling behind them,” said Matthew Maclachlan, who witnessed the attack from the mob but did not participate. “Charles and Camilla’s car ran into such a concentration of people that it had to stop. It was stationary for a lot of the time, then would squeeze forward an inch. They had just one bodyguard in the car with them and a chauffeur. We couldn’t believe it. The car had really big windows so Charles was very much on display. People were trying to talk to him about tuition fees at first but when more people realised what was happening, the crowds swelled and people were throwing glass bottles and picking up litter bins and throwing them at the car. You could hear all this smashing. … It must have been frightening for them but, throughout it all, Charles was really calm and smiling at everyone. Camilla was beaming too. He was holding his hands out towards them in a gesture that said, ‘I’m innocent’.”
You’d think that someone involved with the Royal entourage would have looked at news reports and said, “Hey, wait a minute, maybe we shouldn’t drive through the heart of a riot with the next face of the country.” I actually feel bad for Charles, because you know that kind of situation has to be scary and the Royal family has basically no say in the rise of student fees that kicked off the violent protests.
Tags: prince of wales, Prince Charles, Camilla Parker-Bowles, Charles and Camilla, Prince Charles and Camilla attacked by protest mob, London, England, Royal Variety Performance, Prince of Wales’ motorcade attacked, school fees protest, riots, Regent Street, Matthew Maclachlan