Diana Inc.

JOHN CASEY believes her Memorial Fund should be wound up before it becomes indecently large We risk losing her memory in a torrent of vulgar commerce

HE QUESTION of whether a charity has become an embarrassment is usually asked when the public appeal for contributions looks as though it will fall far short of its objective.

This is the opposite of what is happening to the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund. It looks as though the official fund will soon have attracted at least GBP 200 million. And the unofficial merchandising of Diana's name grows unstoppably. On last night's Panorama, Alicia Mundy, an advertising expert, claimed that the "explosion" of Diana merchandising in America is now "worth the economy of a small Third World nation". She told the programme that the industry is already worth more than GBP 50 million. None of that money raised is going to the Memorial Fund and the charities it supports. And the Americans seem keen on memorabilia of quite extraordinary tackiness. A "Diana Doll" is planned, although being legally challenged, which can be dressed in the famous "mine sweeper" outfit which the Princess wore on her visit to Angola, where she was campaigning against landmines. Alicia Mundy described the doll on Panorama: "You can change her, you can move her arms, you can make her sit, you can make her stand. I'm sorry, this woman is dead, how can you do this... Diana is not a plaything, she is not a toy." Very true. Is this simply yet another proof of the cultural insanity of the Americans, of their ineradicable compulsion to mingle show-biz and moneymaking with the most sacred human instincts? The trouble with taking this opportunity to be smug about American vulgarity is that the fund is about to launch some fatuous dolls of its own - little black bears called "Princess". On Panorama Diana's butler was shown draped in five or six of them. Then there is the famous Flora margarine with the Diana signature that provoked the wrath of Earl Spencer. MR Anthony Julius, the Princess's lawyer, and acting chairman of the fund, stoutly defended the margarine as "absolutely right". He said: "It's a choice between having a signature - which is just a logo - on tubs of margarine and depriving the cancer patients, the homeless, the sick children, those afflicted with leprosy of the money that we could raise. It's not a decision that takes more than a second to reach." It so happens I have read with care, and admired, a book of literary criticism by Mr Julius, in which he shows himself extremely sensitive to words, and which suggests that he would normally give short shrift to the impatience of anyone who said that a decision to use the signature of a dead woman on a margarine packet would not "take more than a second to reach". A signature surely is not a "logo" - it is a signature. It looks personal - something between a relic and an autograph. That is why it will sell the margarine. I can see the point of a "living memorial" to the Princess. These days we are uncomfortable with large and expensive memorials which exist purely to preserve the memory of the deceased, no more and no less. We want them to be useful as well, to support charity, or offer recreation and refreshment to the citizens. Any equivalent now of the Albert Memorial - huge, expensive, gilded and quite useless - would call forth howls of execration. The trouble with a living memorial dedicated to good works is that there is no limit to the good works you might want to contribute to, and hence no limit on the funds you will want to raise. The potential of the Diana fund seems virtually unlimited. The legal adviser to the fund says that they are currently negotiating "approximately one thousand commercial deals" worth hundreds of millions of pounds. So perhaps the fund will reach GBP 500 million pounds, or even GBP 1,000 million. And it could go on for ever - which is what some of the present trustees envisage. It would then become an enormous foundation, with a large bureaucracy, huge spending commitments, and consequently a permanent commitment to raising enormous sums of money. That is the way with foundations. True, it would do a great deal of good, helping cancer patients, lepers, the homeless and all the other people whom Mr Julius mentions. But the inevitable consequence would be that the name and image of the Princess would become permanently, ineradicably linked to a commercial enterprise. Last night one of the fund's officials spoke of "aggressively pursuing the commercial path." OVER the years t h e n a m e o f Diana, Princess of Wales, would become identified in the public mind with money, fund-raising and a rich and powerful organisation. It would be a famous charity indeed, but it would also look very much like Diana Inc. Already there is talk of "a market hungry for Diana products". The Trustees are also developing an appetite for litigation. They are determined to "ring fence" the Princess's name. They will pursue "unauthorised purveyors" through the courts because (as one of the officials put it) "they are stealing the Princess's name". Since there are sure to be hundreds of such "purveyors" we can presumably look forward to years of court cases. Perhaps we should try to look at this with a sense of history. I have no idea whether the late Princess will bulk large in our national memory in, say, 50 years. My guess is that the public really wish to memorialise her still more than they want to see her name used for charitable good works. The most famous memorials from the past, which still have power to move our imaginations, have been precisely those useless but poignant expressions of love and regret that are now out of fashion - the Taj Mahal and our own more homely Albert Memorial, the nation's tribute to Queen Victoria's heroic love for her husband. I hope that the Diana Memorial Fund will be wound up before it becomes indecently large and the focus of ugly bickerings stretching into the indefinite future. A memorial garden with a good statue may be conventional, but it is more likely in the long run to serve the purpose - the preservation, untainted, of the memory of the deceased.

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