On 14 November 1993 the Princess set the seal on her ability to combine her new, independent territory with more conventional royal domains by attending the Remembrance Day service at Enniskillen in Northern Ireland. In 1987 this picturesque country town had been devastated by a bomb which had killed 11 people at the same service on the same spot. Not least because of the groundwork she had put into developing working links with the province – helped by the discovery of a distant kinship with the Secretary of State Sir Patrick Mayhew and by sustained interest in initiatives undertaken by her patronages Relate and Barnardo’s – she had been asked to attend what was probably the most emotive service of all those being held that day throughout the United Kingdom.
The Queen had given her approval, a decision unlikely to have been popular with those in the organization who still preferred to see the former Diana Spencer as a subregal figure. These more cynical observers might have rubbed their eyes in disbelief to see her become the focal point of commemorations which, for their simple sincerity and power to move, had few equals anywhere in the UK. After the service, the Princess reviewed a march past and joined officers of the local garrison and the Royal Ulster Constabulary at a reception. Once again on this bedrock on which loyalty to the Crown’s traditions is built, she found she had a firm and secure footing.
In case it was all becoming too deadly serious, however, the Princess still managed to convince everybody on the plane that her only concern was which hat to wear. Before leaving KP we had disagreed on the choice, so the two favourites accompanied us to Northolt and on to the Queen’s Flight 146. There, by a simple majority, hat A was discarded and hat B (her original choice) was worn instead – with a triumphant air, I might add, at least when looking in my direction.
The success of the day owed much to the genuine emotion and simple dignity of the people the Princess met. She played her part too, nonetheless. Slim, elegant and very feminine, she stood surrounded by men in uniform at the head of the tribute to the dead of two world wars and the more recent bomb outrage. The scars of that dreadful day were still visible in damaged buildings around the memorial and in the faces of the large crowd which had gathered to share a common grief. Despite a massive security effort, there was still a threat of terrorist attack and it was greatest for the royal person standing conspicuously at the front.
During the two minutes’ silence a pair of swans flew directly overhead, perfectly silhouetted against the crystal-clear winter sky. She talked about it afterwards. ‘Did you see those birds?’ she asked. ‘It was so moving. I couldn’t help feeling they meant something.’
I had felt it too. ‘You mean the spirit of the dead?’
‘Yes. Something like that. Or peace.’
I sometimes wondered what she really felt about the country she represented. How strong was her patriotism, and what form did it take? It was certainly not jingoistic – she was instinctively uneasy with flag-waving conservatives. Nor did she confuse, as some do, a blind loyalty to old institutions with love of country. Her knowledge of history, it has to be said – like much of her geography – was virtually nonexistent. Although, I reflected as we set off for beleaguered Ulster that day, that could be a positive advantage when trying to appear neutral in Northern Ireland.
She was also untroubled by any well-developed political awareness. Certainly she liked John Major, but that was as a man not as a politician. Her courtship by and of some Labour figures in the last years before the 1997 election only reflected a recognition of where power was likely to lie in the future. Her husband obviously came to the same conclusion.
In the end I concluded that she had a fairly healthy attachment to the status quo, at home and abroad, as one would expect of a woman of her birth and upbringing. Moreover, when the chips were down – as they memorably had been at the launching of HMS Vanguard – she had had the guts to do her duty against the weather, abusive heckling, chaotic organization and her own ethical misgivings. She had shown the same determination in walkabouts on the streets of Ulster, as well as in flying the flag in factories, ministries, embassies and export seminars in countries around the world. Whichever way you looked at it, it was an impressive record of service to Queen and country.
After the success of Enniskillen – in symbolic as much as in practical terms – I felt that the ‘new’ Princess was consolidating very effectively her obvious claim to be a serious royal performer in her own right. I was soon to watch all my hopes being dashed to pieces. In quick succession, fate upset this carefully filled applecart with more than a helping hand from the Princess herself.
The first blow came a little later in November when, as the papers succinctly put it, she ‘lost her top cop’. I have already written about the high regard I felt for all the PPOs. You might imagine how closely we had come to work together during the traumas of the previous two years, as the faultless presentation of the Princess’s public duties became ever more important to her survival as a royal force to be reckoned with. After the death of the long-serving and devoted Graham Smith, the main responsibility – not just for her day-to-day safety but increasingly for freeing her from many extraneous and distracting worries – fell on Inspector Ken Wharfe.
I will not now do him the disservice of trying to describe the debt that the Princess and others, myself prominent among them, owed Ken for the work he did in those dark days. It would take another book and, given his taste for the theatrical, probably an opera as well. It is only necessary to say here that, during the five years he was with her, he understood better than anybody the professional risks he ran in working for such a high-profile, mercurial figure, ultimately as ready to swap dedicated staff as a funeral hat.
By the nature of Ken’s duties and the personality of the woman he protected, for much of the time he had to act independently of his immediate superiors. If he was seen to be highly successful at his job, there was no shortage of envious eyes who would find opportunities to criticize him. If he established a close working relationship with the Princess, he would become the subject of unwelcome and utterly unfounded gossip and innuendo. If she felt he was too distant, then she would let him know that in some way he had failed in his loyalty towards her.
His good nature, conviviality and complete professionalism would, he knew, be scant protection against the storm that would descend on him if – or rather when – the day dawned when the Princess woke up and decided it was time for a change. That day did dawn, inevitably, and the most painful of all her human sacrifices was offered up on the altar of the Princess’s random axemanship. The man who had been through so much with her was abruptly posted to what were euphemistically termed ‘other duties’.
In this case the pain was made even greater because, in her customary way, the Princess tried to find fault with him before the blow fell. She could find none. Ken was a professional to the tips of his elegantly shod toes. Instead, I watched her unhesitatingly exercise her influence over his superiors in the Royalty and Diplomatic Protection Group. These men were wise to the special hazards faced by bodyguards, as much from the people they were there to protect as from any outside threat. All administrative red tape was cut through and at least the transition was mercifully swift.
Perhaps in the end Ken had committed only one crime in her book, but it was as unforgivable as the condemnation was unjustified. He had seen and heard too many of her unroyal moments for the Princess ever to feel she could convincingly reinvent herself in his eyes. Rather than let herself be accepted for what she was – and Ken knew her warts better than most – she found it preferable to start with a clean sheet and so a replacement had to be found.
In some ways, I suppose it was not such an unreasonable wish. One of the least enviable aspects of being royal is the requirement to share so much time and space (to borrow a phrase) with these protective shadows, however good natured and convivial they may be. It saddened me, though, that once again personal loyalty, with all the vulnerability it inevitably exposes, had to be rewa
rded so harshly.
Again I had stood by while the execution took place, but this time there was even less that I could have done to change the Princess’s mind. I knew she would miss him, but ‘Once gone, always gone’ was still her motto and she turned instead to the new toy that the system obligingly offered.
Cuff links and photographs do not soften the blow and they are no substitute for a system which might better protect royal servants from the temperaments of their royal masters and mistresses. The police at least have their own administration to fall back on. A PPO past his sell-by date does not lose his job, he just gets reappointed. He carries out his duty with the reassurance that his mortgage is secure, if not always his path to the upper reaches of the service. Even on the grim day of his departure, I envied Ken that ultimate safety net and wondered when my turn would come.
I formed a theory then which may still be relevant. To get the best out of the kind of people who are attracted to royal service and who, for whatever combination of characteristics, royal people tend to want to employ, it would only be to the advantage of employer and employee alike for the consequences of their hiring and firing to be in the hands of an independent agency. If, for example, courtiers were classed as civil servants, with pay and conditions of service equivalent to the appropriate ranks in other government departments, their advice would be confident and impartial, their horizons wider, their futures secure and the tender parts of their anatomy safe from royalty’s sometimes ungentle grip.
For their part, the royal people would have to break the habit of growing their servants in the job and thus always being surrounded by reassuringly familiar faces. This habit is increasingly the mark of the older households anyway – the Waleses led the trend away from it – and breaking it would permit the introduction of fresh ideas and fresh blood throughout the institution, say every two or three years. The habit of simply dropping unwanted toys on the nursery floor is surely not the ideal way to introduce such freshness.
The new system would involve the regular reappraisal of working methods and philosophies that otherwise become accepted as unbreakable historical precedent. It would encourage the sort of nondeferential discussion which royalty quite naturally enjoys, but which at the moment it has to find by devious and divisive means. The game of favouritism, intrigue and manipulation which makes people such irresistible toys to play with can now be seen to produce few winners. How much better to declare it over and give the modern monarchy the modern staffing system both it and its servants deserve.
A ‘Department of the Monarchy’, augmented by secondments from private industry as at present and – why not? – from the voluntary sector as well, could become a jewel in the crown of public service. It could become a beacon of good practice, initiative, impartiality and efficiency and demonstrate a healthy recognition of the part our rich heritage has to play in our modern national life.
Almost simultaneous with Ken’s departure – and in some way linked with it in the Princess’s mind – came the deeply unedifying saga of the ‘Peeping Tom’ photographs taken of her as she exercised in a West London gym.
The Princess’s growing addiction to physical culture posed a number of worries for those of us who tried to guard her interests. It has to be said that few of us shared her fascination with working out. Few of us, in truth, had the raw material with which she was so eminently blessed. Her life was sadly short of reliable sources of happiness and fulfilment, however, and I did not begrudge her the pheromone rush that I am told results from strenuous physical exercise.
The snapshots were originally splashed in the Sunday Mirror, but were later taken up by several other newspapers, alongside text of fairly blatant hypocrisy which justified their release either on the grounds of the proof it offered – as if any were needed – of the Princess’s radiant physical health or, according to taste, of the slipshod security which had allowed such a daring subterfuge.
My initial reaction was probably unworthy. I had known of the dangers in publicity terms of her exercising in a public gym and had told her of my misgivings. At first, therefore, my reaction was one of petty vindication. Then a note in her voice as we discussed the outrage on the day of publication quickly informed me that this was not a minor, or even complimentary, prank to be laughed off. Instead this was the straw that might easily break the camel’s back.
I found myself talking to an actress ready to deliver her best lines with all the considerable emotion she could muster. Just as she intended, the voice I heard belonged to an essentially modest woman whose privacy had been brutally invaded; who felt – in her own words – as if she had been ‘raped’. The world must know of her hurt and outrage and armies must be mobilized to avenge her violated personal space.
I could understand that the Princess, so often accused of media manipulation herself, would seize on an opportunity publicly to demonstrate her abhorrence of the very type of tabloid tactic which had worked in her favour so often in the past. This is called having your cake and eating it, and not surprisingly the royal family, like many others in the public spotlight, would dearly love to believe that the spotlight can be turned on and off at will. I just thought the lady did protest too much.
The precise sequence of events which led Bryce Taylor, the owner of the L.A. Fitness Gym in Isleworth, covertly to photograph the Princess quickly became the focus of heated legal argument as soon as the big guns of Mishcon de Reya were brought to bear on the Princess’s behalf. So too did the implications for standards in the media as a lively discussion ensued about who was manipulating whom.
Against the Sunday Mirror Lord Mishcon fielded a rising star in the legal firmament, Anthony Julius. Although Anthony and I were contemporaries at Cambridge, we had not met. I quickly developed a keen respect for his professional ability, while also finding him stimulating company. His owlish urbanity concealed a rapier-like intellect, unhampered by so many of the doubts and sensitivities that had crept like ivy across what passed for my own. During the two years that we worked together on this and subsequent legal business for the Princess, I benefited from his many acts of friendship and from his Jewish, leftish, republicanish perspective, so refreshingly different from my own. The Princess took an even greater shine to him, probably for many of the same reasons.
The eventual victory over the Sunday Mirror was as emphatic as all Anthony’s skill could make it. Nonetheless, in a way that I doubt deprived him of much sleep, I continued to feel uneasy about this and other attempts – not just by the Princess – to censor what the tabloids published and then censure them when an ill-defined privacy line was thought to have been crossed.
It was not uncommon in the red-carpeted corridors I then trod to hear ‘the comics’ being mocked. ‘There are lies, damned lies and Sun exclusives’ was just one of many witty ways of dismissing tabloid talk as unworthy of serious consideration. I would always maintain, however, that the tabloids got most of their facts right most of the time. It just took a while for our denials to be blown away.
It might be a crude test, but if a visiting extraterrestrial wanted to take back to his spaceship a broadly accurate picture of the Princess of Wales’s public life, he could do worse than take a complete set of tabloid front pages. As they set off on their next intergalactic journey, the watchers from outer space would have a pretty accurate picture not just of the main events in the Princess’s later life, but also of the extraordinary fascination they held for other dwellers on our planet.
Of course there were times when the popular prints got their stories spectacularly wrong, and they often paid a spectacular price as a result. After the gym photos scandal, the Mirror was buried under a blizzard of high-minded criticism from its fellow newspapers, few of whom could have claimed a completely clear conscience on matters of press intrusion. A list of the media’s gross errors would not be a long one, however. Time and again I saw stories printed that I knew to be fundamentally true but for the sake of some inaccurate detail could be dismissed as i
nvention.
What galled me more were the commentators, especially in the broadsheets, who were happy to ride with the hunters by joining in with the chorus of disapproval when tabloid excess offended establishment taste, but who were also happy to run with the fox when enough of that excess was known to be true, using it as the basis of a partisan rant in favour of their readers’ perceived prejudices.
The saga of the sneaky snapshots took another year to resolve. Its significance in the winter of 1993 was the part it played in contributing to the Princess’s most melodramatic decision of the year – her very public ‘withdrawal’ from public life which she announced on 3 December at a charity lunch in aid of Headway, the head injuries organization of which she was patron.
There was a large part of the Princess which sincerely believed that she was the victim of unrestrained media harassment. It was the same part of her which was always able to provide ample evidence of her absolute right to feel victimized. Her famous ‘Time and Space’ speech at that Headway lunch only just avoided blaming the media directly for her dramatic decision. I believe she knew very well that a decision not to open a new hospital wing in Newcastle – which was what her withdrawal amounted to – would not protect her from the attentions of the paparazzi. In the climate then prevailing, however, especially in the wake of the gym photos, the press found that their ability to respond to her criticism was severely restricted.
For some months the Princess had been musing aloud about her wish to find a quieter life. I found it hard, though, to reconcile this wistfully expressed dream with the new, independent Princess single-mindedly applying her considerable talent to the task of plotting her own course in national life.
I should have spotted the danger signs. Of course this was a contradiction. She said she wanted peace and quiet, but in fact the day-to-day routine of her charity patronage, as much as the grand, set-piece occasions of the overseas tours, provided her with vital self-belief and job satisfaction. I also knew that her increasing confidence in speech-making had put in her mind the idea of making a truly grand oration. This, not peace and quiet, was her real dream.
Shadows of a Princess Page 43