Buckingham Palace Wouldn't Hire Minorities for Office Jobs

windsor, england june 13 queen elizabeth ii attends a ceremony to mark her official birthday at windsor castle on june 13, 2020 in windsor, england the queen celebrates her 94th birthday this year, in line with government advice, it was agreed that the queens birthday parade, also known as trooping the colour, would not go ahead in its traditional form photo by toby melville wpa poolgetty images

(Image credit: WPA Pool)

published 6 June 2021

Officials in charge of hiring at Buckingham Palace engaged in problematic practices until at least the late 1960s, according to a new report.
The Guardian unearthed documents from the U.K.'s National Archive that showed that the palace had a policy against hiring "coloured immigrants or foreigners" for clerical positions, but would hire them for domestic servant positions.
The report also said that palace aides had sought exemptions for royal household staff from anti-discrimination labor laws in the 1970s.

Buckingham Palace (opens in new tab) had some very problematic hiring practices in place until at least the late 1960s, according to a new report.

According to a report from The Guardian (opens in new tab) published Wednesday, the Queen's chief financial manager made it clear in 1968 that "it was not, in fact, the practice to appoint coloured immigrants or foreigners" to clerical roles in the royal household (minorities were permitted to be hired as domestic servants at the time, however). The newspaper cited documents from the U.K.'s National Archive as the source of the information.

That wasn't the only cringe-worthy reveal in the The Guardian's report, however. The documents also showed that palace aides had attempted to obtain exemptions from laws prohibiting discriminatory hiring practices for the royal household as recently as the 1970s.

"Claims based on a second-hand account of conversations from over 50 years ago should not be used to draw or infer conclusions about modern day events or operations," a Buckingham Palace spokesperson told E! News (opens in new tab) in response to the report. "The principles of Crown Application and Crown Consent are long established and widely known."

Buckingham Palace chose not to comment on the hiring policy for the Guardian story, but did say that records showed minorities were employed by the Palace in the 1990s (the Palace claimed that records on racial backgrounds weren't kept before then).