18

Big Brother

Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed

George was right. Not Galloway, but Orwell. Big Brother is watching you. And Orwell clearly knew what he was talking about, because at the very time his last book Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in 1949, he was secretly passing a list of ‘subversives’ to a seemingly anodyne government department, the IRD – an acronym that stood for an innocuous-sounding, but clandestine part of the Foreign Office that conducted ‘Information Research’. The ‘subversives’ were contained on a list of thirty-eight people (well-known writers, actors, academics and campaigners), which had been compiled by Orwell over a period of time – people whom he considered to be ‘crypto-communists, fellow travellers or inclined that way and not to be trusted as propagandists’.¹

The object of the exercise was purportedly to warn the authorities who not to employ in order to promote their version of the truth during the Cold War, though looking at some of the names, it is difficult to imagine many of them entertaining such an approach in any event. Nonetheless, such collaboration sits uncomfortably with Orwell’s searing critique of a totalitarian world in which Winston Smith, a gnome in the Ministry of Truth, spends his time airbrushing ‘inconvenient’ people and events out of history.

It was this nightmare, echoing Franz Kafka, that dominated the post-war years in which I was brought up. Both Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four were groundbreaking, prophetic allegories of a society that could envelop all of us within our own lifetimes – in my case it was the threat posed by nuclear weapons and the prospect of a third world war.

I am not suggesting for a moment that my teenage waking moments were consumed with these dire warnings, or that I withdrew into some kind of bunkered existence, but these were the prevailing subliminal preoccupations of that period, and the momentous occasions when they would erupt onto the world stage remain etched on my memory: Russian tanks crushing the civilian uprising in Budapest in 1956, for example, and most frightening of all, the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. These are the occasions when you are so affected that you can remember where you were and what you were doing at specific points in time. The first coincided with a history lesson when the master concerned was so angry about events in Hungary that he could barely speak; the second found me anxiously glued to a television set at the start of my second year at university.

Against such a backdrop it is easy to be diverted from the machinations of our own state and from what is being done in the name of national security: even Orwell’s list had been withheld until 2003, when the government finally relented and allowed it to be published, partly because the Guardian had revealed its existence in 1996.²

We now have the Freedom of Information Act, but there are still provisions that exempt the security services from it, and exclude items required for ‘administrative’ or other ‘special reasons’.

No one should underestimate the extent and powers of the secret British state. Some of its organs surface above the ground, and I have encountered them in a large number of the cases that I have handled involving MI5 (SS), MI6 (SIS), GCHQ (Cheltenham), SO15 (incorporating what was SO12, or Special Branch), armed services intelligence units and the JIC (Joint Intelligence Committee). And I have little doubt that there are others which are never identified and whose existence is never admitted.

In 1985, one year after the setting for Orwell’s book, the discreet and insidious way in which such shadowy organisations can work was publicly exposed.

Even more sinister than Orwell’s text, and reminiscent of the McCarthyite era in the United States, two Observer journalists, David Leigh and Paul Lashmar,³ revealed a system of blacklisting inside the BBC, located in what became known as Room 105. Here files collated on targeted individuals were marked with a Christmas-tree symbol stamped on the outside. Why the Christmas tree? Because ‘O Tannenbaum’ was sung by Nazi troops and sympathisers during the Third Reich, and the title translates as ‘O Christmas Tree’.⁴ For a time it was of interest to note that the new secret-service building on the south side of the Thames at Vauxhall sported a line of Christmas trees, a feature that has mysteriously disappeared.

The BBC files contained the names of reporters, journalists, producers and directors, and among them was Yvette. The information amassed was tenuous, amorphous, low-level political activist-type material, gathered in order to block appointments and job opportunities for those considered some form of ‘risk’. Careers and lives were marred and individuals stigmatised without their knowing why, which was especially iniquitous when the information was erroneous.

The information was passed to Brigadier Ronnie Stoneham in Room 105 on the first floor of Broadcasting House behind a door marked ‘Special Duties Management’, and the process was called ‘colleging’.

I remember when David Leigh came to see Yvette to persuade her to be named in the article. She had shown remarkable courage during the aggressive policing of the miners’ strike, which she had filmed for the BBC at close quarters, but the article posed a serious risk of resurrecting a pernicious prejudice which she had successfully challenged. For the sake of bringing malpractice to book, however, she agreed, and the following appeared in the Observer:

Things did not work out for Yvette Vanson. In 1979 she was considered of sufficient talent and integrity to be hired to help make ‘access’ films in the BBC’s Community Programmes Unit. But days before she was to start, an embarrassed executive told her the job had been withdrawn. In a series of letters now held by the Observer, the BBC wrote telling her that ‘the job should have gone to an internal candidate.’ She was told she could apply for other jobs and offered £500 for her ‘inconvenience’. We traced one of the senior officials concerned who admitted that the BBC had been telling lies. She had been blacklisted by MI5 as ‘an organiser of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party’. Indeed, she had been a member of the WRP when, five years earlier, she was an actress. Although she had subsequently left the party, she made no bones about her left-wing opinions. The blacklisting is intended to be permanent. Last year, 10 years since Yvette Vanson stopped being a member of any political group, another BBC producer wished to hire her. An executive told us: ‘Personnel said: “But wasn’t she in the WRP?” ’ This time there were protests, the blacklisting was withdrawn and she successfully worked for the BBC.⁵

But only once, on a short-term contract, and in fact on the programme through which we met.

This state interference was a nightmare for Yvette. Her career had been stalled and she had to fight her way back into the BBC, following years of working for charities and making training videos for a social-services department – none of which she regrets, although it could have been very different had she not been politically vetted and blacklisted, and for what? Being a socialist. Yvette never was employed as a full-time staff member of a British broadcasting company, but she went on to be a multi-award-winning independent producer/director, and her films are now held in the British Film Institute’s prestigious archive.

The salutary point arising out of this episode is that what was done took place not only without the knowledge of the victimised, but also without the knowledge of the BBC Governors, let alone the public. Whatever machinery is in place to provide some kind of protection, like the Security Commission, there are always ways of ducking and diving, ultimately issuing the usual ‘We cannot confirm or deny’ statement.⁶

Cathy Massiter, who was a junior officer at MI5 in the mid-1970s, confirmed that lists of BBC candidates would pass across her desk for approval. She also appeared in a Channel 4 documentary⁷ which highlighted improper surveillance, including the phone-tapping of CND and trade-union activists. The film was banned and she was threatened with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act.

I had my own extraordinary experience of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party (WRP) at the same time as Yvette was experiencing her problems at the BBC – although we had not yet met.

I had finally been persuaded by Comrade Wilf to attend a WRP meeting addressed by the party’s leader, Gerry Healey, at the City University on the topic of the dialectic – and I say ‘persuaded’ because I found the WRP’s politics as outlined in its paper The Newsline, which was delivered to me personally on a weekly basis by Wilf, to be a little bit off my radar. Nevertheless, having studied philosophy I thought I’d give it a go, and went straight from court dressed in a dark suit and sat at the back of a crowded lecture hall. I took out my pen in order to make some notes but, finding Gerry Healey’s thought processes quite impenetrable, hardly wrote a thing. At the end of his address a forest of hands shot up to ask erudite and esoteric questions, but I was none the wiser.

As the crowds filtered out of the hall I remained seated, only to find myself suddenly surrounded by a number of ‘heavies’ who demanded to know who I was, why I was there and why in particular my pen had hardly touched the paper. They suggested that it contained a recording device and that I was some form of spy, who would therefore have to be removed from the hall and strip-searched. I couldn’t believe that someone who’d supported freedom of speech as I had was being turned on in this way, but I was clearly no match for this lot. The only thing I could do was sit tight and protest loudly. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a man appeared and with a very authoritative voice demanded, ‘Leave him alone!’ I had no idea who he was, but he took me by the arm and led me out, and as we left I thanked him profusely and asked him why he’d intervened. Apparently he’d recognised me from one of my trials, in which he had been a juror.

In December 2008, thirty years after Cathy Massiter, Big Brother was still operating when the Conservative MP Damian Green was arrested on charges of conspiracy and aiding and abetting in relation to alleged misconduct in public office, common-law offences which carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment and circumvent the public-interest defence available under Section 5 of the Official Secrets Act 1989. If used, the prosecution would have to prove that the confidential information (supposed leaks about Home Office internal policy), allegedly received from a civil servant, was damaging to the interests of the United Kingdom. What was even more astounding was the way in which the police failed to obtain the Speaker’s consent, without which even the Queen cannot enter the House of Commons. Nor did the police think it necessary to obtain a search warrant for Mr Green’s parliamentary office containing his papers and computers. It now turns out, according to a statement by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, in April 2009, that ‘the Home Office papers undoubtedly touched on matters of legitimate public interest . . . and that the information contained in the documents was not secret or information affecting national security: it did not relate to military, policing or intelligence matters. It did not expose anyone to risk of injury or death. Nor in many respects was it highly confidential.’⁸

That the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, knew nothing of this begs the question. The issue is not one of immunity or of MPs being above the law; rather, it concerns an assumption and an arrogance of power about which all of us need to be constantly alert. If the state within a state can march into the heart of our democracy without so much as a by-your-leave, or little more than a raised eyebrow, then there is trouble in store for us all.

Bearing all this in mind, it came as no surprise to me to learn from Annie Machon’s book⁹ that when she and her partner David Shayler worked for the secret services, I too was (and probably still am) in the frame. Not all the time; not every phone call; not every meeting; just when it suits them. So, as with bomb threats, I’ve worked on the basis that it is safer for me to keep my head above the parapet – making it clear to all and sundry which side of the wall I’m on. It’s more difficult to rub me out if I’m reasonably well known, but in general the level of risk depends on the level of threat that you present.

Take, for example, Colin Wallace, whom I represented on appeal when his conviction for manslaughter was overturned by the Lord Chief Justice – and subsequently he appeared as a witness at the Bloody Sunday Inquiry. He had served in a special unit of the Ministry of Defence in Northern Ireland described as ‘Psy-ops’ (Psychological Operations), and his work had taken him to Derry. There has been an aura of denial and obfuscation by the authorities about the work

itself and his role in it – namely, ‘black propaganda’ intended to destabilise and disorientate terrorists – and even more controversial was the manner of his removal from this work by the Ministry of Defence, which alleged misconduct in handling official documents, a charge roundly rebuffed by Colin. The whole saga is eloquently chronicled by Paul Foot in his definitive book Who Framed Colin Wallace? When Paul turned his investigative searchlight on the conviction for murder, many of the unanswered questions in the trial found a rationale in the hypothesis that Colin had been set up in order to discredit and silence someone who had become a conscientious thorn in the side of the security services.

Another example is that of Dr David Kelly, the government scientist whose death was clearly connected to the war in Iraq. It is the nature of that connection that is the big question: whether he took his own life or whether it was taken by others, the unseen forces and pressures that lay behind his death have not so far been satisfactorily explored or resolved, either by an inquest or by the Hutton Inquiry.¹⁰

For me there are similar unresolved questions arising from what happened in Paris on 31 August 1997. Like Budapest and Cuba, it’s another of those occasions when most people can remember exactly what they were doing when they heard the news.

In my case I was staying with my family and some close friends in a remote Tuscan village where there was no television. We drove to Florence to see some of our party back off to London by air, and decided to spend one night in a hotel before returning to the village. The following morning ten-year-old Freddy raced down the corridor to our room as urgently as if the hotel had been on fire. (Which reminds me of an experience some years earlier, when I rushed to Freddy’s rescue through thick smoke in a hotel on the banks of a Scottish loch, only to find that his bed was empty and there was no trace of him. I was desperate – but thankfully he had been whisked down the fire escape by a quick-thinking young girl from a neighbouring room.)

This time there was no fire, but Freddy was urging us to see something on the television in his room, and as he led us down the corridor he kept saying, ‘Diana is dead.’ I could not quite get a grip on what he meant, or even who he meant. In his room we all sat in front of the screen, like millions of others around the world, mesmerised, transfixed into stunned silence. The crushed Mercedes was so finite a message, and it was not long before the questions started forming. How could this be? An accident on this scale? Not only Diana dead, but two others, Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul, the driver.

At that moment it did not occur to me that I would ever become immersed in the world of Diana and the Royal Family, or that I would end up representing Mohamed Al Fayed.

For one thing, I am a republican. I have been a member of the campaigning organisation Republic¹¹ for years, arguing against unaccountability, inherited property and privilege and for a democratically elected head of state – and I certainly had not followed the social cavorting of various members of ‘The Firm’. In the early 1990s I presented the case for change in a groundbreaking BBC televised debate, which apparently ended a long-standing, unspoken convention and taboo that prevented any serious criticism of the Queen, or of the institution of the monarchy, being ventilated.

Earlier still was the uncomfortable business of ‘taking Silk’. I am sure those outside the profession think it’s some kind of medieval medicinal cure for elderly ailing barristers, but ‘taking Silk’ is the term used to describe the tortuous process whereby, in those days, you ‘let it be known’ that you were ready for the call to become Queen’s Counsel, and mysteriously a divine finger alighted upon your shoulder if ‘they’ were ready for you. I put off engaging in such an anachronistic set-up for as long as possible, and part of my reservation was having to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen. Nothing personal, Your Majesty, but this went against the grain, so colleagues advised me to do it with my eyes closed.

Despite all these misgivings, when I returned home from Italy I couldn’t help becoming fascinated by the ‘back story’ of Diana, most of which I had missed. A young woman at one moment hated and derided by a sizeable proportion of the media for her association with Dodi and the Fayeds, at the next suddenly transformed Cinderella-like into the ‘People’s Princess’ at the hands of the very same critics. All is forgiven or forgotten, or both, at least until her brother unleashes a broadside during the funeral service in Westminster Abbey.

I was keen to discover more about this woman, who had clearly engendered love and hatred in almost equal measure, and the more I read, the more I appreciated her deeply felt commitment to raising awareness about major human tragedies – literally touching the lives of those affected and gaining recognition in her own right, rather than as some regal appendage.

It was in these circumstances that I found it difficult simply to accept that what happened in the Alma Tunnel in Paris was ‘just one of those tragic things’. Of course it might have been, but then that’s what ‘they’ always hope we will think. Judging whether a hidden hand is at work is always difficult, but I prefer a healthy and inquisitive assessment of the authorised version, and for me it was mere serendipity to be approached a year after the crash and asked to represent Mohamed Al Fayed for the purposes of an inquest.

Barristers are not allowed to tout for work: they have to wait to be asked, and some have wondered why I should have wanted to be involved in this case at all, supposing that it must have been for the money. Nothing could be further from the truth. The vast majority of my work has been publicly funded, with a proportion being pro bono, so money wasn’t the object. But prior interest certainly was, along with a real sympathy for Mohamed Al Fayed, who had been unceasingly and erroneously attacked for wanting what any parent would have wanted: answers to why and how their loved one had died. The vitriol poured upon Mohamed’s head constantly misses the point that he is a grieving father, entitled to an inquest – which, as the coroner pointed out, is obligatory in the circumstances. Furthermore, Mohamed’s main concern, relating to the fears expressed by Princess Diana, would have required investigation even if he had played no part at all in the inquest.

In many of the criminal cases I’ve handled it sometimes helps to start at the end rather than the beginning, especially where death is involved. Ask the question: who does it benefit? If it benefits no one, that might suggest one scenario. On the other hand, if there are some obvious beneficiaries – and, more importantly, some less obvious ones – it may be productive to trace the chain of causation backwards, a bit like those kids’ maze puzzles where there is only one route to the treasure at the bottom of the page, with several entrances at the top. I start with the treasure.

In the case of Diana and Dodi, I have always believed that whatever had caused the crash, it was not an accident. And, as it transpired, that belief was shared by the jury at the inquest.

Given the welter of publicity, the wealth of books, films and pundits, it is hardly surprising that the jury’s verdict was not reported in full, or was misreported or misinterpreted. There is still a widespread belief that the inquest was a waste of time and money and came to no different conclusion than previous investigations and enquiries. This is a serious misconception.

The Assistant Deputy Coroner for Inner West London was the Right Honourable Lord Justice Scott Baker, brought in for the purpose after an earlier High Court judge withdrew. Such an appointment is becoming more commonplace in the wake of the Human Rights Act, as inquests broaden in scope and embrace an increasing number of legal problems. One of them is the form of the verdict contained within what is called the Inquisition.

As already outlined in relation to the Marchioness inquest (see Chapter 8), at an inquest there is no indictment and no defendant, nor a simple verdict of guilty or not guilty. There are four basic questions to be answered. Who was the deceased? Where? When? And how did he or she die?

The first three usually pose no difficulty, but it is the fourth that gives rise to complications – and in the case of Diana and Dodi, merely to record injuries received as a result of the car hitting the wall of the Alma Tunnel would be somewhat trite. The bigger question is: how did it come about that the car hit the wall? The courts have been resistant to this sort of extension for many years, until it was recognised that in order to comply with Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the ‘how?’ question would have to be enlarged. An integral part of Article 2, ‘the right to life’, involves an effective and independent investigation whereby the family of a victim may be able to ask the broader questions relating to the general circumstances around, and before, the death.

The High Court therefore decided¹² that the ‘how?’ question should mean not only ‘by what means?’ but also ‘in what circumstances?’ This decision came before the Diana inquest itself (held in 2007 and 2008), but the deaths occurred before the Human Rights Act 1998, incorporating Article 2 into domestic law, came into force. Therefore on one view the inquest could have been narrowly confined, but it was recognised that this would not be in the public interest, nor would it satisfy another purpose of an inquest, to allay rumours and suspicion.¹³

In the event, Lord Justice Scott Baker outlined a number of far-reaching questions at the beginning of the inquest and then distilled a number of options open to the jury at the end. Nevertheless, the over-arching scene was set for the jury by the coroner at the start: ‘Over the coming weeks you will be hearing a great deal of evidence about the issues and events I have described, and as I have mentioned, some issues may fall away and new ones may arise. At the end of it all, you will be faced with the overriding question of whether what happened was anything more than a tragic road accident.’¹⁴

This, of course, represented one of the main views being constantly rehearsed in the media. Quite remarkably, just before the original start date for the main inquest hearings set for January 2007, Lord Stevens, who had been tasked to investigate allegations made by Mohamed Al Fayed, published both his research and his conclusions. This was done amid massive publicity at a press conference held in the Queen Elizabeth Centre in Parliament Square, Westminster, on Thursday 14 December 2006, and was managed in such a way that only a few people had advance notice of his report’s general conclusions, while virtually no one had had time to read it in detail. Such a move was unprecedented, and there was absolutely no need for it to have occurred at this point. The Paget Report, as it was known, could have been provided to the coroner for the purposes of the inquest without the attendant publicity. Given its official status, such a step was potentially prejudicial to the fact-finding role of the jury at the inquest. Although Lord Stevens reserved issues relating to what happened in the tunnel for resolution by the inquest, he nevertheless made his view abundantly clear: ‘Our conclusion is that on all the evidence available at this time, there was no conspiracy to murder any of the occupants of the car. This was a tragic accident.’¹⁵

It does not require a great deal of imagination to work out the headlines the next day. As a result, the jury had to be warned by the coroner at the beginning of the inquest to ignore this report and its conclusions.

Unlike most proceedings, an inquest is organic and has a life of its own. It is difficult to predict precisely how the evidence will unfold, what will become relevant and what will have less significance. Preparation as ever is the key, but much has to be done as the process develops, and over the six-month period from October 2007 to April 2008 when the coroner’s court was sitting, fourteen-hour days were the norm for me. I would get up at 5.30 a.m. in our Putney flat and take the early river boat down the Thames to Blackfriars, relishing the quiet and stately journey past the dark silhouette of the forbidding chimneys of Battersea Power Station, and as the sun rose over St Thomas’s Hospital I’d think of Freddy’s birth all those years ago in the maternity unit overlooking the Houses of Parliament. I’d walk up from the quay to a café on the Strand opposite the Appeal Court to grab a coffee before making my way to Court 73, where the inquest was being held. Invariably I’d meet John, an avid member of the public gallery whose enthusiasm was emblazoned all over his forehead, where he had the names ‘Di’ and ‘Dodi’ inscribed in blue dye. His good humour, and that of the other ‘regulars’ during the inquest, provided a necessary humanising element to the proceedings.

However, the most crucial support came from my legal team: Tom Coates, my solicitor, and my juniors Henrietta Hill and later Alison McDonald. Since everything is now digital, electronic and diskified, my slow-moving pen is no match for the daily flood coming down the information highway, but they had it all at their fingertips, turning round emails, opinions and statements on their portable fruit machines – Blueberries? BlackBerries? – probably while sitting in the bath or, in Henrietta’s case, while giving birth to baby Reggie. Talk about multitasking. At least this meant that I could concentrate (usually at the end of a long day on my feet and after a conference with my client) on the central issues being presented.

At the end of the inquest Lord Justice Scott Baker had to sum up to the jury and present them with various verdict options. The original version was as follows:

1 Unlawful killing (grossly negligent driving of the paparazzi pursuing the Mercedes in which Diana and Dodi were being driven).

2 Unlawful killing (grossly negligent driving of the Mercedes).

3 Unlawful killing (grossly negligent, a combination of both 1 and 2).

4 Accidental death.

5 Open verdict.

This was amended in one important respect before finally being given to the jury: the phrase ‘following vehicles’ was substituted for the word ‘paparazzi’ in option 1.

On 7 April 2008¹⁶ the jury did not decide it was just a tragic accident (option 4), but returned a verdict of unlawful killing by the drivers of both the Mercedes and the following vehicles (option 3).

The ‘following vehicles’ element in the verdict was an aspect that very few commentators picked up on, or bothered with, and mostly its implications were not understood. In so far as anyone took any notice, they thought it was merely a reference to the chasing pack of paparazzi. It wasn’t: there were other vehicles clearly present, but never traced and not driven by members of the paparazzi.

Even finding the paparazzi partially responsible was a different conclusion from both the French investigation and the subsequent Stevens Inquiry contained in the Paget Report.

Initially, the French authorities arrested ten members of the paparazzi for involuntary manslaughter and failing to render assistance, but they were eventually released and not prosecuted. The juge d’instruction essentially concluded that there was insufficient evidence against any person for involuntary manslaughter. At the inquest, none of the paparazzi was prepared to testify, even by video link from studios in Paris, and despite overtures from the coroner and the British authorities, the French Government could not secure their attendance. The only person willing to come forward was Monsieur Darmon, the driver of a motorcycle carrying a member of the pack called Mr Rat.

During the inquest it became clear that the assiduous research by DI Paul Carpenter of the British police had managed to identify every single paparazzo, together with their mode of transport. This was accomplished by marrying up descriptions, statements and hundreds of photographs, and in this way it was possible to distil from the following vehicles which were paparazzi and which were not. Upon entry to the tunnel, the majority were not – and the other vehicles include the infamous white Fiat, the ownership of which has never been satisfactorily established and which had no more than glancing contact with the Mercedes. In any event, it was not a following vehicle, as it had been overtaken just inside the entrance to the tunnel.

Surprisingly, there had been witnesses in the tunnel who had what might be termed a ringside seat, even though the whole event happened very quickly. The importance of such witnesses was recognised by the French police on the night, and they were placed under ‘garde à vue’ (detention to secure evidence) and gave written statements shortly after the crash in the early hours of 31 August, together with completed diagrams of the various positions of vehicles.

Two of these witnesses were Benoit Boura and Gaelle L’Hostis, who saw the Mercedes sandwiched between a dark blocking vehicle immediately in front – with which the Mercedes had collided before it hit the thirteenth pillar and skewed across the road, impacting on the far wall of the tunnel – and a large motorcycle right behind.¹⁷

Boura was driving a Renault 5 on the opposite carriageway, travelling in the other direction, but he arrived at the thirteenth pillar at about the moment of the crash. He thought that the car in front of the Mercedes was larger than his own and dark-coloured, and that the motorcycle was 350 or 500cc. Gaelle L’Hostis, his passenger, thought the dark vehicle driving rather slowly in front of the Mercedes was a Renault Clio or a Super 5-type, although she did not think the car was deliberately hindering the Mercedes.¹⁸ Both witnesses gave evidence and both were unimpeachable.

Neither the dark car in front nor the motorcycle behind has ever been traced, either by DI Carpenter or by Commander Mules or Lieutenant Gigou, who were leading the French police investigation. No paparazzo ever got in front of the Mercedes, and the motorcycle cannot be attributed to any paparazzi, because none claimed to have been that close: Darmon was the first into the tunnel with Mr Rat as passenger, whereas Boura and L’Hostis did not recall any pillion passenger on the motorcycle they saw.

There were two other witnesses placed under ‘garde à vue’: Clifford Gooroovadoo and Olivier Partouche, who were on foot near the entrance to the tunnel. Partouche stated that the Mercedes was preceded by a car ‘driving at a speed – well, to apparently slow down the Mercedes that was following. I could not tell you what type of vehicle it was. Maybe a Ford Mondeo. It was of a dark colour. Clearly this car was trying to make the Mercedes slow down.’¹⁹ In his early statements on the night, Partouche also described a powerful motorcycle ‘tailgating’ the Mercedes²⁰ and thought he saw flashes of light before the vehicles disappeared into the underpass. Clifford Gooroovadoo confirmed both the presence of a vehicle travelling more slowly in front of the Mercedes and of a motorcycle behind it.²¹

Another witness, Thierry Hackett, also gave a graphic account that was clear and unimpugned. A short distance from the tunnel entrance he saw a car being pursued by four or five motorcycles. He had drawn a plan for the French police depicting such a group, with motorcycles very close to the rear of the Mercedes. He had thought the driver of the car was being hindered by the motorbikes.²²

At this point only one paparazzi motorcycle could have been in contention – Darmon – and he denied being part of any group as described by Hackett. Therefore the unresolved question relates to those other unidentified vehicles that were not paparazzi, but which nevertheless contributed to the unlawful killing by grossly negligent driving.

Two years before her death, at a meeting on 30 October 1995, Diana had expressed a disturbing premonition to her solicitor Lord Mishcon, who recorded: ‘Efforts would be made if not to get rid of her (be it by some accident in her car such as a pre-prepared brake failure or whatever) . . . at least to see that she was so injured or damaged as to be declared unbalanced.’²³

This premonition was kept secret until after the crash, when on 18 September 1997 Lord Mishcon revealed his note to the then Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Condon in the presence of David Veness, a senior officer. Despite its obvious ‘potential relevance’, as admitted by Veness during my questioning,²⁴ it was disclosed neither to the French juge nor to the English coroner Dr Burton, who at that time was seized of the matter (the legal term for dealing with it). The crucial memorandum remained a state secret locked in a safe at New Scotland Yard.

On 20 October 2003 the Daily Mirror published extracts from a book by Paul Burrell, Diana’s butler, in which he disclosed a note, written by Diana, which he maintained she wrote in 1996: ‘This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous – my husband is planning “an accident” in my car. Brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry . . .’²⁵

Two months later the Mishcon note was made known to the new coroner, Dr Burgess.

Diana’s fear had been expressed to several others, among whom was Mohamed Al Fayed. This occurred when she went to stay with his family in France in July 1997. His evidence on this point was not challenged at the inquest.²⁶ Until the publication of the Paget Report in December 2006 it was not known to the public, let alone to Mohamed, that she had also confided this fear to her solicitor eleven years before its publication.

Plainly no inquest into her death could ignore this chain of events, for at the heart of it lay the recurring belief that she would meet her death, or incur serious injury, while travelling without her children in a small form of transport, be it car, helicopter or light aircraft: in this way fewer people would be involved. These were the genuine concerns of an intelligent woman, and not – as is often portrayed – a fevered fantasy from the brow of Mohamed Al Fayed.

Beyond this was a further concern about the extent to which her life was being monitored, not just by the press, but by the state itself. These were not far-fetched or outlandish thoughts, and no one who knew her well – like Diana’s private secretary Patrick Jephson, who had been present for the Mishcon meeting in 1995 – considered her paranoid or mentally unstable in any way.

It is easy to forget just how much of a threat Diana presented to the established order. Her clandestine contribution to a searingly honest biography by Andrew Morton in 1992 was closely followed by the publication in August that year of the ‘Squidgygate’ tape: intimate conversations between Diana and her lover James Gilbey, in which he called her ‘Squidgy’, intercepted on 31 December 1989. Then in November 1995 (a month after the Mishcon meeting) came the famous Panorama interview²⁷ with Martin Bashir, in which Diana graphically described her own predicament and how she was viewed by the Royal Household.

BASHIR: Once the separation had occurred, moving to 1993, what happened during that period?

DIANA: People’s agendas changed overnight. I was now the separated wife of the Prince of Wales, I was a problem, I was a liability (seen as), and how are we going to deal with her? This hasn’t happened before.

BASHIR: Who was asking those questions?

DIANA: People around me, people in this environment, and . . .

BASHIR: The Royal Household?

DIANA: People in my environment, yes, yes.

BASHIR: And they began to see you as a problem?

DIANA: Yes, very much so, uh, uh.

BASHIR: Do you really believe that a campaign was being waged against you?

DIANA: Yes, I did, absolutely, yeah.

BASHIR: Why?

DIANA: I was the separated wife of the Prince of Wales, I was a problem, full stop. Never happened before, what do we do with her?

BASHIR: Can’t we pack her off to somewhere quietly rather than campaign against her?

DIANA: She won’t go quietly, that’s the problem. I’ll fight to the end, because I believe that I have a role to fulfil, and I’ve got two children to bring up. But I was doing good things, and I wanted to do good things. I was never going to hurt anyone, I was never going to let anyone down.

BASHIR: But you really believe that it was out of jealousy that they wanted to undermine you?

DIANA: I think it was out of fear, because here was a strong woman doing her bit, and where was she getting her strength from to continue? I don’t see myself being Queen of this country. I don’t think many people will want me to be Queen. Actually, when I say many people I mean the establishment that I married into, because they have decided that I’m a non-starter.

BASHIR: Why do you think they’ve decided that?

DIANA: Because I do things differently, because I don’t go by a rule book, because I lead from the heart, not the head, and albeit that’s got me into trouble in my work, I understand that. But someone’s got to go out there and love people and show it.

BASHIR: Do you think that because of the way you behave that’s precluded you effectively from becoming Queen?

DIANA: Yes, well, not precluded me. I wouldn’t say that. I just don’t think I have as many supporters in that environment as I did.

BASHIR: You mean within the Royal Household?

DIANA: Uh, uh. They see me as a threat of some kind, and I’m here to do good: I’m not a destructive person.

BASHIR: Why do they see you as a threat?

DIANA: I think every strong woman in history has had to walk down a similar path, and I think it’s the strength that causes the confusion and the fear. Why is she strong? Where does she get it from? Where is she taking it? Where is she going to use it? Why do the public still support her? When I say public, you go and do an engagement and there’s a great many people there.

What rattled the cage far more than all this was Diana’s highly publicised visit to Angola in January 1997 in order to highlight the inhumanity and destruction caused by landmines. It is an understatement to say that this did not endear her to various vested interests, and she was criticised for interfering in political affairs and accused of being a ‘loose cannon’. But she was not deterred, and went on to develop her commitment to this issue in a lecture at the Royal Geographical Society in June 1997, on a visit to Bosnia between 8 and 10 August 1997, and in an interview in Le Monde published on 28 August 1997, three days before her death. A trip similar to the Angolan visit was planned for autumn 1997, this time to Cambodia, along with the possibility of establishing an international hospice with the financial support of Mohamed Al Fayed.

Although there had been a change of government in spring 1997 with Tony Blair’s first term in office, the Ottawa Agreement on the restriction of landmine manufacture and use was still at a sensitive stage of negotiations. According to one witness, Simone Simmons, a close friend and confidante of Diana, the Princess was undertaking a great deal of research and had:

compiled a dossier which she claimed would prove that the British government and many high-ranking public figures were profiting from their [landmines] proliferation in countries like Angola and Bosnia. The names and companies were well known. It was explosive, and top of her list of culprits behind the squalid trade was the Secret Intelligence Service, the SIS, which she believed was behind the sale of so many British-made landmines that were causing so much misery to so many people. ‘I’m going to go public with this and name names,’ she declared. She intended to call her report Profiting out of Misery.²⁸

There has been a recent decision by the Information Commissioner that Diana’s correspondence with John Major and Tony Blair is too private to publish under the Freedom of Information Act.²⁹ It is known that she wrote letters about the possibility of becoming an ambassador or emissary in relation to landmines, and the inquest heard evidence that she had attended an informal dinner with Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell at the beginning of 1997 when this possibility had been discussed. What is not known is whether any of the private correspondence deals with this or other matters relevant to her death.

To cap it all, Diana had had a long-standing friendship with Mohamed Al Fayed, who had supported a number of her other projects and causes, for which she expressed her gratitude in moving letters produced by him at the inquest; and she finally struck up a loving and intimate relationship with his son Dodi, which was equally spelled out in letters produced at the inquest. Dodi had been depicted by the tabloids as a playboy, and reputedly by the Duke of Edinburgh as ‘an oily bed-hopper’, but what became abundantly clear during the inquest was a completely contrary view. Witness after witness, save one (his jilted girlfriend), described Dodi as a gentle, caring and generous individual, sensitive to the needs of others, but as this was not a particularly sensational portrait, needless to say it didn’t hit the headlines.

Against this background it was utterly reasonable for Diana to suppose that Big Brother was looking over her shoulder, that her telephone communications were being tapped and her movements by car were being tracked. It was only by persistent pursuit of these issues at the inquest that material came to light which had not surfaced before, even though part of the remit for the Stevens Inquiry had been to investigate Princess Diana’s fears.

Records relating to the police Royal Protection Unit were disclosed, which revealed an important meeting on 18 October 1994. The head of the unit, DAC David Meynell, recorded: ‘She then told me that she knew her telephone was being tapped and that she was certain the same applied to her vehicle. She stated that she had proof that her phones were being tapped . . .’³⁰

The reaction to this material provoked interestingly diverse and conflicting responses. On the one hand, the by now Lord Condon, Sir David Veness and Colin Haywood-Trimming, a Royal Protection officer, all claimed nothing was done beyond informing the Home Secretary, because they said Diana had refused to co­operate with them. On the other hand, DAC Meynell told Diana that he would look into the matter, and that her apartments and her car were searched by the team from the Palace of Westminster, with negative results.³¹ There is no record of any search. Later in the inquest Meynell attempted to qualify his evidence by saying that in fact he was referring to a previous incident a year earlier.

Whatever the true position adopted by the police, Diana had a credible and understandable basis for her belief, given the circumstances surrounding the original recording of her private telephone call on 31 December 1989 [Squidgygate], and by the time of the inquest it had become clear that the initial interception could not have been carried out by the ‘radio hams’ who claimed to have provided the tapes to the newspapers. John Nelson, an expert originally engaged by the Sunday Times, provided a report to this effect to the inquest. His conclusion was that the interception ‘can only have been made by means of a direct or possibly inductive pick-up tapping of the telephone line itself and the local exchange’.³²

These two forms of bugging both involved physical interference with the handset or telephone line on royal property on the Sandringham estate where Diana was staying, and it is unlikely that this was achieved by the press, let alone by an amateur.

Matters were made worse during the inquest when I was pressing for answers about all this, and about whether it had been properly investigated. A document was revealed for the first time which showed that fixed telephone lines had also been tampered with where the Prince of Wales had been staying on the night of the alleged ‘Camillagate’ conversation. (A controversial recording in December 1989 of an agonisingly intimate hour-long late-night conversation, featuring talk of tampons, between Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles (as she then was) was made public in 1993.)³³

The Queen had expressed disquiet and requested an investigation, but despite denials by the security agencies, once again there was no satisfactory explanation or documentary audit demonstrating that such an investigation was carried out. This might provide an interesting insight into Paul Burrell’s account of his conversation with Her Majesty on 19 December 1997: ‘Be careful Paul, no one has been as close to a member of my family as you have. There are powers at work in the country about which we have no knowledge. Do you understand?’³⁴

While Burrell’s credibility on many topics did not survive the inquest, the fact of this meeting has been admitted in a press release from Buckingham Palace, and at no time has the content (which mostly related to Diana’s belongings) been denied. Indeed, when in 2002 Burrell was on trial at the Old Bailey accused of stealing a quantity of those belongings, it was Her Majesty’s sudden recollection of being told by him that he had taken some of Diana’s items for safekeeping that brought proceedings to an abrupt end, before Burrell himself or any defence witnesses could be called.

There were many other issues touched on during the wide-ranging inquest hearings, which I have not explored in detail here: the box of missing personal papers belonging to Diana, described as the ‘Crown Jewels’ in the light of their potential significance; the missing Fiat driver; the missing three hours on the evening of 30 August 1997 during which Dodi’s chauffeur Henri Paul’s movements could not be traced; and the unexplained regular and sizeable sums of money going into Henri Paul’s several bank accounts over the three months before the crash. None of these could be resolved by evidence, or reflected in the verdict.

But Diana’s fears for her safety and her preoccupation with surveillance were thoroughly canvassed, and in my view were found to be entirely justified. Unfortunately her predictions came to pass – and span the very period of our history that was the focus of Orwell’s attention.

We have seamlessly passed 1984 with all its ominous prophecies, and almost without realising it we have slid rapidly towards the very surveillance society that could be barely imagined as a reality in 1949: CCTV on every corner; traffic cameras tracking car registration numbers; credit and debit cards reflecting patterns of movement and use; satellites tracking mobile phones; vast databases recording medical details, welfare benefits, and so forth. The latest proposal – on hold in the light of the more pressing economic and fiscal exigencies – is the Communications Data Bill, enabling government to extend its powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act,³⁵ which seeks to establish a centralised database that will monitor every call we make, every website we access, every text and email we send. There is now the prospect of a cashless, chequeless society in which the mobile phone alone will be used as the mechanism of payment for goods, so every purchase will be monitored. And then we have the ‘toolkit’ issued to teachers for the purpose of the ‘prevent agenda’, by which pupils’ behaviour and thinking are to be reported to the authorities, should it disclose Islamic radicalisation. And don’t forget the ID card.

That these surreal proposals should even be contemplated shows how far beyond Orwell’s worst fears we have travelled. The whole idea of Big Brother is now part of mainstream cheap light entertainment, in which people like the other George volunteer to have their thoughts scrutinised in greenhouse conditions and commentated upon by a disembodied voice while anonymous millions watch enthralled. This is both sinister and symbolic, for twenty-first-century Western popular culture has been traduced. It’s Jim Carrey’s film The Truman Show for real.