The Diana Essay

So, it would seem that I was affected by it as much as everyone else; I just reacted differently.

To Die On Stage

It's 11pm on Saturday September 5th, 1997.

Six days ago, Diana Spencer, The Princess of Wales, was killed in a 120mph car crash in Paris. I have no doubt that, in months and years to come, as with John F Kennedy, people will talk of the moment when they first heard of the death. Sheina and I were staying with friends in Paisley. We attended the Cowal Games in Dunoon last Saturday, got drunk and watched the procession of pipe bands through the main street while we snatched sips of lager and cider from concealed cans in direct contravention of the inaugural public drinking ban, a ban that had even made it onto the previous evening's Scottish news.

We returned to Paisley via ferry and train and taxi and drifted into an autonomous sleep in our friends' spare bedroom, concerned only with our own minor worries which were somewhat diluted by the following morning's news.

My reaction to it was, I realise now, quite cynically absurd.

She faked it! Sure enough. The woman was clearly unhappy with her life, a failed princess constantly hounded by the media. What better way to escape.

I sat in front of the Television last Sunday morning and absorbed the facts of the tragedy. Travelling with her lover, Dodi Fayed, son of the Harrods owner, Mohammed, in a chauffeur driven Mercedes, they crashed while being pursued by members of the infamous paparazzi on motorbikes.

Dodi and the driver, who was later in the week accused by Parisian coroners of being drunk at the wheel, died instantly, Diana later in hospital. A bodyguard survived although at this time he is still extremely ill and has been unable to communicate further details to the police.

Tomorrow, the 'people's Princess' will be buried and the country will come to a standstill. Our new prime minister, Tony Blair, king of the sound bite, proved his skill with that term last Sunday, and it has been repeated many times since.

Even now, most television channels carry extensive coverage of the nation's reaction but it is this very reaction that perplexes me.

People in their thousands have flocked to London. Mourners are still descending on the city and extra buses and trains are running through the night from Glasgow and Edinburgh to aid Scottish pilgrimages.

I don't understand it, though.

How can people mourn someone that they don't know. People knew of Diana, she was an icon of the late twentieth century and much of its zeitgeist. A modern day princess for a modern day fairytale tinted by the realities of life; a victim of clinical depression and Bulemia, only two of the mental conditions that became accepted as real illnesses during her royal life; an empathiser with the social plagues and champion of their casualties, the sufferers of AIDS,  homelessness, war and poverty; an unashamed campaigner for simple good causes at a time when society is at last beginning to accept the validity of common sense over stoicism.

It is hard, after a week of media regurgitation, not to list some of the many admirable feats and features of the princess of Wales and I have done just that. I must also remember, though, her class and status. I must remember her privilege.

She was born into England's upper class, what was once called the idle class. She was the epitome of the eighties 'Okay, Yah' set. She was the ultimate yuppie, a Sloane Ranger, never having a materialistic concern , never having to look after the pennies.

A model of aristocratic achievement, Diana went from Lady to Princess, a promotion from upper management to the board of directors. She stole the British public's royal focus from the Queen and used it for her own ends and those of others, less able to help themselves.

I am able to list these facts but I did not know Diana. I will not mourn her death, as tragic as it was, because it will make no real difference to my life. I have not lost a friend or family relation, someone whom I knew and loved and neither has the majority of the country.

We have lost a figurehead, a character in a real life soap opera. Our lives and our attitudes will not change because of this.

The death was indeed tragic and a terrible loss for Diana's sons, Harry and William, the future King of England and for all her friends and family members. I find myself thinking of other tragedies, plane crashes around the world of which Lockerbie stands out as a particularly shocking example, the Hillsborough disaster, The King's Cross fire, the sinkings of The Marchioness and The Herald of Free Enterprise, Northern Ireland and the IRA's British bombing campaign, The Oklahoma bomb. So many others that escape my memory. So many deaths.

And then I think of Dunblane,, the class full of four and five year olds and their teacher, shot dead by a mentally disturbed gun enthusiast named Thomas Hamilton. I can recall that name, even now, such was the effect of this particular tragedy.

After all of these disasters, life went on. There was mourning but it was localised and controlled, it did not interfere with such things as television schedules or sporting timetables. I always remember the Chris Evans breakfast show on Radio One, the morning after Dunblane. He refrained from the usual immodest ravings to play back-to-back records as a mark of respect (as did his television show, TFI Friday this evening), only speaking to explain his actions. Because of this, people phoned the BBC to complain. Why should they lose out on the morning entertainment just because some madman went nuts somewhere in Scotland?

What society seems to be saying is, famous people are important, the more famous, the more important. A plane full of people can die but they're just ordinary people so we don't mourn them because we don't know them. Someone famous dies and we mourn because we THINK we know them. It is a natural progression in society's obsession with the lionized.

This is where the irony creeps in and where I begin to feel really uncomfortable. It is this obsession with the famous and with Diana in particular that fuels people's hunger for detail. They wanted to be told about her lifestyle, they wanted to see photographic and cinematic proof of her activities, what was she wearing, who was she with, where did she go?

People want this. People demand this.

But how are they to get it?

Yes, you know what I'm going to say but it is surprising how little this simple mechanism has been mentioned during the past week. Photographer's (let's call them paparazzo for the sake of topicality), take pictures of Diana because they know that they can sell them for enormous amounts of money, they kind of sums that justify risk and reckless behaviour. Editors of publications buy these pictures, generally tabloid newspapers and magazines. They pay such large amounts because they know that the circulation of their particular publication will rise dramatically (sometimes doubling) if it includes pictures of the Princess of Wales. This is because the PUBLIC want to see them and will pay for the privilege. The editors don't pay through the nose because they happen to have too much money on their hands, there are providing a service defined by society.

Stories have appeared in the media this week describing incidences of public hatred being directed at members of the media and even Earl Spencer, Diana'a brother, has banned the editors of seven tabloid newspapers from attending her funeral.

Surely, if he wanted to exclude the perpetrators of his sisters death, it should have been the public who should be castigated. Society itself should stop blaming the media catalysts and look into its own soul for it was society's greed that played a major role in the death of the 'people's Princess'.

This is a defining period for British society but I fear that it is for all the wrong reasons. Here is an opportunity to see out own failings, our obsession with the banal, our apathy of the real problems and issues which Diana herself tried to bring to our attention, our idleness and refusal to take an active role in our own evolution.

People say that Diana was a victim of the media. This is, of course, too easy an explanation. Diana was a victim of her own people. It may help the grieving process to blame paparazzo and editors but we should not grieve Diana at all, leave that to the those who knew her and those she helped. We should grieve our actions, accept our failings and learn from our selfishness.

Diana did use the media to great effect and this should not be forgotten. She raised awareness about the less fortunate, the ill, the physical and mental casualties of war. She fought for public favour with her ex-husband in full glare of us all. She flaunted her wealth and status. She travelled in expensive cars to visit people locked in the garage and basement of society's great mansion and sat injured black children on knees clad in jeans that cost the same as a year's food supply.

She did a lot of good. I imagine she did it because she cared and wanted to make a difference but I believe she also did it because her ex-husband didn't. She was in a position to care. She didn't have to hold down a job or worry about paying the mortgage or buying food and clothes for the kids. She could devote a lot of time to charities which, as well as benefiting them, gained her the admiration of the people and highlighted the traditional royal reservations to which she was immune. Her battle with the media was easily surpassed by her conflict with the monarchy.

Again, irony rears its comical face.

Who wins from Diana's death. It would seem, most do except those who matter.

The public have been moved and have been given a reason to grieve without any of the loss that a real bereavement brings. They will pull together tomorrow, hug each other, cry, go to the pub tomorrow evening and toast their lost princess. They will reflect on Sunday and then go out on Monday morning and, again, buy the Sun or the Star or some other tabloid comic to gaze at pictures of their beloved icons.

The monarchy have the sympathy of the country. Their greatest assets, William and Harry, will be cultivated by an establishment in remission. No more will people debate on the future of the monarchy. Thanks to Diana, that is now assured.

The media will just sit back and rake in the money. Pictures of the funeral, of Prince Charles and his sons, of the Queen and of the mourning public will continue to sell papers, that same public having learned nothing. The television royal correspondents will be given a new importance alongside the new monarchy. I can't help picturing Nick Owen in my mind, on our screens since last Sunday, sighing deeply during his descriptions of everything from the handling characteristics of a Mercedes to the innermost feelings of members of the Royal Family and punctuating each soliloquy with a vacant stare into space, almost unable to handle the strain of it but just managing to cope, every day for the past week he just managed to cope. Never has the art of talking drivel been elevated to such importance.

There are also losers.

William and Harry have lost their mother.

Mohammed Fayed has lost a son and the chauffeur is lost to his family; I'm unable to elaborate any further as it is of little importance to the media, my source of information.

The bodyguard has apparently lost his tongue.

The charities to which Diana was so devoted have lost their figurehead.

The most famous woman in the world lived her royal life on the world stage. I can remember where I was when she started that life, on a little boat in the middle of Loch Long with my Father fishing for mackerel. I was proud to be isolated from the mania on that day in 1981 but tomorrow I will not be proud, neither will I be isolated.

I have not grieved but I have been affected. I have written this essay to somehow come to terms with my feelings and the implications of this event in history. Perhaps this is my way of grieving for a people so willing to accept cruelty and barbarism on a world scale but devastated by one public death.

The world stage is where Diana lived and died. I hope that we, as a people, can accept blame and begin to honour our social conscience.

The 'People's Princess'. The people owned her and the people killed her.

I may not always remember where I was when the people's Princess died but I will remember how I felt.

We all have a responsibility for each other and we must realise that our actions can be far reaching. The time for self-prejudice is gone.

We must all now step onto the world stage.