Photos
Quotes
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Princess Alice : Oh... Who cares? Honestly. One of the few joys of being as old as we both are is that it's not our problem. It's not really our country, either.
Lord Mountbatten : What are you talking about? Of course it's our country.
Princess Alice : We Battenbergs have no country. Our family might have kings and queens in its ranks, but we're mongrels, too. Part-German, part-Greek, part-nowhere at all.
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Lord Mountbatten : Gentlemen. In the past decade alone, there have, by my reckoning, been 73 coups in 46 different countries around the world, and the success of some of these might encourage us. In Ghana two years ago, President Nkrumah was ousted with just 500 men. And in 1961 in South Korea, Major General Park Chung-hee seized power with 3,500 men. And in 1964 in Gabon, just 150 men were able to arrest President M'ba and thus gain control over the levers of state power. And, of course, it was with just one legion that Caesar crossed the Rubicon. And perhaps we would not seek to follow his fate. Sic semper tyrannis, gentlemen.
[chuckling]
Lord Mountbatten : And what all successful insurgencies have in common are five key elements. Control of the media, control of the economy, and the capture of administrative targets, for which you need the fourth element, the loyalty of the military. Now, in Ghana and Gabon, this can be achieved with a handful of battalions, but here in the United Kingdom... we would need to secure Parliament, Whitehall, the Ministry of Defence, and the Cabinet Office. The Prime Minister will be arrested, of course, along with other politicians still loyal. We would have to shut down the airports, air traffic control. Same with the train stations. Curfews will be put in place, martial law declared. And I haven't even mentioned the police. It would take tens of thousands of unquestioningly loyal servicemen, and even in my heyday, I could never command that. Which brings me to the fifth element. Legitimacy. Now, our government draws its strength from long-established institutions that support it. The courts, body of common law, the constitution. For any action against the state to succeed, you'd have to overthrow these as well. But in a highly evolved democracy such as ours, their authority is sacrosanct. Which is why, gentlemen, a coup d'état in the United Kingdom... doesn't stand a chance.
