POLITICS
Many people feel that they no longer understand their countrymen
BRUCE ANDERSON
The appearance of near-unanimity among the media has been deceptive. In its assessment of the political consequences of the Princess of Wales's death, the public has been sharply divided. A majority believes that nothing will ever be the same again. The minority agrees, but with pro- found regret; many members of that minor- ity feel that they no longer understand their countrymen.
Diana, Princess of Wales, was not only complex but protean. She was a remarkable mixture of insecurity and power. At times, she seemed to be amused by her hold over public opinion; at other times, she gave the impression of being frightened by it: increasingly, however, it enthralled her. But she had not yet understood — perhaps she never would have — that she could not exercise her powers only on her own terms. Hence her ambiguous relationship with the tabloids; it was never clear who was exploit- ing whom.
There is enough material in her life, let alone in what might have been, to occupy historians, psychodramatists, novelists for many years, and they are unlikely to reach a consensus. They will find it impossible to distinguish between fiction and reality; it might seem more a matter of disentangling the myth and the legend. Anyway, the facts are of limited utility. Trying to establish the truth about the late Princess is like asking whether the Virgin Mary did appear to the girl. Bernadette at Lourdes. Whatever the reservations of science and history, the cult is established. The same may well apply to the cult of Diana, Princess of Wales, at least in the short term.
Those who think the whole business ridiculously overblown can find one conso- lation. The new cult will be short-lived, for a cult can only become a religion if it cre- ates institutional momentum to replace and rejuvenate the initial mass enthusiasm. Bernadette saw the Virgin; the Holy Church canonised her and built the basilica.
The best parallel with the Diana cult is the cargo cult which afflicted a South Sea island for a number of years: the natives believed that the dropping of stores from an American aircraft was a religious mani- festation, so a cult arose in the hope that it would be repeated; the devotees also wor- shipped Prince Philip. Within a few decades, the cult of the Princess of Wales will also become an anthropological curiosity. That said, it would be unwise to underes- timate its short-term potency. The mood among the hundreds of thousands of votaries who assembled around St James's last weekend was febrile. It was only because there were no inflammatory speak- ers that the full potential of crowd psychol- ogy was never manifested. It would have been easy for a mob orator to whip up hys- teria, or anger; it would not have been impossible to persuade the audience to burst into Buckingham Palace or the Palace of Westminster, or both. The atmosphere was volatile, as were attitudes to the monarchy. This was a crowd which would have cheered Brutus's speech and then, 15 minutes later, made him fly for his life. So what is one to make of it all?
There is a paradox. Last week's events might seem symptomatic of that withdrawal of consent from the processes of govern- ment which is widespread in the developed world. Political philosophers of earlier eras were preoccupied with the question of con- sent — why individuals should subordinate themselves to the state — but could find no enduring answer. Divine ordination lost its potency and its secular equivalent, the social contract, was open to two basic objections. First, it was never signed; sec- ond, even if it had been, why should that bind successor generations? Political phi- losophy found itself in the same position as Cromwell, who insisted that he wanted con- sent, if only he could find it.
Then came democracy, and the problem was no longer discussed, as if it had been solved, which it had not, either philosophi- cally or practically. The modern democratic state has arrogated to itself many of the perquisites of absolutism, and in some cases added to them. Its citizens obey it out of habit, laced with fear, but the habit may be breaking down, and even Hobbes recog- nised that fear was not enough.
In Britain, the problem of consent is both easier to manage and more acute. Over much of the Continent, and in America, there was the equivalent of constituent assemblies, at which the institutions of the state were recast. Even if politics remained, as it always has been in every advanced democracy, a contest between competing elites with the voters as cannon-fodder, those voters were at least given the illusion that they had been able to reshape their political destiny. With the British, it was more a matter of the children gradually being permitted to dine with the grown-ups; there was no question of their being allowed to alter the place settings (compare the treatment given to Americans who visit Congress to the de haut en bas reception of British con- stituents at Westminster). This is, of course, a strength. The constitutional stability which Britain has enjoyed, as symbolised by the continuity of ancient forms, was only made possible by a uniquely benign history, which has enabled us to remain one of the best- governed nations on earth.
But that Whig optimism, which even the highest of high Tories tacitly subscribed to everywhere except in their libraries, has become a minority taste. Until recently, the habit of consent seemed unbreakable, but now there is a manifest public impatience with established forms and a determination to wrest new meanings from them.
That is when the paradox arises. The hunger for these new meanings is also a hunger for those two great needs implanted deep in the human psyche: something to worship and something to defer to. The cult of Diana fuses worship and deference, which makes it so potent, just as her funer- al drew most of its dramatic force from ancient rituals. Many of those who watched might have thought that they would have preferred an all pop service, but one sus- pects that by the end, most of them had been much more moved than they had expected to be by the spectacle of the Welsh guardsmen marching past royal palaces, as they escorted the gun-carriage to the parish church of the British Empire.
But it would be foolish to find any grounds for optimism in all this. There is no reason to believe that the desire for worship and deference will subside into orthodox channels. On the contrary, it is likely that the Princess of Wales's cult will be replaced by other cults, other icons; few if any of these will bring comfort to those who still hope to trust in the antique virtues of the British people. Two hundred years ago, many liberals believed that if mankind could only emancipate itself from its worship of gods and its deference to kings, barbarism would inevitably give way to the reign of rea- son and virtue. In one respect, the liberals had their way: gods and kings are not what they were. Instead, we have lottery tickets, astrology and pop music.
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