‘Diana’s funeral showed British tradition at its best’
The Princess was loved, honoured and given the funeral that she deserved
As adults wept openly on the streets of our capital for a woman they’d never met, piling up flowers for the “People’s Princess”, inside Buckingham Palace the mood was quite different. I don’t mean among the Royal family themselves but within the large room where around 30 of us gathered every day between the fatal car crash and the funeral six days later.
Sometimes our meetings lasted four hours, sometimes we met twice the same day, to plan – in meticulous, minute-by-minute detail – a royal ceremonial funeral for Diana, Princess of Wales, a send-off like no other in British history.
Inside our meeting room in Buckingham Palace, there was none of the emotion to be found beyond its gates in the days following the death; rather, the swinging into action of the most impressive event-planning machinery I had ever seen.
I was a representative for Tony Blair’s newly elected administration. To call it a baptism of fire is something of an understatement: we had won the election in May, and spent a short time in office before Parliament went into recess and off we went on holiday. I had just returned a few days earlier. It was to be our first big test.
“These are enormous doings,” Tony told me on the phone after news of Diana’s death filtered through, grasping straight away what was at stake.
He had seen the Princess just weeks earlier, when she and her sons had gone to Chequers for lunch. That day, the Blair children played football with the Princes, while their parents had a private chat about the tabloid press, whose coverage of Diana had started turning nasty. “Watch out,” Tony had warned her. “They can be your friends, but then they can turn.” Over this, I think he felt an affinity with her.
And now these enormous doings he rightly invoked required an enormous response. So in we filed to the Palace to help organise the funeral of the century. The No
10 team was Alastair Campbell, Downing Street press secretary, Hillary Coffman, a senior press officer, Angus Lapsley, a Downing Street government official, and me. There were contingents from Buckingham Palace representing the Queen, from St James’s Palace representing Prince Charles, and from Kensington Palace – where Diana had lived – representing the Spencer family. Balmoral was represented via a huge speaker in the middle of the table, over which came the voices of Robin Janvrin and Robert Fellowes, the private secretaries to the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh and the most senior civil servants in the room.
Presiding over every meeting was Lord Airlie, the Lord Chamberlain. This was the establishment writ large, and it knew what it was doing.
The agenda covered everything: how many people were expected; how many roads must be closed; how many police were needed; who should be invited – and who should not be.
The latter question was answered with feeling by a woman from Earl Spencer’s contingent: on no account must newspaper editors be put on the guest list. When we talked of their inclusion, Earl Spencer’s people objected; but protocol dictated that they be included. A heated discussion ensued, and the editors were uninvited, by a furious Earl Spencer, who called them himself.
Yet if tensions spilled over on this one matter, I remember the rest of the talks as amazingly dignified. While the nation outside whipped itself into a maelstrom of grief, within those four walls total order reigned strong. We planned, adhered to rules, and drew on protocol formed over centuries.
The contrast was palpable. When we left the Palace, the Mall was full of mourners. One evening crowds had lit candles and were weeping. The wall of grief assaulted the senses.
But we in the room had to think more than feel. This was not always easy: my own mother had lost her life in a car crash when I was exactly the same age as Prince Harry and I felt for him acutely. My brother and I did not attend our mother’s funeral; it was decided it would be too upsetting. So when it came to the Princes’ role, I had to speak up. The idea that they would be part of the cortège – first raised three or four days into the talks – shocked me to the core. How could they do it? How could anyone expect them to? The issue was not resolved in that room; the final decision lay with the Royal family. I never found out what swung it. There they were at the funeral, two griefstricken boys who had just lost their mum, walking in line as the world watched.
I was watching too, with my family, on our TV in Sussex, on the phone to Hillary saying things like “God, it’s so quiet”, or worrying over the meet-up with the charities. I was stunned when the boys joined the procession. I had not thought they would, and I felt a shiver run down my spine. “How brave,” I thought. “How incredibly composed.” They must have been in turmoil, but they did it.
Throughout the day, I recall feeling nothing but pride – pride in those boys, pride in the Royal Family, and pride of the establishment. Here it was at its finest, doing pomp and ceremony as only Britain can. It had been a week of public grief, but here there was dignity, poise and control.
As the pall-bearers shouldered the coffin, Big Ben began to strike 11. I thought: “What brilliant precisiontiming.” It was perfect. This was Britain at its best: working together, following tradition, sticking to our values and maintaining stoicism. Yes, the emotional outpouring had been without precedent. But ultimately we pulled ourselves back. Diana was loved, was honoured and was given the funeral she would have wanted. Anji Hunter was director of government relations for Tony Blair’s administration in 1997.
As told to Rosa Silverman