Princess Diana Refused to Be Silenced in New Footage: ‘I’m a Humanitarian Figure’
Unearthed footage shows Princess Diana pushing back on her own team, giving a rare look at how she handled pressure in the moment
Princess Diana has always been known for defying royal protocols and speaking up for the downtrodden. In unearthed archive footage, a fresh glimpse into Diana’s 1997 visit to Angola reminds us of her brave personality. It makes one thing pretty clear, that she was not about to dodge difficult questions, even when her own advisers tried to intervene. The clip was dropped as part of ITV’s Reporting History series. It shows Diana in conversation with journalists during her January trip to the war-hit country, where she was actively campaigning against landmines.
Journalist Steve Scott asked if he could raise a question about the “political role"; Princess Diana was clearly up for it, saying, “I'd have thought that was the most important question out of the two. I'd go for that one.” However, her team quickly tried to step in, with someone off-camera attempting to shut the question down. But the princess was not having it, making it clear she wanted to tackle the question head-on.
Diana’s trip to Angola had already led the Conservative government to make accusations that she was backing Labour policy. In the new clip, she addresses the situation and shrugs it all off, making it clear the criticism did not matter to her in the backdrop of the work she was there to do. She said, “I saw it merely as a distraction, as I'm not a political figure; I'm a humanitarian figure. Always have been and always will be.”
The Princess, who was divorced at the time, visited Angola to draw attention to the country’s landmine crisis. She met victims and even walked through an active minefield to highlight the human cost and push for a global ban. The campaign became so hard to ignore that it gave a real push to global action on landmines. By December 1997, 122 governments had signed the Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel mines, which officially came into force in March 1999. Since then, more than 100,000 landmines have been cleared from Angola alone.
Unfortunately, Diana’s Angola trip was one of her last humanitarian trips out of many, and seven months later, she passed away. In August 1997, she died in a car crash in Paris. After spending so much time around her during the Angola trip, Scott got a glimpse of a much more personal side of Diana on the flight home. He later shared with Tom Bradby that, in that moment, she was not speaking as the Princess of Wales but just as a mom.
Although she was committed to helping the world, her main priority was always her children. Scott recalled, “I stood with her on the plane all the way back. It was a long conversation. She wanted to talk about her boys and about how much she missed them when she goes away.” He added, “Her priority was her boys, and that's where she would be focusing most of her energy going forward.”
