SO, THE BUTLER DIDN'T DO IT …

Dr Jocelynne A. Scutt* 2002

Why did she leave it so long?

The timing of Elizabeth Windsor's revelation that Paul Burrell (Diana Spencer's former butler) told her that he had secured various items belonging to his dead employer comes as no surprise. Isn't this a part of the ongoing struggle between the House of Windsor and the House of Spencer? After all, in this now infamous trial of the butler accused of having done it, what has happened is transparent.

Throughout the trial, the House of Windsor had the upper hand: the evidence was all against Diana and her family. When it came time for evidence to come forward that may show the Windsors in poor light, poof! the case collapsed.

Paul Burrell was charged with theft of a range of goods - including letters and photographs, dresses and underwear, jewellery and other objects, numbering a grand total of 310 items. Mr Burrell was arrested some 21 months ago, the charges laid by Scotland Yard in the name of the Queen. Eventually, the matter arrived in court, with a raft of Queen's Counsel on the prosecution side.

The evidence went for days, all of it damning of Diana and her family.
Personal letters were read out in court, none of them complimentary to the woman who wished only to be England's 'Queen of Hearts'.

From the prosecution case, we learned that Diana was moody, or perhaps 'unstable' is the better word?

Letters revealed that first, in the midst of the breakdown of her marriage with Charles Windsor, and at the invitation of her brother Charles Spencer, she was to live at Althorp, the family property, with 'her boys'. Next, her brother withdrew the offer, fearing a media influx and loss of his family's privacy. Following that, Diana wrote to him furiously, so furiously, in fact, that Charles Spencer returned her letter unopened.

'Dearest Duch,' he wrote (Diana being known as 'The Duchess' from an early age), 'Knowing the state you were in the other night when you hung up on me, I doubt whether reading this will help our relationship. Therefore I am returning it unopened because it is the quickest way to rebuild our friendship … Have a very happy birthday on Thursday. Love, Charles.'

Next into the witness box for exposure of more family business came Diana's mother, Frances Shand-Kydd. More revelations of Diana's lack of mental equilibrium. Here, Diana's correspondence was again the focus. This time, it was letters (plural) that were the subject of forensic comment. So distressing and antagonist were they, or believed to be, that Mrs Shand-Kydd shredded them - unopened. This was just another episode in the history of what was and is portrayed more and more as a dysfunctional family, and Diana the most dysfunctional of all.

Yet then the prosecution case closed, and the prospect of revelations about the other side of this battle royale became real. What might be said about members of one of the most dysfunctional families of all?

As the public now knows, the public will never know.

Why? Elizabeth Windsor had an 'instant' recollection. All of a sudden, she reported to her eldest son, Charles, that in the weeks after his employer's death Mr Burrell had advised her of his taking Diana's goods into safekeeping.

Was it fortuitous that Charles (no champion in the brain-stakes) saw the significance of this, when its relevance had apparently been unclear to his mother, a woman who has run the country as monarch for more than 50 years. Is this credible?

Perhaps monarchical duties bore so heavy upon her, that a minor matter involving expenditure of prosecution and court costs of some $8,300,000 slipped by Elizabeth II unnoticed?

Until last week, that is, when Windsor family privacy might be invaded, matters personal to them become the focus of a curious public.

And yet once more, ironically, the Windsor's case has misfired. Diana appears to have won again. Whatever view the public was persuaded to take from the daily recitations of Diana Spencer and her family, the public is far from impressed by the monarch's performance.

A trial that could have been stopped before it began screeches to a halt at a time suited to the interests of the House of Windsor. In the push to destroy Diana's standing with the public, they forget she is the mother of a future king of England and the former wife of another. Desperate, still, to do Diana in, they forget that every time they have sought to join battle with Diana's standing as a mother and darling of the people, they have suffered a loss.

What is repeated over and over again in this sad saga is the failure of the House of Windsor to recognise that in this struggle Diana always seems to come off best. And the longer the struggle continues, the more the Windsors are revealed as the best argument for a republic, ever.

JAS
4 November 2002

* Barrister and author of The Incredible Woman - Power and Sexual Politics.