His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Monday 12th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), and indeed the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant).

This amazing man was the Colonel of my old regiment, the Grenadier Guards, for 42 years, and I spent this morning on the phone to many people who knew him throughout that time. The overwhelming message was, “He was simply one of us in the regiment, and everyone knew that from the guardsmen up.” There are also a number of stories that, unlike the Prime Minister, I unfortunately do not have the social confidence to retell here. I first met the Duke of Edinburgh when I was a nervous young Sandhurst cadet, and he invited the officers who were joining the regiment up for a drink in a little sitting room in Buckingham Palace. He visited the regiment when it was on operational tours in Northern Ireland, and before and after deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Bosnia. Indeed, one friend of mine told of how, at a patrol base in Northern Ireland, this young officer had a room next to the Duke, who stayed for the night. My friend lent Prince Philip a towel, and he could not help noticing when Prince Philip had gone, that he had folded up my friend’s towel and put it back in his room.

As someone who had been at the sharp end in world war two—we will hear more about that in a few minutes from my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart)—the Duke of Edinburgh understood the ghastliness of war and the suffering that tends to follow it. After one particularly unpleasant incident in Northern Ireland when three soldiers were seriously hurt, he gave them all jobs in his household. Two decades later, seeing the need for additional support for the large numbers of grenadiers being killed and injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, he started the Colonel’s Fund to support injured soldiers and bereaved families.

As we all know, MPs and peers occasionally get invited to meet the royal family, and I remember one time that I was talking to Prince Philip, and showing off my huge knowledge—not—of Afghan tribal politics. I could not believe it when he said, “No, Adam, you are completely forgetting the significance of the northern Pashtuns in the Afghan national army.” Those who know about Afghanistan, including hon. Members here, will appreciate that that is a nuanced point, and it is amazing that the Duke of Edinburgh was across Afghan tribal politics in quite such detail.

Along with General Webb-Carter, Prince Philip was the driving force in getting more soldiers from ethnic minorities into the Household division. He came from good stock. This morning, I learned from a Jewish friend of mine that in the second world war, when the Nazis started shipping Jews out from Athens in 1942, his mother hid the Cohen family for nearly a year, despite the fact that her small flat was pretty much next door to the Gestapo headquarters. Her body now rests on the Mount of Olives, and she is honoured as Righteous Among the Nations.

Prince Philip honoured and served this nation with a stunning contribution for more than eight decades. Generations of grenadiers and the people of my constituency salute and thank him, and we send our good wishes and sympathy to his family, and to Her Majesty the Queen.