in angola with Princess Diana, 1997

Red Cross consultant Michael Stone remembers accompanying Diana, Princess of Wales to Angola 20 years ago

IT WAS JANUARY 1997. I had been given responsibility, through the International Red Cross, for organising and accompanying Diana, Princess of Wales on her visit to Angola. The purpose of this trip was to draw attention to the horror of anti-personnel mines. We were to attend a briefing meeting in Angola, a country where more mines had been laid per square mile than anywhere else in the world.

I look calm and composed in the picture, but the opposite would have been the case if it hadn’t been for a great stroke of luck.

I had arrived the week before with Diana’s personal bodyguard, in order to decide on our programme, and walk through every event. My first meeting, as a courtesy, was with a British ambassador. He kept me waiting for an hour, walked into the room, and said, ‘This is my visit. The Princess will spend her time meeting gover nment ministers, fellow a mbassadors a nd leading British businessmen.’ I had not expected this. I advised the ambassador, ‘The purpose of the visit is to draw attention to the horrif ying consequences of mines in Angola, and all attention will be on the victims.’ Angry at being told this by a mere Red Cross person, he turned to a woman who had just entered the room ( a senior British minister who happened to have been on the same flight as us), and told her, ‘This man says this is not my visit.’ ‘Michael is quite right,’ she replied. ‘You must do exactly what he says.’

With a plea from Diana to ‘keep me away from the men in suits’, we spent four extraordinar y days visiting hospitals, prosthetic units, physiotherapy units and numerous other facilities relating to the victims of mines. This produced some of the most iconic photographs: Diana in a minefield, Diana with a limbless child. World coverage was unprecedented.

The visit was not without challenges. She was under tremendous pressure throughout, made worse by a junior minister in London calling her a ‘loose cannon’. I told her, ‘You’re doing a wonderful thing here. To hell with what they think.’ In private, she was frightened and sometimes in tears, but Diana had great courage. Angola, by its nature, was high-r isk. Diana understood t his. She didn’t have to do this work, but she did it with astonishing determination.

Beyond compassion, Diana had empathy. Her ability to shine the light on others, not on herself, was key to the massive international impact of her trip to Angola. Shortly af ter wards, the UN Mines Ban Treaty was finally ag reed and later that year the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded for this issue. Currently, 162 countries are sig natories to the treaty, agreeing neither to manufacture nor deploy anti-personnel mines.

Since her death 20 years ago, 51 million stockpiled mines have been destroyed, and thousands of lives saved by t heir vast ly reduced deployment. Diana’s visit to Angola turned out to be one of the most significant humanitarian trips there has ever been.

With a plea from Diana to ‘keep me away from the men in suits’, we spent four extraordinary days