According to a well-researched article published in Guardian, the investigation leads to a time when Buckingham Palace once banned ‘coloured immigrants or foreigners’ from serving in clerical roles in the royal household until 1960 and this will surely reignite the debate over the British royal family and race. As per the report, in 1968, the Queen’s chief financial manager informed civil servants that ‘it was not, in fact, the practice to appoint coloured immigrants or foreigners to clerical roles in the royal household but they were permitted to work as domestic servants.’
The portal also claimed that the time when the practice ended is still unknown but in the 1990s there were records of people from ethnic minority backgrounds being employed in Buckingham Palace; however, records before the time were not mentioned. Nevertheless, the Queen was exempted from these equality laws for more than 4 decades. Due to this, it became difficult for ethnic minorities and women to make a complaint against discrimination. Later, the report suggests that separate laws on racial discrimination and sexual equality laws were implemented around 1970.
A Buckingham Palace spokesperson, in a separate statement to E!News, stated, “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. The principles of Crown Application and Crown Consent are long established and widely known.”
Interestingly, earlier, in the tell-all interview, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex Prince Harry and Meghan Markle alleged that a member of the royal family had raised concern over the skin tone of their unborn baby Archie as Meghan is the royal family's first mixed-race member. However, then, Prince William rubbished his brother’s statement and allegations by stating, “We’re very much not a racist family.”
Image Source: royal.uk