Princess Diana's death

What would've happened if the monarchy didn't raise the flag to half mast, see the flowers for Diana at the gate exc... A lot of people wanted to abolish the monarchy before the Queen started showing respect for Diana's death.
 

Devvy

Donor
What would've happened if the monarchy didn't raise the flag to half mast, see the flowers for Diana at the gate exc... A lot of people wanted to abolish the monarchy before the Queen started showing respect for Diana's death.

I'd disagree with that. There was a lot of unhappiness about the Monarchy regarding their reaction to Diana's death, but I don't think it really manifested itself as a push towards republicanism.

Personally I think it was more a "crap, erm, what do we do now?" reaction from the Royal Family rather then anything disrespectful. To be fair, Diana was no longer really part of the Royal Family....she just happened to be the mother of the heirs to the throne. Rather a unique situation. Could of been handled better in hindsight though.

If the Queen continues as she did though; I'd wager the PR image of the Monarchy is damaged, and depending on future actions it might get abolished - I think it would need at least a couple more incidents to alienate people enough to warrant a shift to a British Republic.
 
What would've happened if the monarchy didn't raise the flag to half mast, see the flowers for Diana at the gate exc... A lot of people wanted to abolish the monarchy before the Queen started showing respect for Diana's death.

By and large what people seemed to completely ignore was what the Queen actually was doing: providing family support at Balmoral. Couple that with an absolutely top notch publicity campaign in the years before by Diana and the effects of royal protocall and you get something being blown far out of proportion to what actually happened. (Admittedly the fact that I belong to that ever increasing generation of people who have no memories of that time may be colouring this PoV)

As it was, it was the Union Jack that was flown on the day of the funeral (the first time BTW that a flag other than the Royal Standard was ever flown at Buckingham Palace) and only then. Indeed it was more the Queen's TV message that calmed people that anything else.

From what we know of her, I highly doubt that the Queen would have done nothing once the sheer magnitude of public opinion became apparent, so the most that could change would be a delay in matters, which would lead to a longer period of monarchical gloom, but would pass in time.

In the unlikely event that it even got to the stage of organisition a referrendum on the monarchy, which requires a much longer burn on the high levels of vitriol, I think the situation is more likely to Tarnish Diana's reputation than the monarchy's. If the entire argument is basically built around the treatment of Diana, with the more sordid details being aired much earlier than they were.
 

Cook

Banned
Ah yes, the manufactured grief of a nation. It’s worth noting that when the funeral was shown live and uninterrupted on all the major television channels, television ratings showed that less than a quarter of the nation even bothered to watch.
 
By and large what people seemed to completely ignore was what the Queen actually was doing: providing family support at Balmoral. Couple that with an absolutely top notch publicity campaign in the years before by Diana and the effects of royal protocall and you get something being blown far out of proportion to what actually happened. (Admittedly the fact that I belong to that ever increasing generation of people who have no memories of that time may be colouring this PoV)

As it was, it was the Union Jack that was flown on the day of the funeral (the first time BTW that a flag other than the Royal Standard was ever flown at Buckingham Palace) and only then. Indeed it was more the Queen's TV message that calmed people that anything else.

From what we know of her, I highly doubt that the Queen would have done nothing once the sheer magnitude of public opinion became apparent, so the most that could change would be a delay in matters, which would lead to a longer period of monarchical gloom, but would pass in time.

In the unlikely event that it even got to the stage of organisition a referrendum on the monarchy, which requires a much longer burn on the high levels of vitriol, I think the situation is more likely to Tarnish Diana's reputation than the monarchy's. If the entire argument is basically built around the treatment of Diana, with the more sordid details being aired much earlier than they were.

Well stated.


Ah yes, the manufactured grief of a nation. It’s worth noting that when the funeral was shown live and uninterrupted on all the major television channels, television ratings showed that less than a quarter of the nation even bothered to watch.

Though we don't live in that particular nation, my wife and I watched it.
 

sharlin

Banned
Whilst I watched the funeral the bombardment of it on the news infuriated me.

On the day she died, I came downstairs in the morning, got some breakfast and sat down to watch some cartoons whilst eating, all the cartoon channels on sky were not working, went to discovery etc, not showing anything, all were saying 'go to sky news'. So I went to sky news.

"Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed died this morning in a car crash in Paris..."
My reaction
"Oh thats a shame." *puts on the animated Transformers movie*
 

Cook

Banned
Whilst I watched the funeral the bombardment of it on the news infuriated me.
It was that song that did it for me; if she wasn't already dead I'd have happily gone and shot her and Elton John after hearing that fucking song for the umpteenth time!
 
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Ah yes, the manufactured grief of a nation. It’s worth noting that when the funeral was shown live and uninterrupted on all the major television channels, television ratings showed that less than a quarter of the nation even bothered to watch.

Indeed. And given the invovlement of the press in her death, not to mention the ways that they hounded her for years, I have always wondered if the public anger was intentionally directed onto the royal family as a way of directing it away from the press themselves.

Personally I never watched the funeral, but the one thing I remember about that day was that pretty much everywhere in the UK was closed!! Supermarkets, offices etc all had at least a half day off so they could watch it.
 

AndyC

Donor
Indeed. And given the invovlement of the press in her death, not to mention the ways that they hounded her for years, I have always wondered if the public anger was intentionally directed onto the royal family as a way of directing it away from the press themselves.

Oh, God, yes.
I was living on a fairly remote RAF base in the north of Scotland, and we got the earlier editions of the papers. Of the tabloids, the only one that had adjusted in time was the News of the World. The other tabloids were ripping chunks out of Diana, because we were reading the original editions from just before the news came in in the early hours of the morning.

Soe we had the News of the Screws idolising and lamenting the death of a living saint, while the Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Express were howling about this inappropriate slutty weirdo with exactly the same name ...
 
Indeed. And given the invovlement of the press in her death, not to mention the ways that they hounded her for years, I have always wondered if the public anger was intentionally directed onto the royal family as a way of directing it away from the press themselves.

Personally I never watched the funeral, but the one thing I remember about that day was that pretty much everywhere in the UK was closed!! Supermarkets, offices etc all had at least a half day off so they could watch it.

As a nation we were being forced to grieve for a woman we were being told that we all cared about and would miss ... I hate when the press insists we have feelings that we don't. Very similar to the royal wedding and the queens aniversary ... well done and all that but really I don't need the press trying to brainwash me that I care !!!
 
I was working EuroGenCon at Loughborough Uni that weekend, had been paid on the Saturday night, and sort of took in the news from the radio playing in the student union shop on Sunday morning while I was nursing the hangover that only 12 pints of Theakston's Old Peculiar can produce.

I promptly got on with trying to do my job (running demo sessions of an RPG, Fading Suns I think), and pretty much forgot about anything else until we stopped at a motorway services on the way back to Cardiff and noticed that there was a flag flying at half mast.

Despite what the Daily Mail would like to believe, there's a considerable proportion of the British population that didn't give a toss what she got up to when she was alive, and weren't particularly bothered when she died. This may sound a bit callous, but it's true.

Oh, just for the record, I don't particularly like the monarchy, but I'm not a republican because I've yet to hear anyone come up with a system better than what we've got at the moment.
 

sharlin

Banned
Getting Princess Di rubbed vigeriously in our faces for several months did get bloody irritating VERY quickly. After I learned she died I didn't care but you simply could NOT escape it. Heck even radio 1 was made to play somber songs and of course that song...

I doubt that when Her Majesty pops off her mortal coil there will be quite so much about it in the news for as bloody long (unless someone from the Palace reports Prince Charles running around his bedroom going YES! YESYESYES! FINALLY!) I like Charlie but he must wake up every morning and go 'Is she dead yet?' He's been waiting for the big chair for a bloody long time and ma shows no signs of carking it soon.
 
As a nation we were being forced to grieve for a woman we were being told that we all cared about and would miss ... I hate when the press insists we have feelings that we don't. Very similar to the royal wedding and the queens aniversary ... well done and all that but really I don't need the press trying to brainwash me that I care !!!


This sort of reminds me of a documentary on Nazi Germany I saw some years ago. A retired BBC correspondent said that he was sent to Germany in the 1930's to cover Hitler's Nuremberg rallies. Being there with 1/4 million+ Nazi's all shouting "Hiel Hitler" was almost hypnotic. He had to constantly remind himself of who he was and why he was there. He had to jam his hands in his pockets and keep them there lest he be tempted to give a right handed salute, such was the power and hypnotism of the occasion.

Not that I am directly comparing modern Britain to Nazi Germany. However, the events of 1997 do show how a large percentage of a nation can be driven and led into a particular way of thinking. Found myself being sucked into this line of thought myself at the time until I heard the comic Mark Thomas make a scathing joke about the whole event and public mood. Was like a slap in the face at the time and woke me up!
 
It was that song that did it for me; if he wasn't already dead I'd have happily gone and shot her and Elton John after hearing that fucking song for the umpteenth time!

You must be confusing Sir Elton John with someone else. As far as I know, the rumors of his death are greatly exaggerated.

On the larger points raised, though; yes, the whole thing seems kind of overblown in retrospect, especially given what we now know about the kinds of things Diana actually got up to, and the Queen has been unjustly blamed. There was one book (I forget the title at the moment) which I think gives a pretty trustworthy account of the events of that week which states unequivocally that the Queen's first concern was to console and protect her grandsons, and that Charles was literally wracked by anguish on hearing of his ex-wife's death (the latter in particular I firmly believe to be true, having seen live TV footage that day when he went to claim Diana's body from the hospital in Paris; he looked positively shattered).
 
Indeed. And given the invovlement of the press in her death, not to mention the ways that they hounded her for years, I have always wondered if the public anger was intentionally directed onto the royal family as a way of directing it away from the press themselves.

Personally I never watched the funeral, but the one thing I remember about that day was that pretty much everywhere in the UK was closed!! Supermarkets, offices etc all had at least a half day off so they could watch it.

it would be interesting if it clearly wasn't the press involved in the original incident or the cause of Diana and Dodi;s death had been something else ( e.g. crazed loon obsessed with Diana tries to take Dodi out and diana gets caught i n the crossfire ... )

It was i n the interests of the press to divert attention from their actions by blaming the senior Royals and giving Al-Fayed Snr. air time and column inches with the conspiracy theories ...
 
Whilst I watched the funeral the bombardment of it on the news infuriated me.

On the day she died, I came downstairs in the morning, got some breakfast and sat down to watch some cartoons whilst eating, all the cartoon channels on sky were not working, went to discovery etc, not showing anything, all were saying 'go to sky news'. So I went to sky news.

"Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed died this morning in a car crash in Paris..."
My reaction
"Oh thats a shame." *puts on the animated Transformers movie*

I feel your pain I had the same problem with JFK's assassination and Winston Churchill's funeral.
 
I remember I was shocked and surprised and all that -- not particularly sad, because I didn't know her -- but very quickly I got annoyed by the fact that all the TV channels seemed to junk all their programming in favour of going "DIANA DIANA DIANA DIANA DIANA DIANA". I was like "Yes, we get it, she's dead, now put Looney Tunes back on!" It was especially annoying because it happened right after the 1997 Thredbo landslide where all the TV channels had been going "THREDBO THREDBO THREDBO THREDBO THREDBO THREDBO STUART DIVER STUART DIVER", so I was like "Again?!"
 
Oh, just for the record, I don't particularly like the monarchy, but I'm not a republican because I've yet to hear anyone come up with a system better than what we've got at the moment.

And that's the problem right there with any idea of the monarchy being abolished. Even if the Royal Family had totally failed to respond to Diana's death the outrage would have cooled off dramatically when faced with the practicalities of doing away with them.
 
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