Mary Kenny
St Teresa of Kolkata
holds hands with Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 just months before Diana’s death. Photo: CNS 
Over the past week or so, the BBC’s globally-famous interview with Princess Diana in 1995 has come back to haunt the corporation. Accusations – and evident proof – of underhand and deceptive methods of gaining access to Diana have emerged. Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, has shown that the interviewer, Martin Bashir, used forged documents to obtain the interview – documents which triggered Diana’s fears and suspicions that the Palace was spying on her.
But there is plenty of evidence that Diana wanted to take revenge on Charles because of his adultery”
Prince William has claimed that the Panorama interview was partly responsible for Diana’s ultimate death, because it enhanced her feeling of paranoia – and this led to the series of events which ended with that fatal car crash in 1997.
It’s yet another example that past events don’t just fade away – they often come back to haunt those involved. “Be sure your sins will find you out,” as that portentous phrase from the Book of Numbers has it.
Complicated
And yet, I think the story is a little more complicated. Prince William wants to believe that his mother was railroaded into that broadcast, partly because he hated her doing it anyway: even as a child, he loathed Martin Bashir because of it.
But there is plenty of evidence that Diana wanted to take revenge on Charles because of his adultery. She sought that opportunity to air their marital grievances in public. Her shattering words “there were three of us in this marriage” redounded across the globe, referring to her husband’s relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles.
Indeed, no thundering preacher could have highlighted the pain, the damage, and the retribution that can flow from an adulterous relationship more effectively than Diana did in that moment. And that was precisely the effect she wanted – even though, later, she understood that it had upset her children.
And of course it led to a series of events that ended so dreadfully: Diana’s frazzled attempt to escape the publicity that she had helped to create: that ghastly scene in Paris when a driver who had been tippling Ricards all day took to the wheel. It was truly akin to a Greek tragedy. But many different events had contributed to the mournful ending.
Heads have rolled at the BBC, and the corporation’s entire operational structure has come under scrutiny. Questions are being asked as to whether a national broadcaster should benefit from a compulsory licence fee in a new media age – questions that have also been asked about RTÉ.
Unethical methods
Accountability there must be, and the BBC evidently allowed unethical methods of journalism to prevail. But the seeds of the story lay in Diana’s wounded feelings at being betrayed.
***
A friend from our local church told me that the Israeli TV drama Shtisel is one of the best things available on Netflix. “It’s so involving – completely character-driven,” she said. So, I’ve started watching it, and it’s surely one of the most unusual of television series. The storyline is set among Haredi – sometimes called Ultra-Orthodox – Jews in Jerusalem. They adhere loyally to their religious traditions, which include, charmingly, having loads of children – the Ultra-Orthodox do not practice birth control – and often approaching marriage through matchmakers. Prayer is a natural part of everyday life. Duty to family and community are key values, and everyone must work. Life can be hard, and their dwellings are modest. Yet the tone is funny and human, and characters have faults and take wrong turnings. Also, they never stop eating!
A fascinating glimpse into a way of life that is rarely visible to us now – and yet, to those of us who remember an Ireland of yore, recognisable in so many ways.
Larking about in sensational antics
The mainstream media has been marking the 50th anniversary of the notorious ‘Condom Train’ of 1971, and I’ve turned down three requests to revisit it – I’ve given my account of it in a short memoir, Something of Myself, and that’s on the record for anyone to peruse.
A far more significant aspect of the Irish women’s liberation movement, to me, was the publication of the pamphlet Chains or Change, which I co-authored in the same year. This outlined the many reforms that really were due to the status of women – for widows, deserted wives, unmarried mothers, in employment, education, childcare, the law, financial arrangements, and much more. It wasn’t accurate in all respects, but it is a historic document – available at the National Library of Ireland. For me, this was a much more laudable achievement than getting on that train, which was really a publicity stunt, in which Mary Robinson so wisely declined to take part.
She chose to reform the State’s 1935 Act prohibiting the importation of birth control artefacts through the process of the law, which was the dignified approach characteristic of Mrs Robinson’s level-headed judgement, rather than larking about in sensational antics!
