The Mountbattens with Nehru: Raising a storm

London, Jan. 4 (PTI): Winston Churchill, when he was Prime Minister, had cautioned Lord Mountbatten, a cousin of the queen and former viceroy of India, that his wife Edwina’s “behaviour” was doing his career “no good”.

He even tried to ban her from an official visit to Turkey amid fears that she would commit a diplomatic blunder.

This was revealed yesterday when the National Archives released secret files from Churchill’s private office papers.

“His wife’s behaviour was doing his career no good in political and naval circles,” Churchill, who was prime minister during World War II, wrote.

The files also revealed that Mountbatten had realised that his ambitious wife was “far beyond his control”.

Government concerns came to a head after a coronation ceremony at Buckingham Palace, during which Lady Mountbatten told her close friend Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, then Prime Minister of India, that Britain was responsible for atrocities in Kenya.

A “blazing row” ensued in which Lady Mountbatten appealed to James Thomas, the first lord of the admiralty, to “save her husband’s career”.

Thomas told Churchill that he intended to use the dispute “as a peg for telling her a lot of things about herself. I hope very much we can get the lady to behave herself as she does so much of her work extremely well”.

Churchill had already received a letter from the queen’s private secretary, Sir Alan Lascelles, about an earlier visit to India by Edwina, which generated a lot of controversy.

Lascelles wrote: “It seems to me that the time has come when it should be pointed out to Edwina by one of her majesty’s ministers that these visits of hers to the Indian capital do not further the general interests of the Commonwealth.”

Churchill sought to ban Lady Mountbatten from accompanying her husband on an official visit to Turkey in August 1953 but was forced to back down when Lord Mountbatten told him that his wife had denied making the offensive remarks about Kenya. The Mountbattens’ trip turned out to be a resounding success.

Relations between the couple and the government soured with officials believing they had come too close “to the dividing line between legitimate naval interests and foreign policy”. Churchill was driven to ordering Lord Mountbatten to “restrict his ceremonial visits”.