Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Even in death they cannot leave Diana alone

I, a staunch republican, still believe that Diana was done in, and still miss her swirling, subversive presence. There, got that out, even though such a confession immediately makes me a credulous cretin or a crazy conspiracist in the eyes of my cleverer peers. Laugh all you like, shake with derision. Journalism is not the handmaiden of power, and should always loiter suspiciously on the edges of received wisdom.

It is disquieting that so many acquiescent hacks cannot bear this necessary isolation and seek to join the establishment instead. Together they assert with absolute certainty that the death was an accident. I am not sure it wasn't, but I hold on to the possibility that it may not have been. We have not reached the end of that history; it is not over. The death of Diana is our JFK cover-up. It will never be truthfully explained.

Each time a new "respectable" report repeats the accident orthodoxy and tries to stamp out further questions, I find my unease rising, a restless ghost refusing to lie down. Those with vested interests seem overly determined to crush any scepticism about the official answers we have been given and will be again. Like my colleague Mary Dejevsky, methinks they insist too much and that key questions remain unanswered.

The young princess, viciously laid aside after she had dutifully surrendered her virginity and eggs and produced heirs for posterity, wrote in her own handwriting:

"I am sitting here at my desk today in October, longing for someone to hug me and encourage me to keep strong and hold my head high - This particular phase of my life is the most dangerous ... is planning 'an accident' in my car, brake failure or serious head injury in order to make the path clear for Charles and Camilla to marry."

It was written to her butler, Paul Burrell, and she adds: "I'm going to date this and I want you to keep it ... just in case." Why was she this afraid, and so sure about the manner and reasons of her untimely death, which happened just as she said? Charles got his girl as she predicted, and they all lived happily ever after in the castles.

Burrell was made to learn lessons for his insubordination; we have never had a tested account of what exactly happened from the bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones. The white car in the tunnel remains a mystery; key CCTV cameras were not working at the Ritz; specialist Mercedes mechanics were not asked to examine the car; even Lord Stevens, last approved arbiter on the matter, agrees the hotel was infiltrated by French intelligence; US intelligence was continuously bugging Diana's phone calls. Why? Why? Why?

This week, I met one of the TV chiefs behind the Panorama Diana programme. He said everyone he knew at the BBC felt it would be impossible for Charles and Camilla to marry after that broadcast. But what a lovely coincidence - God blessed the Tampax lovers. His nuisance first wife just happened to die, and after a bit of upset with the grieving masses, order was restored to the monarchy and state. The film The Queen completed the recapture. The ship is steadied again. And shameless Camilla will one day be Queen.

More appalling still is the way in which the dead princess is consumed, even more in death than in life, used and abused for PR and profit. At her funeral, her brother - who betrayed her when she needed him most - had us weeping for his sister. Didn't we love him for it? Her sisters, mother, father, Charles, and every member of royalty failed the woman, but have shamelessly used her brand.

Her sons, loved to distraction by their mum, now firmly retrained to be the Windors boys, put on a good-time gig for their mates, claiming it was for Diana who was swept away by the noise, her name barely an echo. Dozens of books on the tragic princess have been penned, the latest, by attention-grabbing Tina Brown, who had met Diana for a few lunches.

If that isn't enough, Diana is increasingly cast as a sexual predator, a maverick, an unstable Sue Ellen, a media wicked witch, a crony of the Fayeds, the most hated Arabs in town. She may have become a little of all these as life made her feel bitter and emotionally homeless, but she wasn't when they plucked her up for sacrifice, only 18 and damaged after a harsh aristocratic childhood. It is as if her detractors feel she will only really die if her story, too, is killed and buried.

That will prove more difficult than the death itself. For many Britons, Diana remains the one who cared, who had spirit and empathy you can never bottle and sell on. As Anthony Holden wrote in his tribute book Diana: A Life and Legacy, penned during the emotional heatwave that descended on the land after the crash: "Diana - a fragile butterfly broken on a media powered royal wheel, a tenacious tigress in defence of those, like herself, whom life had victimised, or simply passed by."

This is why you won't find many revisionist black and Asian Britons. The music producer Charles Bailey has just brought out a collection of rap songs, Ten Years Since You've Gone, by young black urbanites who remember their princess with deep affection. I do too, for to her we were never the barely tolerated aliens. She even fell in love with one of ours. And that was another reason she had to die.

y.alibhai-brown@independent.co.uk

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