A JOURNEY

by Blair, Tony

  I used the phrase ‘kept faith with Princess Diana’ for a very particular reason. For some time before her death – and most of all recently, because of the relationship with Dodi – the jackals had been on the prowl. Parts of the media (the Mail especially) were gauging whether or not they could go for her. I knew they wanted to, and I had warned her of it when we met at Chequers, but they were nervous about it, unsure of the public reaction. So they contented themselves with laying down themes of criticism that could be developed, small barbs here and there, the occasional frontal attack, but nothing amounting to a campaign. The reason they held off was that her support was deep and quite visceral in its way, and people did keep faith with her. They were not going to let her be sacrificed. I knew that she would want those people to be recognised too. Would that support have continued in a future in which she remarried, grew older, became an even greater figure of controversy as well as renown? It is hard to say, but a decent part of it would surely have clung on. People knew her faults, and they didn’t love her any the less for them.

  The national mood was exactly what we thought: an outpouring of sadness. But already it was tinged with anger that she had been taken away. At first, the rage was turned on the paparazzi who had been following her. It is perhaps hard to convey what it is like to be a public figure and feel hounded. And for perfectly understandable reasons, many people don’t feel sorry for the famous, most of whom have willingly taken that path. They often have a rich lifestyle. They take the upside, so the argument goes, and should jolly well put up with the downside. Anyway, small price to pay, isn’t it?

  Except in Diana’s case it had gone way beyond a small price. She was literally hunted down. She was a very valuable commodity, a gold mine that was constantly plundered. The digging was deep and unusually desperate because the gains were so immense. Of course, media people say she was happy to pursue the media when it suited her, but this is a far less compelling argument than it seems. The truth is, in the full glare of media attention, you have no option but to engage with them, to try to mould their view of you, to try to prevent a different and often unflattering and unfair view from taking hold. In other words, sometimes this is a purely voluntary act, while at other times – as with Diana – there is no choice: either you attempt to feed the beast or the beast eats you. Now, at points she fed them more than was necessary, but that doesn’t alter the basic fact: she was subject to a degree of persistent, intrusive and dehumanising harassment that on occasions was frightening, excessive and wrong.

  That Sunday morning, the royal family attended a service in Crathie Church at Balmoral as usual. There was no reference to Diana. I knew the Queen would have felt that duty demanded that the normal routine was followed. There would have been no Alastairs in the entourage suggesting that possibly mentioning the tragedy might be sensible. The point is: the Queen is a genuine, not an artificial person, by which I mean there is no artifice in how she approaches things. While her absolute preoccupation was protecting the boys, it was to protect them first and foremost as princes. There would have been no question of them not going to church that day, hours after their mother had died. It was their duty as princes. Of course, to some of the public this looked incredibly, almost blatantly, insensitive.

  I knew that swings in sentiment can come and go. I knew, too, that firmly set underneath there was a deep and abiding affection for the Queen. But this was a unique case. As the days passed, the crowds grew. Three books of condolence at St James’s Palace became four, became fifteen, became forty-three. The outpouring of grief was turning into a mass movement for change. It was a moment of supreme national articulation, and it was menacing for the royal family. I don’t know what would have happened if they had just kept going as before. Possibly nothing, but in the eye of that storm, unpredictable and unnerving as it was, I couldn’t be sure.

  The refusal to lower the flags at Windsor Castle and the Tower of London was because Diana was technically no longer a member of the royal family, having been stripped of her HRH title. The flag at Buckingham Palace was not flying at all because, by tradition, only the Queen’s personal standard is flown, and then only when she is in residence. She was staying at Balmoral because she didn’t come to London in September. Again, by tradition. It was all very by the book, but it took no account of the fact that the people couldn’t give a damn about ‘the book’, actually disliked ‘the book’, in fact, thought ‘the book’ had in part produced the chain of events that led to Diana’s death. In the strange symbiosis between ruler and ruled, the people were insisting that the Queen acknowledge that she ruled by their consent, and bend to their insistence.

  Public anger was turning towards the royal family. At the same time, it hadn’t abated towards the press who, sensing this, understood that they needed to direct it at the other target. And to be fair, they were releasing genuine public feeling and, like everyone else, struggling to read where it might all go.

  There were also two camps inside Buckingham Palace. One was thoroughly traditional, and had not regarded Diana as an asset but as a danger. They felt that to give way to press and public pressure was to start down the slippery path to a populist-driven monarchy, which would then lead to the monarchy ceasing to be true to its station, and therefore losing its essential raison d’être. As admirably tough and principled as that approach was, it seemed hopelessly out of touch. While they may have understood the sadness of the people, they didn’t understand the potential for rage.

  The second camp in the Palace was to some degree represented by people such as Robert Fellowes, the Queen’s private secretary and brother-in-law to Diana, who was a thoroughly sensible man. I don’t know what he really thought of Diana – I think he saw both sides to her, loved the side he loved and shrugged at the other – but he was a professional and, as you sometimes find with well-bred upper-class types, a lot more shrewd and savvy than he let on. His deputy Robin Janvrin, who later succeeded him, was a Foreign Office official, also bright and completely au fait with where it was all heading.

  At the suggestion of the Palace, I was to greet the body as it arrived from Paris. As I stood with sundry members of the Establishment out on the tarmac at RAF Northolt, I was acutely aware of the different camps. I had already decided in my own mind that this was a moment for the country to unite. There had to be love for Diana; respect for the Queen; a celebration of what a great country this is and how proud we were in having such a princess, and we had to show ourselves able to put on something spectacular in her memory to the lasting admiration of the world. I therefore thought my job was to protect the monarchy, channel the anger before it became rage, and generally have the whole business emerge in a positive and unifying way, rather than be a source of tension, division and bitterness.

  I also really felt for the Queen herself, who was in a hellishly difficult situation. On the one hand she had been worried about the impact of Diana on the monarchy as an institution, and on the other of course she grieved for the mother of the grandchildren she completely adored; but she didn’t want to pretend to a view of Diana that was more conflicted than the public could accept, so her reluctance to step forward came about less through obedience to tradition and ‘the book’ – though undoubtedly that was part of it – and more through a sincere desire to be true to what she really felt. My upfront and visible filling of the vacuum would have made her uncomfortable, and certainly some of those around her somewhat disdained it. It also emphasised their general unease with me and what I represented.

  I am not a great one for the Establishment. It’s probably at heart why I’m in the Labour Party and always will be. It’s not that I mind them particularly, and, over the days that followed Diana’s death, I did my level best to protect not just the Queen but also the court. I have to say, also, I found them polite, charming even, and never anything other than helpful people. So what I’m about to add may say more about me than about them. I always felt that they preferred political leaders of two types: e
ither those who were of them – or at least fully subscribed to their general outlook – or the ‘authentic’ Labour people, the sort they used to read about, who spoke with an accent and who fitted their view of how such people should be. People like me were a bit nouveau riche, a bit arriviste, a bit confusing and therefore suspect. So I was also aware, during these days, that if it became too obvious I was trying to shape things, I could expect considerable blowback; and if I stumbled, I shouldn’t expect help getting up.

  It was strange standing there at Northolt watching the plane arrive, waiting for the coffin to be brought out, the press pack penned in their hundreds behind the fence, the awkward chit-chat with the others. You have to be so careful at such events. You stand around talking. The mood is sombre. Someone says hello; the natural inclination is to smile. Someone snaps the picture. Before you know it, you look as if you are behaving inappropriately, as if the only thing you did was grin. Diana was not wrong about photographs. When Cherie and I were getting out of the car for a memorial service or some other solemn occasion, I would always say, as much to myself as to Cherie, you can’t afford to smile too broadly or laugh. Be on your guard.

  For Prince Charles, it was really ghastly. He and Camilla were an obvious focus of intense interest and speculation. What could he do? Appear grief-stricken and he would be called a fraud. Appear calm and he would seem cold. It was an impossible situation, his every gesture interpreted or more likely misinterpreted, and people ready to pounce on any slip.

  In this extraordinary, challenging time, his relationship with the boys rescued him. At that point I hadn’t really seen them together, but as I saw more of them later, I realised that the relationship was close and deeply affectionate on both sides. Not surprisingly, since they were father and sons, you might say; but back then there were plenty of people who assumed that the strain between husband and wife had been transferred to father and sons. However, it wasn’t so, and as the days wore on it became clearer, significantly easing the pressure on Prince Charles.

  I had got to know him quite well before coming to office. He had made it his business to acquaint himself with leading members of what was likely to be the governing party. He was a curious mixture of the traditional and the radical (at one level he was quite New Labour; at another, definitely not), and of the princely and the insecure. He led a life in which naturally people deferred to him, and you wouldn’t describe him as easy-going, certainly not in the way Diana was, but he was also sensitive to criticism and nervous about the public reaction to him.

  I could never imagine him sitting in Maggie Rae’s basement dining room in her terrace house in Hackney as Diana had, joshing with the other guests, everyone on first-name terms and beguiled into more or less complete informality. On the other hand, he had and has one very major and, to me, transcendent quality: he is enormously and sincerely committed. He does not sit on his backside biding his time until the moment of coronation comes. He genuinely cares about the causes he takes up, but more than that, he identifies with them. He thinks about them deeply. And in his own funny way, when you get to know him better, he is less de haut en bas than many junior and transient heads of state. Probably he underestimates how much the public – now more than then – get him and are comfortable with him. They can smirk at the tree-hugging, talking-to-flowers business, and they can find it weird and unnatural when he refuses to play the game by their rules (as in that extraordinary moment when he and Diana had just become engaged and he was asked whether he loved her and said, ‘Yes, whatever “love” means’), but they also know he does good work, believes in his duty to them and has commitment. That counts for a lot.

  Towards the end of the second term, I was asked to advise on whether he and Camilla could or should get married. The scars of the Diana business were deep and lasting. It is fair to say that the Palace had become understandably neuralgic about anything that touched on it. I immediately said I thought it would be fine. They love each other; why not? Or are we really saying it’s better they don’t marry, as if marriage was somehow an insult? And by and large it was fine. There was, and from time to time still is, a media desire to go after and demonise Camilla, but the public have sussed her out too. They understand she is an uncomplicated, down-to-earth person who happens to love him. Is she Diana? No. Does she pretend to be? No. So let them get on with it. Now we are more sympathetic, more perceptive of the fact that the royals are both different and the same. In some ways, the furore around Diana’s death was the point at which things turned. People not only felt the monarchy had taken a further and necessary step towards being more open to public opinion, but they also saw the human frailty and strength of its leading representatives and accepted both equally. The monarchy realised it could open up while remaining royal.

  But during those days, it certainly felt touch-and-go. As the Queen stayed up in Balmoral and London became the capital of mourning for the world, the gulf between monarch and subjects became wider. Alastair and Anji had been inserted into the committee established by the Palace to handle the funeral and keep on top of the ‘situation’ as it was unfolding. Both were evidently being of huge benefit to a machine not unnaturally struggling with the enormity of it all. Alastair was also guiding the press while alive to accusations of manipulating them, though frankly in crises like this, the difference between the two is hard to spot. I wanted Anji in there because I knew that whereas Alastair would take a tabloid view of what needed to be done, she would speak for her very correct brand of Middle England. Between them, we had a chance to get the balance right. Some of the court were suspicious of such ‘interference’, but most thought it practical and Robert Fellowes in particular insisted on it.

  The funeral to be held the following Saturday was the main topic of debate. It had to be dignified; it had to be different; and it had to be Diana. There were endless discussions of the precise numbers of each category of people to be invited, the order of service and the role of Diana’s family. Her brother Charles Spencer was a very strong and assertive character who felt extremely angry at the way she had been treated, certainly by the media and possibly by the royal family. Each decision was highly sensitive with multiple pros and cons, each had been worked and reworked. There was a big debate about whether the boys should walk behind the cortège with Prince Charles, and concern about the differing possible public reactions to him and to them.

  Most of all, pressure was mounting on the Queen. I went out on the Wednesday and did a doorstep, supporting her strongly and asking for understanding that the priority was the children, as it should be. However, the fact that I was speaking only served to emphasise the fact that she wasn’t. Indeed, if I hadn’t spoken on the Sunday and during the week that followed, literally no one in any position of authority would have been speaking. How bizarre would that have been, given this was the only news worldwide? Meanwhile, though Alastair and Anji were more or less working full-time on this, I was having to attend to government matters. We were cranking up the Northern Ireland business to get to a ceasefire by the IRA, and that was taking time; I had a major speech to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) the next week; there was a big education summit at Downing Street on the Thursday; and of course throughout I was taking calls from world leaders who rang to express their condolences.

  On Wednesday afternoon, I decided to call Prince Charles. Part of my problem with the Queen was that there was no easy point of connection in age, or outlook, or acquaintance. I respected her and was a little in awe of her, but as a new prime minister I didn’t know her, or how she would take the very direct advice that I now felt I had to give her. I totally understood how she looked at the whole thing and sympathised, but you didn’t have to be a political genius to work out that this was a tide that had to be channelled. It couldn’t be turned back, resisted or ignored. I didn’t trust myself fully to go straight to her and be as blunt as I needed to be. So I went to Charles.

  I called him from the den at Downing Street and realised straight
away it had been the right thing to do. He was clearly of completely the same mind. The Queen had to speak; the royal family had to be visible. However tough it was for him personally, for all the obvious reasons, he and the boys couldn’t hide away. They had to come to London to respond to the public outpouring. I was extraordinarily relieved. He agreed to take the message back. By the next day, Thursday, it was clear there would be a broadcast by the Queen herself. Alastair was able to steer the journalists gently on to that track, and almost immediately the tension started to dissipate and you could feel people moving back towards her.

  At the Queen’s request I called her on Thursday lunchtime, and we spoke about what would happen the next day and how it would be managed. She was now very focused and totally persuaded. It wasn’t easy, but it was certain. The following day, the Queen, Charles and the boys visited the front of Buckingham Palace, which had turned into a shrine. There were some last-minute discussions about her precise words, but it was plain from the language and tone that once she had decided to move, she moved with considerable skill. The broadcast was near perfect. She managed to be a queen and a grandmother at one and the same time.

  I had spoken to Prince Charles again and we had gone through the arrangements for the funeral one last time. The Palace had asked me to read a lesson. It was a mark of how pivotal my role had been through the week, but I also knew it would lead to a charge of ‘muscling in’. Indeed, throughout, we were walking a tightrope, thinner and more frayed by the day, between organising everything to go well and ‘cashing in’ or exploiting. And that was in those halcyon days; heaven knows what would have happened had Diana died some years later . . .

  The funeral was all we could have hoped for. It was unusual – Elton John singing ‘Candle In The Wind’, and doing it rather brilliantly – but it was also in keeping with Westminster Abbey. Charles Spencer made a strong attack on the press (I said to Alastair, mark my words, they will wait for the chance for revenge, and if it comes they will seize it savagely). There was also something of a rebuke to the royal family, but his speech was powerful and would reverberate.