Was Princess Diana offered security after her divorce?

[antelopevalley]

There is an interesting article in The Sun that says amongst other things, that Harry is asking lots of questions about Diana's death e.g. " Official judicial sources in Paris say the Duke of Sussex’s researchers have been seeking information about the car crash that killed his mother 25 years ago." One of the questions is allegedly whether Diana had been offered security after her divorce.

After her fatal crash Scotland Yard asked why Diana had no security. Tina Brown said that Diana had turned down security. But the suspicion is that Diana is in the same situation as Harry i.e. only offered security if attending an official royal event such as the Jubilee, but refused security for the rest of the time.

I know it is The Sun, but given Harry's fight around official security in the UK, which he has offered to pay for but still been refused - it rings true that he would be asking questions about his mother's security. It is clear if she was using official security at the time, she would still be alive.

www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/19503595/prince-harry-diana-final-moments-book/

She says she felt trapped. Not that she was tied up in chains.
Why so dismissive?
Many people say they feel trapped e.g. in jobs, relationships, etc. They are not saying they are physically tied up.
But it is easy to dismiss what a woman says I guess.

I think part of the reason that people don’t take her complaints seriously are because of her statements like this, which are provably incorrect:

`’And, yeah, when you say, ‘Was it what it looked like?’, my understanding and my experience of the past four years is it’s nothing like what it looks like. It’s nothing like what it looks like. And I . . . and I remember so often people within The Firm would say, ‘Well, you can’t do this because it’ll look like that. You can’t’. So, even, ‘Can I go and have lunch with my friends?’ ‘No, no, no, you’re oversaturated, you’re every-where, it would be best for you to not go out to lunch with your friends’. I go, ‘Well, I haven’t . . . I haven’t left the house in months’.

I mean, there was a day that one of the members of the family, she came over, and she said, ‘Why don’t you just lay low for a little while, because you are everywhere right now’. And I said, ‘I’ve left the house twice in four months. I’m everywhere, but I am nowhere’..... And so, there was very little that I was allowed to do.”

We later discovered from the information that came out in her lawsuit against ANL that in this period she for example went on a secret holiday to stay with her friend Jessica Mulroney in Toronto, and her staff worked with her to keep it a secret from the press. Not to mention the trips to Amsterdam, Lake Como, which were also private travel etc etc.

That’s why the Oprah interview was so bad. It’s left them with a huge credibility problem.

Exactly! Diana would've survived that car crash if she'd been wearing a seat belt.

On the point of security - she had a bodyguard with her at the time of the crash. Trevor Rees Jones (a private security guard) was in the passenger seat of the car, wearing a seat belt, and he was the only survivor. It's been said many times though that if she had had her British police protection with her they would never have allowed her to get in that car with Henri Paul, who was drunk.

I am interested to know if she was offered security or not. This may be a question answered in Harry's memoir

After the lies and nonsense spouted during the Oprah interview, do you really think that Harry's book is going to shine a light on anything? It will be 'Harry's truth' i.e. a load of emotive bollocks that casts him and his mother as 'victims of the dark forces within the royal family'. You'll learn how Harry feels (angry, victimised, bitter, resentful, persecuted, wronged, etc), but I wouldn't hope for any further enlightenment, if I were you!

Harry is covered by Royal Protection in the U.K. for official duties ( eg the PJ) not for dotting around filming stuff for Netflix .

She says she felt trapped. Not that she was tied up in chains
Why so dismissive?
Many people say they feel trapped e.g. in jobs, relationships, etc. They are not saying they are physically tied up

However, what is interesting about M's version of entrapment presented in the O interview is that it is indeed very physical, as opposed to the psychological entrapment that you cite above. The O audience is left in no doubt that the RF either physically confiscated her keys, driving license and passport or she had no choice but to surrender them. Either way, the implication is that not only was this princess physically trapped in the palace but, in addition, actually prevented from seeking help when she needed it most I am still unsure why she thought that anyone would be persuaded by this narrative.

Harry is covered by Royal Protection in the U.K. for official duties ( eg the PJ) not for dotting around filming stuff for Netflix

Well I am glad to know that, and that seems fine on the surface (and recognises that tax payers probably don't want to pay for protection unrelated to public duties) but it strikes me as a bit too complicated in reality. How is protection actually allocated? Who pays for protection to and from the airport or to other locations (always the most vulnerable part of a tour) when their trip is a mix of both private and public events? It's tricky to work out and given recent events (Shinzo Abe and Salman Rushdie) I don't think the RF should be churlish about this. The protection should be allocated on professionally calculated risk and nothing else. It's not about optics. It's about protecting the brother of the heir who has a wife and small children. Do the decent thing fhs!

@MaulPerton That is not true. She said what she meant.

i am sure I read that Royal Protection was provided to and from the airport .

France didn’t know Diana was inside their borders until after the crash, I think?

@Mintchervilpurslane the protection is allocated by RAVEC, a committee that decides on these matters and it is indeed allocated on a risk basis. There have been whole threads devoted to discussing this in the past ! 😂

Regarding Diana notifying her private secretary of any travel plans so risk assessments could be made and security offered by the Met, I seem to remember reading Dodi changed their travel plans at the last minute. Diana was supposed to be flying back to the UK to meet up with her boys and Dodi changed the plans so they ended up in Paris. The rest is history.
As far as I remember, on any documentaries about Diana's last days, they always mention plans being chopped and changed and Diana being unhappy about this.
Maybe this is what Harry is referring to?

Regarding Diana notifying her private secretary of any travel plans so risk assessments could be made and security offered by the Met, I seem to remember reading Dodi changed their travel plans at the last minute

Yes, they were originally intending to fly back to the UK on 30 August, but Dodi changed their plans and they went to Paris instead. They landed there at 3pm, and so neither the British Embassy nor the French Police knew that the Princess was even in Paris until the accident happened.

Please could someone answer this question which I have no clue what the answer could be.

If Diana had accepted police protection after her divorce but remarried at some point, what would have happened then?

I think they allocate protection purely on risk - which is sensible - so in contrast to how they deal with titles and so on, which is protocol. On that basis, remarriage would have been immaterial. If she’d still had the public profile, and still been at risk, she would have been entitled to PPOs. She would have always been mother to a future king, so it’s not like she would have dropped back into anonymity.

Would her new husband be offered protection if she was deemed at risk?

He

No idea.

I don’t know if the Met would ever clarify that kind of issue - part of the protection is surely the fact that they don’t publicise their budget, or who gets protection and who doesn’t?

They don’t answer FOIA requests on those kind of issues, certainly.

Lots of info about this here, from the inquest webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20090607230629/www.scottbaker-inquests.gov.uk/hearing_transcripts/170108pm.htm

Why should RAVEC be told Diana's movements if they are not protecting her ?

So that they (or her own staff) could risk assess, and see if specific arrangements needed to be made.

So what now, they were protecting her then ?

Abroad. The agreement was that Diana would inform of her movements abroad so that her security needs could be assessed. She was in France at the time we are discussing.

The intention was obviously to provide protection in some form, but it relied on Diana telling them where she was. It seemed that Dodi was calling the shots on the that final trip to Paris, and no-one knew she was there.