23.11.1995

Reality behind fairytale family

It is hard to conceive how Di’s wish for a more down to earth monarchy could ever come about when her interview emphasised just what an artificial and inhuman institution it is. Nevertheless the establishment will do all it can to make sure it survives

EVERYONE IS talking about the Lady Di interview. Hardly surprising. Her ‘confessions’ on this week’s Panorama programme were a fairly devastating indictment of the royal family and the rotten system which lies behind it.

What came across was the breathtaking hypocrisy of the entire royalist propaganda machine, not to mention its bottomless cynicism.

The fairytale marriage of Diana Spencer and Charles was a charade from start to finish. Diana’s function was purely to look ‘nice’ and reproduce heirs for the greater glory of the house of Windsor. Charles was more interested in an ‘open’ relationship involving Camilla Parker-Bowles - as long as it was kept secret and his wife stayed clear.

For those with eyes to see, it is clear that the royal ‘lifestyle’ is perverse and sick. The young and naive Diana is no longer useful to ‘the establishment’, to use her own phrase, and therefore must become ‘the enemy’.

As a little taster of the future, Nicholas Soames, the armed forces minister and Charles groupie, instantly popped up on the Newsnight programme. He dismissed her as barmy and blustered about how Diana was showing the “advanced stages of paranoia”. If necessary, the Windsors will resort to all sorts of dirty tricks to annihilate the rebellious Lady Di.

This sudden escalation of ‘civil war’ between Diana and Charles can only be good news for all partisans of the working class and fighters for real democracy. The Panorama interview can only undermine the royal family, to put it mildly.

The sooner we have a republic, the sooner the likes of Diana Spencer - perhaps even Charles Windsor - can live a genuinely human life and play a useful role in society.