Prince Charles Accused of Pushing His "Quasi-Environmental Feudalism" onto Government

Prince Charles has been accused of overstepping his constitutional role in order to push his "quasi-environmental feudalism" on the British Government. The accusation came within a week of Lord Monckton's accusation that the Queen had overstepped her constitutional role during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Trinidad. The Guardian writes that Prince Charles has been doing just that for at least the last three years. Working through his "charity," the Prince's Foundation, he has written directly to ministers in eight Whitehall departments since 2006. Those who received letters included: Department for Food and Rural Affairs, Department for International Development, HM Treasury, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Department for Work and Pensions, Department for Education and Skills, Department for Communities, and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

According to documents obtained by the Guardian, Charles has sent a small army lackeys from his foundation to press senior cabinet ministers to adopt his beliefs on matters including hospital building and the design of "ecotowns." Memos pressed on the ministers have been dubbed "black spider memos" because of Charles's infantile, scrawled handwriting.

Republican campaigner Graham Smith told the Guardian, "The charity is little more that a soapbox for his views. It promotes his worldview, which is quasi-environmental feudalism."

The documentation focuses on Charles's effort to influence the policy announced in 2007 by Gordon Brown to construct 100,000 homes in 10 so-called carbon-neutral ecotowns to create a "home-owning, asset-owning, wealth-owning democracy." No sooner had the policy been announced than Charles's lackeys at his charities started bombarding ministers with proposals, which resulted in a seminar organized by his Foundation and promoting the building of the towns along the lines of his own ecotown at Poundbury Dorset.

Documents were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act because the Whitehall departments refused to release the letters and documents when first requested. They pressed Andy Burnham, chief secretary to the Treasury, to consider one of Charles's studies on "sustainable housing, which provides support for the Foundation's mission to promote timeless and ecological ways of planning, designing and building."

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, warned Charles that "He has to be very careful to respect the traditional separation between the democratically accountable parts of the constitution and the ceremonial parts. The Prince of Wales is entitled to ask about what is going on, but if he is urging a particular point of view, then that's a different matter."

Prime Minister Gordon Brown was implicated in trying to block the release of the documentation, including an earlier set of correspondence which involved Tony Blair.