Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release Monday, 28 August 2017

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://www.cecaust.com.au

New CEC pamphlet released: ‘Who Killed Diana, and Why?’

28 August 2017—On the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales on 31 August 1997, the Citizens Electoral Council of Australia has released the pamphlet “Who Killed Diana, and Why?”

In his Letter of Transmittal of the new pamphlet, CEC National Secretary Craig Isherwood writes that securing justice for Diana at last, requires turning to the issues to which she devoted the last years of her life, in her campaign against landmines and the international arms trade, and her humanitarian missions among the sick, the injured and the dying in Britain and abroad. Isherwood writes:

Spurred by grief and anger at the suffering she witnessed during her crusade against landmines, shortly before her death Diana, Princess of Wales had compiled a large file on the British arms trade. She claimed the dossier “would prove that the British government and many high-ranking public figures were profiting” from this business, a confidante recorded [Simone Simmons with Ingrid Seward, Diana: The Last Word (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005)]. “The names and companies were well-known. It was explosive. And top of her list of culprits … was the Secret Intelligence Service, the SIS [MI6].… ‘I’m going to go public with this and I’m going to name names’, she declared. She intended to call her report ‘Profiting Out of Misery’.” Diana was well positioned to know: Her ex-husband Prince Charles had concluded all the later stages of the infamous al-Yamamah arms deal—the largest in history—which PM Margaret Thatcher struck with the Saudis in 1985. Funds from al-Yamamah were used to finance the rise of both al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Many believe that Diana’s work with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, the organisation which brought about the 1997 international agreement banning antipersonnel mines, was the reason she, her friend Dodi Fayed, and driver Henri Paul were killed in the Place de l’Alma tunnel in Paris on 31 August 1997. But there was a far deeper issue in her conflict with the British Establishment: her threat to the very existence of the monarchy. Already in November 1995 Diana told some 20 million viewers of the BBC’s Panorama program, “I shall not go quietly”, and expressed the hope of being “a queen of people’s hearts”. One commentator warned that if she were to continue such “a skilfully organised attack on the institution of the monarchy itself” as this interview detailing her struggles with the Royals, “the Establishment will simply get rid of her”. Said another observer, “She could have started a movement to end the monarchy.”

When Diana did die, that potential became dramatically visible, as UK Channel 5’s May 2017 documentary “Diana: Seven Days That Shook the Windsors” [shown in July on Australia’s ABC as “Diana: Seven Days that Shook the World”] acknowledged: “The impact of [her] death was bigger than anyone could have predicted”. Millions converged on the royal palaces in London to mourn “the People’s Princess”. Recalls the Channel 5 video, “As the public came to grips with Diana’s death, Britain found itself in the midst of a collective nervous breakdown”, and “the Queen knew that if [the Royals] lost the affection of the public, then their days were numbered”. The public outpouring during the week of Diana’s funeral foreshadowed the tectonic changes that would erupt in Britain nearly two decades later, with the vote for Brexit and the rise of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is greeted by huge, enthusiastic crowds wherever he speaks.

In the ancient Roman Republic (509 to 27 BC) there was an office called the Tribune of the People. A tribune had the authority to intervene on behalf of the ordinary people, or plebeians, to protect them from arbitrary acts by the ruling patricians, consuls and magistrates.
During the 2017 election campaign, Corbyn stepped forward as a Tribune of the People under the motto “For the many, not the few”, confronting the harm done to the population by the country’s most powerful institutions. In recent times the most famous other person to assume the role of a Tribune of the People was Diana, who had frightened the Establishment not only by speaking out about the cruelty of her husband and in-laws, but also by radiating kindness and compassion for ordinary people. Though she and Corbyn are of different backgrounds, there are clear similarities between the ideals and courage of each, not least in their campaigns against the murderous arms trade and its terrorist progeny.

Two decades after Diana’s death, “the many” have been impoverished and victimised to a degree far surpassing what she saw in her lifetime, and therefore the United Kingdom and other nations are witnessing the greatest popular upsurge in modern history, typified by the Brexit vote and the outpouring of support for Corbyn.

The reason for that upsurge is the great, systemic financial and economic crisis worldwide, of which the 2008 crash was just an earlier inflection point. Now the worldwide financier oligarchy, centred on the Crown and the City of London, faces the looming threat of an even larger crash, one which will evaporate their political power. Will such a desperation-driven oligarchy allow Jeremy Corbyn to become the next prime minister of the United Kingdom? Or, are there plans already afoot to make sure that he suffers a similar fate to that of the People’s Princess?

In August 1997, there was nothing that you, personally, could have done to stop the murder of Diana. But this time, with the emergence of Jeremy Corbyn as a new Tribune of the People, there is something you can do to ensure that he does not suffer a similar fate. And that pivots on the necessity to overthrow the Crown/City of London dictatorship by breaking up their Too-Big-To-Fail banks (in Australia as well as in London), through measures elaborated in this pamphlet.

Diana devoted the last years of her life to the forgotten, the immiserated, and the victimised, and she personally corresponded with some of those who helped inspire this present pamphlet. Would she not now smile down upon you for taking up her crusade?

Related reading:
• CEC pamphlet Stop MI5/MI6-run Terrorism! (2017).

Click here for a free hardcopy of “Who Killed Diana, and Why?”

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