Anthony Barnett (London, OK): There is a great deal about Diana over at the Spectator's Coffee House blog and the significance of her, of the 10th anniversary of her death and whether we are now an emotional country, and will it be 'closure'. Scorn not. These issues touch a nerve, there can be no healthy or intelligent democracy without emotions. The problem is the poverty of thought about it and a pathetic over-personalisation. As with all relationships what matters is not the inner nature of this personality or that but the relationship between them. The monarchy was not put at risk by Diana's personality or by that of Charles or by Elizabeth, however appalling/admirable you think them. It was put at risk by the uncontrollable civil war that broke out between all three. Of course, the monarchy was strengthened by Diana's death. If ten years ago a meteor had hit Balmoral and wiped out the other side leaving Diana as a regent Queen with William as the young King, the monarchy would also have "emerged strengthened".
A much more interesting issue is the question of public emotion that the Coffees do not leave unturned. As I have reported, leaving aside those looking for someone onto whom to cathect their emotions, the public was not hysterical when Diana was killed. On the contrary, the public was grown up and it was the other royals who were childish, jealous and emotionally inadequate. The British Empire was built on stiff upper lips. But this was not just a matter of sexual repression. Temperance, irony, and modesty in the midst of great privilege, could be what we now call "cool" rather than cold. At its best (there were also worsts) upper-class behaviour was about good judgement providing the steel for strong emotions and inner integrity.
What has changed is that these qualities can now be found more among the lower classes while the upper classes have lost their way. I vividly recall two moments of television from the early nineties which symbolise this for me. One was watching a film about Alan Clark where he blubbed with pathetic self-indulgence about the death of his father. The other was, I think, during the first Gulf War when there were very few fatal casulties. The news teams went to the modest house of one bereaved family who had lost their soldier son. His father came to the gate and said that as his son was preparing to go to war his mother had told him in the kitchen that as the good die young she was sure he would be back. Now she was too heartbroken to talk to the cameras. He kept his demeanour as he said this, he was dry eyed, he was disciplined and it was heart-rending. The ranks now know how to deal with loss. Those who once trained them no longer do. Pitiful diatribes against the masses are just self-indulgent bad-faith.
