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Thatcher funeral: goodbye to all that Thatcher funeral: goodbye to all that
(5 months later)
The distinction between a ceremonial and a state funeral is a subtle one, certainly hard to grasp yesterday as the flag-draped coffin of Margaret Thatcher was drawn on a gun carriage to the steps of St Paul's, where the military pallbearers stood in wait for a prime minister for the first time since Winston Churchill nearly 50 years ago. The Queen was there then, and now. This was not the only lingering echo of the war, for gathered inside Wren's glorious cathedral were the last of the generation that grew up during it and, in a few cases, bore arms in it. Outside, the streets were thickly lined with the respectful, the curious and a few of the critical.The distinction between a ceremonial and a state funeral is a subtle one, certainly hard to grasp yesterday as the flag-draped coffin of Margaret Thatcher was drawn on a gun carriage to the steps of St Paul's, where the military pallbearers stood in wait for a prime minister for the first time since Winston Churchill nearly 50 years ago. The Queen was there then, and now. This was not the only lingering echo of the war, for gathered inside Wren's glorious cathedral were the last of the generation that grew up during it and, in a few cases, bore arms in it. Outside, the streets were thickly lined with the respectful, the curious and a few of the critical.
The pomp and circumstance, like the unplanned recall of parliament last week, might have been intended to embed Lady Thatcher's place in history as a national hero beyond dispute. But the biographies of the mourners were an unmistakable reminder of her capacity to divide: there were the men who fought her, who were sacked by her, who resigned from her governments. Rows of almost forgotten faces, a little as if Spitting Image had been commissioned to reprise its best jokes: the ex-SDP leader David Owen and his political partner, the Liberal leader David Steel, together, but apart; the successor she condemned, John Major, her chancellor, Nigel Lawson, who walked away from her cabinet a year before her fall, and her first foreign secretary, a frail Lord Carrington, who first took his seat in the Lords in 1940 and resigned from her government over the Falklands invasion in 1982. There were the conspicuous loyalists, among them her eternally faithful press secretary, Bernard Ingham, but not far from him Michael Heseltine, the man whose challenge triggered her final defeat. From abroad came Republicans and conservatives, shades from the past: Henry Kissinger and George Shultz; and admirers from the present such as Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu and the former Australian prime minister John Howard.The pomp and circumstance, like the unplanned recall of parliament last week, might have been intended to embed Lady Thatcher's place in history as a national hero beyond dispute. But the biographies of the mourners were an unmistakable reminder of her capacity to divide: there were the men who fought her, who were sacked by her, who resigned from her governments. Rows of almost forgotten faces, a little as if Spitting Image had been commissioned to reprise its best jokes: the ex-SDP leader David Owen and his political partner, the Liberal leader David Steel, together, but apart; the successor she condemned, John Major, her chancellor, Nigel Lawson, who walked away from her cabinet a year before her fall, and her first foreign secretary, a frail Lord Carrington, who first took his seat in the Lords in 1940 and resigned from her government over the Falklands invasion in 1982. There were the conspicuous loyalists, among them her eternally faithful press secretary, Bernard Ingham, but not far from him Michael Heseltine, the man whose challenge triggered her final defeat. From abroad came Republicans and conservatives, shades from the past: Henry Kissinger and George Shultz; and admirers from the present such as Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu and the former Australian prime minister John Howard.
By chance, the funeral was 34 years to the day since, in a storming campaign speech in Cardiff before her first election victory, the young and controversial opposition leader Margaret Thatcher, in the words of the Guardian's headline, abandoned the middle way. In a truly iconoclastic passage that must have struck terror in the hearts of those of her mourners who heard it at the time, she declared herself the true heir to the moral ambition of the traditional socialist movement. It was striking that yesterday the bishop of London, Richard Chartres, invoked with an equally startling boldness the radical Methodism of the leaders of the Tolpuddle Martyrs as a part of her spiritual identity.By chance, the funeral was 34 years to the day since, in a storming campaign speech in Cardiff before her first election victory, the young and controversial opposition leader Margaret Thatcher, in the words of the Guardian's headline, abandoned the middle way. In a truly iconoclastic passage that must have struck terror in the hearts of those of her mourners who heard it at the time, she declared herself the true heir to the moral ambition of the traditional socialist movement. It was striking that yesterday the bishop of London, Richard Chartres, invoked with an equally startling boldness the radical Methodism of the leaders of the Tolpuddle Martyrs as a part of her spiritual identity.
"We are all Thatcherites now," David Cameron told the BBC's Today programme, as if it defined her legacy. Certainly, if only because their politics was formed in her era, she has shaped the current Tory party, as she shaped many of today's political debates. It is also true that to many of the mourners lining the route, she was, as she is in sections of the press, the saviour of the nation. What yesterday's funeral illustrated again was that her legacy was not one nation but two. It was not just the glimpse of the SNP leader Alex Salmond in the congregation, or the back-turning protesters at Ludgate Circus, that served as a reminder of the gulf that separates the Thatcher heartlands in the prosperous south from the rest of Britain. As the doors at the west end of St Paul's were flung open to the sunshine at the end of the service, pictures popped up on Twitter of the damp centre of Leeds, where in front of a giant screen just two solitary individuals had paused to watch the service. Later, in the Dearne Valley village of Goldthorpe, not far to the south, a large crowd gathered around a celebratory bonfire in front of boarded-up homes, a brutal reminder that there are many communities where the scars of the miners' strike are yet to heal. Yesterday marks the end of an extraordinary nine days. But now we are back in the present, where history's verdict will not only be written by the victors."We are all Thatcherites now," David Cameron told the BBC's Today programme, as if it defined her legacy. Certainly, if only because their politics was formed in her era, she has shaped the current Tory party, as she shaped many of today's political debates. It is also true that to many of the mourners lining the route, she was, as she is in sections of the press, the saviour of the nation. What yesterday's funeral illustrated again was that her legacy was not one nation but two. It was not just the glimpse of the SNP leader Alex Salmond in the congregation, or the back-turning protesters at Ludgate Circus, that served as a reminder of the gulf that separates the Thatcher heartlands in the prosperous south from the rest of Britain. As the doors at the west end of St Paul's were flung open to the sunshine at the end of the service, pictures popped up on Twitter of the damp centre of Leeds, where in front of a giant screen just two solitary individuals had paused to watch the service. Later, in the Dearne Valley village of Goldthorpe, not far to the south, a large crowd gathered around a celebratory bonfire in front of boarded-up homes, a brutal reminder that there are many communities where the scars of the miners' strike are yet to heal. Yesterday marks the end of an extraordinary nine days. But now we are back in the present, where history's verdict will not only be written by the victors.
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