A recent book by Tina Brown called “The Diana Chronicles” is said to be an accurate and detailed account of the marriage of Princess Diana and Prince Charles and its aftermath. Tina Brown, who I believe is English and has been a journalist and magazine editor, is herself something of a celebrity and a Media insider.
She claims to have interviewed many people close to the Royal couple and there are many source-notes at the back of the book. Even Tony Blair is quoted and Miss Brown has obviously been able to persuade close friends of the Royals to reveal every salacious detail of the marriage, divorce and the extra-marital affairs of the ill-matched pair.
I have to hold up my hand and say that I have never been a fan of the UK’s Royal Family or a supporter of constitutional monarchy. I never saw anything inferior in the American Presidential system even though the English prided themselves on a Royal Family said to be above politics and existing to protect constitutional government and national integrity. Current events indicate that I was right to be skeptical, as I will enlarge upon later.
As it happens, I once lived next to the picturesque cottage where Princess Diana had her trysts with the young marine officer who comforted her after her marriage soured. I cannot claim to have ever seen the couple, nor heard them! Lympstone Marine Camp was a few miles up the road, overlooking the beautiful Exe estuary, and the village of Ebford was both a handy distance from it and very pretty, so a setting fit for a fairy-tale Princess.
By the time Diana had her death crash, I was living in the USA, so I was spared the national outpouring of emotion, and thank God for that! A friend of mine, a staunch working class Tory, and his wife, took time off from work to go to London for her funeral. Apparently they were devastated by her death. I knew many other ordinary people, mostly women, who felt the same. Elton John, no less, wrote songs in tribute to her. I am not sure which most signifies the decline of the English, ordinary people’s hysterical emotion over a spoiled and privileged airhead or the person and music of Elton John. All such things are beyond my understanding, but what can one expect of a society that is ‘educated’ and nurtured by a Media Class through propaganda, dis-information and celebrity gossip.
Tina Brown argues that the entry of Diana and ‘Fergie’ into the Royal Family via marriage has brought the institution of Royalty to its knees, for they have enabled publicity to destroy the Royal mystique. She has a point, though I think she attributes too much power to this empty pair of permanent teenagers.
For what it’s worth, I think that greater forces were at work on the Royal Family, for we have witnessed the rise to power of the British Media Class, beginning in the 1970’s. All political and social trends since that time must be set against this shift in power. By the early 1980’s it was clear to me that the Royal Family and especially its younger generation had become part of the celebrity/Showbiz world that is inseparable from the Media Class. Princess Di successfully co-operated with the Media and used her own celebrity to punish her husband and his family. Fergie was pure Media from the start. Both craved the celebrity spotlight and ultimately were no different than Paris Hilton, Cindy Sheehan and their ilk. The respective Royal weddings of the two women were Media events from start to finish, as was inevitable, given the power and appetite of the Media Class for events that anaesthetize the public with trivia.
Prince Charles, never the sharpest knife in the drawer, failed to understand the Media’s power when he rejected Diana for an affair with the horsey lady (wife of another man) that he always coveted. I suppose he assumed that he would enjoy the Media protection that had once shielded Royalty from the gossip columns their behavior deserved. Unlike his father and aunty, he misbehaved at a time when the Media was no longer serving another Class, but taking power for itself.
Now, thanks to Tina Brown, there is nothing left private from his personal life and intimate affair, and like all celebrities he must embrace shamelessness or shrivel. He and his mother have done all in their power to dance to the Media’s tune. She has used her position to welcome the multi-racialism and multi-culturalism imposed on her people and he has espoused greenery, Africa, AIDS spending and anything else that fits the Media agenda. Both acquiesce in the dismemberment of her Kingdom that is necessary for the creation of a European Superstate. The Queen has employed as many queens as she can on her staff. They have been deferential to Sir Elton. All this has not brought them peace but it has bought them survival. For the time being they are not being hounded out of office and they should learn from Tony Blair’s recent experiences (supporting Bush over Iraq) that one bad judgment is enough to get the Media chop .
The business of sleepwalking the British people into Europe and the systematic dismemberment of the Kingdom, swamping the natives with Third World immigrants, converting the Anglican Church into the Church of Homosexuality, and much else, remains to be completed. For that, a captive and compromised Royal Family is useful, though not indispensible.
The UK Media Class, led by its political wing at the BBC and the Guardian, has demonstrated that it can intimidate and control every institution. The Anglican Church, the judiciary, the major and minor political parties, the charitable trusts, the professional organisations and Big Business all dance to its tune, install activists who are committed to the Media’s agenda and aspire to rub shoulders with Media celebrities. Even the UK’s Scouts’ (no longer Baden Powell’s Boy Scouts!) organisation has been suborned. Not much remains that can be called a ‘resistance’, except for the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland and the BNP. Still, history is never completed and who knows what the future holds? Perhaps the British peoples will surprise us and reclaim their birthrights. They should not look to the Royal Family for support, for ever since the advent of Di and Fergie, it has been working for the Media Class.
Since completing this piece I see that the BNP is complaining (with much justification) of an extremely biased BBC attack on one of their elected councilors. Mistakenly, the Party blames the Labour Party for orchestrating a campaign of hate and dis-information against him. Sorry, BNP! You have it the wrong way around. The BBC is orchestrating the campaign, and while the Labour Party will be grateful and enthusiastic, no politician of any other party will dare to protest about it.
Interestingly, here in the USA, former New York Mayor Ed Koch, (a Democrat) is expressing sadness at the way his beloved New York Times is orchestrating hate and dis-information against President Bush. He cannot understand why, in the midst of a war, the NYT’s editors do so. Koch is, I suppose both Jewish and a New York resident, and has cause to fear the Islamic Imperialists who attacked his city on 9/11. Like the BNP leadership in the UK, he does not understand that the Media Class has taken power in the USA and has its own reckless, emotion-driven agenda. Koch and Nick Griffin should spend their next few days reading our archive, and all would become clear.