122 governments agreed

In The Diana Chronicles {2007, Doubleday} Tina Brown wrote, it was one of the sad ironies, that Princess Diana was killed in the car crash "just when she was on the point of casting off the most toxic elements of celebrity culture and using her fame as collateral for daring social activism..."


--------------------- [excerpt, The Diana Chronicles] ------------- In Ottawa not so long after her walk through the minefields, 122 governments agreed on a treaty banning the use of antipersonnel land mines.  The Nobel committee awarded the campaign the Nobel Peace Prize, coupled with the name of the leading American campaigner, Jodie Williams.  In the House of Commons, during the Second Reading of the Landmines Bill, 1998, the British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook paid handsome tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales, for her "immense contribution to bringing home to many of our constituents the human costs of landmines."


Diana was not there to hear it.  She was alone on an island, in her grave at Althorp.


------------------------
----------------- [excerpt / same] --------------- The Red Cross was in the network of global organizations campaigning for a ban on the use of land mines, their clearance, and help for their victims.  He [Mike Whitlam, Director General of the British Red Cross] began sending Diana photographs and reports about the devastating effects of mines that had been left uncleared after wars.  He saw this as the right cause for Diana at the right time.


On Monday, January 13, 1997,

  Diana stepped into the throbbing heat of Luanda, the capital of Angola, after an eleven-hour commercial flight to southern Africa with Whitlam and Lord Deedes from the Daily Telegraph. 


The country was reeling from a twenty-year civil war. 


Fifteen million mines had been scattered during that war among a population of 12 million, and clearance had barely begun.  The streets were populated with men, women, and children without legs, few of whom had wheelchairs or even crutches.  Some 70,000 innocents had stepped on a land mine; every 334th citizen was an amputee....


In the wreck of Huambo, still a disputed and heavily mined area, Diana and her party had to walk in single file behind an anti-mine engineer to reach a small hospital....

[Back in London] Lord Howe, Under Secretary of State in the Ministry of Defence, was offended that Diana's support for a ban on land mines was out of line with Tory policy, which was to oppose a unilateral ban while working for a worldwide ban that would exempt "smart mines," which are effective only for a short time. 


Peter Viggers, a Tory member of the Commons Select Defence Committee, popped a vein...."It doesn't add much to the sum of human knowledge.  This is an important and sophisticated argument.  It doesn't help . . . for a very ill-informed Princess to point at the amputees and say how terrible it is."



Actually, it did help. 


It helped enormously. 


The "very ill-informed" Princess was backed by Tony Blair's Labour Opposition, by the Liberal Democrats, by Lord Deedes, and by military figures no less imposing than the


two Gulf War generals


Norman Schwarzkopf


and Sir Peter de la Billiére. 


She had landed herself in the middle of exactly the kind of controversy Henry Kissinger had warned her to avoid.  Well, too bad.  Angola was a snapshot of the woman Diana was about to be. ...


"How dare anyone criticize Diana Princess of Wales for taking up this heartrending cause?" wrote Clare Short, July 1997 The Spectator -- "Diana's stand on the issue deserves the utmost praise.  Her public profile is able to give hope to millions of victims and campaigners that once and for all there may be a global ban on the manufacture and use of anti-personnel land mines."


...Diana's land-mine commitment...drew forth everything that was best about her in the service of a cause that was heartrending, underpublicized, and controversial.  Chased in Angola by the press the day after the Tory smoke bombs went off in London,

Diana did not engage in argument.  "It's an unnecessary distraction . . . I'm a humanitarian, not a politician."

...The Tory government, having badly lost the debate, smoothed it over as a "misunderstanding" and promised support for "progress towards" a worldwide ban.  Too late.  It was just another sign they were out of step with popular feeling.


A few months later, the Tories lost the general election by a landslide.


-30-