Blair plans state funeral for Thatcher
BRIAN BRADY
WESTMINSTER EDITOR (bdbrady@scotlandonsunday.com)
TONY Blair is backing a controversial plan to provide a state funeral for one of the Labour Party's most reviled enemies of recent decades: Margaret Thatcher.
Scotland on Sunday can reveal that civil servants have been working for months on the details of Baroness Thatcher's funeral, even though there is no suggestion the 80-year-old is suffering from any life-threatening condition.
But Blair believes Thatcher's eventual passing should be marked with the first state funeral for a commoner since Winston Churchill more than 40 years ago.
The proposal has astounded constitutional experts, who argue that - royalty aside - the honour is normally reserved for politicians who "saved the country at times of dire need".
The funeral plan has also sparked furious debate at the heart of the New Labour government, with a number of ministers opposing such a mark of respect for a Conservative Prime Minister.
The move is also likely to provoke a furious backlash from the grass roots of the party, where Thatcher is still detested for her stout opposition to the unions and policies in areas including employment, privatisation, gay rights and the Poll Tax during her 11 years in office.
One Labour MP last night claimed the proposal proved Blair and his advisers in Downing Street had "finally lost contact with reality".
The blueprint being drawn up within the Cabinet Office lays out a route for the funeral cortege through central London. It is believed it would take in Trafalgar Square, the scene of wild victory celebrations at the end of the Falklands War in 1982, and a riot against the Poll Tax seven years later. It would pass down Whitehall past Downing Street, her home from 1979 to 1990, on its way to the Houses of Parliament.
Past state funerals have involved a lying-in-state for several days in Westminster Hall, but it is believed that the plans for Thatcher favour a ceremonial route leading directly to a service at Westminster Abbey. St Paul's Cathedral is another option under consideration.
The state ceremony is a highly unusual move for any "commoner". Churchill was accorded the honour in 1965 in recognition of his leadership during the Second World War.
Planning for Churchill's funeral carried on for over a decade after he suffered a heart attack in 1953 and the Queen made it known she would like his contribution recognised in this in the proper fashion when he died. Over 300,000 people filed past his body as it lay in state in Westminster Hall and more than 100 foreign leaders attended his funeral service.
In recent years, former prime ministers, including Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan and Edward Heath, have had lower-key funerals followed by memorial services at Westminster.
A government source last night said Blair had argued Baroness Thatcher deserved special treatment because of her "unique" contribution to British politics during the 1980s.
Blair is known to be an admirer of the 'Iron Lady', who is credited with helping to bring the Cold War to an end and ending the unions' domination of British industry. But she is remembered by opponents as a rigid leader who presided over rises in unemployment and poverty, and the decline of traditional industries, and who clamped down on civil rights.
Prof Richard Bellamy, an expert in the British constitution at Essex University, said the decision was "unusual". "The only two prime ministers that I can remember getting state funerals were Churchill and the Duke of Wellington.
"They could be seen as people who saved the country in times of dire need... It is hard to think of the Falklands as being in that category.
"The claim would be that she fundamentally altered the character of the British state, but we could say the same about Clement Attlee. I'm pretty gobsmacked that it's being considered. One can only assume that this is yet another example of Blair being totally out of step with the population, not to say his own party.
"I guess the fact that we have had a number of big funerals lately sort of lowers the benchmark; it becomes less of a rare event."
Glasgow Labour MP Iain Davidson predicted that the revelation would not go down well within the Labour Party.
He said: "Churchill at least was a unifying force. Thatcher was almost entirely a divisive influence."
Thatcher has suffered personal hardships in recent years. Her husband Denis died in 2003 and the following year their son, Sir Mark Thatcher, pleaded guilty in South Africa to unwittingly helping to bankroll a failed coup in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, in West Africa.
Thatcher officially withdrew from public life on her doctors' advice after suffering a series of small strokes several years ago. But she made a brief return to the spotlight last autumn at a party to mark her 80th birthday.
"What [Winston] Churchill did in wartime, Margaret Thatcher did in peacetime," outgoing Tory leader Michael Howard said in a birthday tribute. "Her political will and her iron courage saw off the threats to our way of life that Britain faced in 1979. We all owe her an enormous debt."
Thatcher's spokesman was unavailable for comment on the funeral plans last night.
Right course, whatever the PM's motives - GERALD WARNER
THE question whether Lady Thatcher should - in the remote fullness of time - be entitled to a state funeral is not debatable to anyone with a sense of British and global history. Only in partisan Leftist circles could there be the least controversy on the subject. In Georgia (whether in the US or the former Soviet republic) the notion of The Lady not being so honoured would provoke incomprehension.
As the victor of the Falklands, the restorer of parliamentary democracy unvetoed by the trade unions, the re-energiser of the British economy, the liberator of the individual from state control and - above all - the joint destroyer of the Soviet Union, with Ronald Reagan, the claim of Margaret Thatcher to funerary honours is self-evident.
Seven non-royal individuals have so far been accorded state funerals: Nelson, Pitt the Younger, Wellington, Palmerston, Gladstone, Field Marshal Lord Roberts and Churchill. Disraeli was offered one but had left instructions to the contrary, which caused Gladstone, carrying rancour beyond the grave, to accuse him of "playacting". A state funeral is one at which sailors draw the gun carriage (dating from the horses bolting at Queen Victoria's obsequies); at a ceremonial funeral it is drawn by horses.
Now, the Labour Party is up in arms against a Thatcher state funeral. We have been here before. When Pitt the Younger died, Charles James Fox led the Whig opposition to the parliamentary motion proposing a state funeral: it was contemptuously voted down by 288 votes to 89. If we could accord a state funeral to Palmerston, the painted old satyr who presided over so many disasters, we can surely honour Margaret Thatcher, who succeeded so spectacularly in transforming our country.
Yet this is a political move by Tony Blair. He has always been semi-detached from his party. Recently they have come to regard each other with reciprocal loathing. As he prepares for the international lecture circuit, this gesture would put helpful blue water between himself and the party he despises, gaining him respectability among the geopolitical chattering classes. He may well be doing the right thing for the wrong reason; but it is the right thing.
Divisive politics split country in two - PETER KILFOYLE
EVEN a cynic like me was jolted by reports that the Cabinet Office is preparing a quasi-state funeral for Baroness Thatcher. I know that she has a keen admirer in the present Prime Minister, but how could such an accolade be justified?
Even the most ardent Thatcherites must accept that, despite her obvious inclinations, she was not Head of State - head of government, it is true, but without the historic triumphs and popular acclaim which led to Churchill's unique distinction. His finest hour was more than Thatcher's finest years. He brought the country together in its time of need, she split the country asunder.
The emollience of a Macmillan or of a Callaghan went unrecognised; Prime Minister Thatcher was the personification of malevolence towards those who were not with her. Attlee left behind the framework of the Welfare State which still defines our politics; she set out to destroy it. Wilson, maligned and then ignored, gave us the Open University, she gave us grant maintained schools. Even Ted Heath worked for consensus, she came up with the poll tax and two recessions.
Her fans might argue that she turned the United Kingdom around. That, she did, as the miners can tell you, or those still battling to revive shattered communities in our cities. Ah, her supporters respond, you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs. Well, says I, she certainly broke hearts and minds as factories were shut down, and their employees thrown on the scrap heap.
Like her pupil, Tony Blair, she had a totally corrosive effect on the nation whilst in the grip of the arrogance of power. Few tears were shed when her own party brought her down. Too many had suffered from her narrow and vindictive approach to what should have been the common good. When the time comes, those who loved her will mourn her. The rest of us will simply remember.
Peter Kilfoyle is a Labour MP and a former defence minister
