IT is not so long ago I was asked at a meeting why I publicly defended Diana, Princess of Wales. It was, I replied, ''because of the nature of the people who are attacking her''.

It is true that the more distant the Princess became from sections of the establishment and the more controversial the causes she championed, then the more my admiration for her grew. I like to think that this was a general reaction in Scotland.

The Princess did not have a special relationship with Scotland as such. She probably

associated our country with cold, wet, and dreary days at

Balmoral. However, as she campaigned for unfashionable causes and as she became an outsider and something of a rebel and an underdog herself, I think the affection for her north of the border grew proportionately.

In tragic circumstances such as these it is always difficult to know what is best and appropriate to do. That is one of the difficult judgments that the parties in the Yes-Yes campaign have had to make just as many other bodies have had to make similar sensitively balanced decisions. The cancellation of national political events this week is indeed a substantial obstacle to the Yes campaign but necessary to show due and proper respect. It just means that we will all have to rise to the challenge of the 100 hours of campaigning that remain to us after Saturday.

One of the better decisions of the past few days is for Saturday's funeral service to have a role and an input from those beyond the establishment, with whom the Princess had a relationship which was uneasy and at times confrontational. She wasn't just the People's Princess but had become a potent anti-establishment figure. That fact was first identified by Nigel Evans, editor of Majesty Magazine who argued back in 1995 that she offered the establishment a fundamental challenge.

The concern about her and the attacks upon her grew over the past year. It is only a week since the Princess was under attack for an interview she had given on land mines in good faith to Paris Match and only a few weeks since she was forced by political pressure to cancel a meeting in the House of Commons on the same subject.

Those who attacked her, arguing that it was inappropriate for her to be involved in politics, were apparently oblivious to the fact that she had been removed as a member of the royal family and presumably had the same rights as any other citizen to speak her mind.

In any case the Princess did not regard the land mine campaign as party political but one of moral imperative. Indeed it was the simplicity and humanitarian conviction with which she portrayed her argument that gave it its true force. That is what made her the People's Princess. Despite having been born into undoubted privilege, she retained a sense of human perspective which most people believed many establishment figures completely lacked.

When the Princess hit back at her ''enemies'' (those she described as ''them'') they dismissed her as ''in the advanced stages of paranoia'', ''mentally unbalanced'', and an ''unguided missile'' - not words which I expect they will be particularly proud of today. However, she was none of these things and the more she demonstrated her resolve to create an independent public role for herself then the more she was feared.

Diana was no paragon. Few of us are. But unlike most of us, her faults were magnified in the glare of constant media exposure. However, her vulnerability tended to reinforce rather than detract from her image. What-ever else may be said about her she had an open and generous heart and it is for that quality that the people have returned to her in full the compassion which she personally radiated.

Even when a fully paid-up royal, Diana gravitated towards causes which favoured the disadvantaged and isolated. Her approach to her work for Aids charities was devastatingly effective, breaking through both the taboo of the disease and the stiff formality which had previous characterised royal events. She was cruelly lampooned for her concern for the gravely and terminally ill and yet no-one in that position seems to have felt anything other than her generosity of spirit and concern.

She moved on to help the homeless with gestures of individual help which it is difficult to believe were anything other than straight from the heart. The recounting of individual experiences over the past few days bears eloquent testimony that she retained what few people in her position managed to do - a common touch.

Whatever faults she had it is difficult not to believe they were created by the circumstances she found herself in. The painful shyness and naivete of the teenager who burst on to the public stage in 1981 was not in the slightest manipulative and had no streak of vanity. She was created by the system.

Her legend will grow. She will be forever young. The tragedy of her life cruelly ended at the very moment she seemed to have found with Dodi Fayed some of the personal happiness which had long eluded her adds to the poignancy.

When she was excluded from the royal family she was written out of the official prayers, a decision which may have been dictated by protocol but which seemed desperately mean-minded. This meant the Princess disappeared from the prayers in every Church of England and in the House of Commons.

However, the Princess was never written out of the people's prayers - or of their hearts.