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By Peter Oborne

 

 

 

Plans to give the former prime minister a state funeral insult many honest, patriotic people

 

For all the sad picture of Maggie Thatcher in old age portrayed in Meryl Streep’s new film, our former prime minister remains magnificent: brave, impervious, indomitable, the giantess of our time.

 

Nevertheless, preparations for her death are inevitably afoot. No official announcement has been made, but it is already widely understood that she may be granted the very rare honour (outside the Royal family) of a state funeral, which would probably take place at St Paul’s Cathedral.

 

The discussions have been held in secret, without public debate, through a series of meetings in the inner recesses of what used to be known as the British Establishment. The most recent of these, reportedly chaired by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude and attended by Sir Malcolm Ross, a senior member of the Royal household who oversaw the sensitive funeral arrangements for Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, took place last week. I understand this meeting agreed that, while not on the scale of royalty, Baroness Thatcher will get a fine public send-off.

 

Such secrecy is understandable: public discussion of the funeral arrangements of any living person can be distasteful and upsetting. However, this decision to grant a state funeral, with all it involves in terms of honour, ceremony and cost, is controversial. It needs to be challenged now, because when the time comes it may be too late, and the atmosphere too fraught, to change course.

 

I believe it would be wrong to give Lady Thatcher a state funeral, even though I accept that she was a very great woman, one of the six or seven most important and admirable prime ministers to occupy Downing Street in the almost 300 years since the office was invented.

 

The problem is that talk of a state funeral for Lady Thatcher reflects a troubling failure to understand what such events are about. They are so very rarely awarded because they have been designed for a category of great men and women who have come to represent the nation as a whole, rather than a particular sect or faction.

 

The first of these are monarchs. It is they who represent the British state in all its pomp and glory, while their heads of government (prime ministers) fulfil a much more workmanlike function. So all monarchs receive a state funeral: that is because they are above politics.

 

The second class are warriors. Horatio Nelson was given a state funeral after his heroic death at Trafalgar in 1805, and so was the Duke of Wellington in 1852 (acknowledgment of his superb role in the defeat of Napoleon, not for his undistinguished premiership later). Earl Haig, Britain’s leading First World War general, viewed by some historians as an unimaginative butcher, was awarded a state funeral in 1928.

 

The third class are brilliant men: Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin both got state funerals. Finally, we come to politicians. Only four prime ministers have been awarded the honour in the past 200 years – Wellington, Palmerston, Gladstone and Churchill. Of these, Churchill was the symbol of our lonely resistance to Hitler in 1940; Palmerston (probably lucky to get his) and Gladstone both stepped down in ripe old age, by which time they had almost completely transcended party politics.

 

Does Margaret Thatcher rank alongside those two massive figures? I believe that she does. She transformed Britain very largely for the better during her great premiership of 1979-1990; like Gladstone, she sought to inject a powerful morality into the heart of our national life.

 

Yet her greatness as a prime minister is not enough. State ceremonies can be very damaging unless (as with the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton) the whole nation can come together.

 

This will not happen after Lady Thatcher’s death. There are too many people – for example, shipyard workers from Glasgow, miners from Yorkshire and the Welsh valleys – whose livelihoods were destroyed during her premiership. They struggled against her government passionately at the time, and many still abhor her memory.

 

Here is an up-to-date example. On Tuesday, David Farham, a former miner, had a letter published in his local newspaper, The Shields Gazette. He wrote: “I am proud to say I was on strike for 12 months in the 1984-5 strike, when Thatcher used the full might of [the] state to defeat us.

 

“I would stand on a picket line now if it would prevent her having a state funeral. She had a near-pathological hatred of trade unions, and referred to us as the 'enemy within’, but what did we do that was so treacherous?

 

“We struck to prevent pit closures and protect jobs – with disastrous consequences. Look at the ghost towns of former pit villages which she left devastated.”

 

As it happens, I reluctantly take the view that Mrs Thatcher was right to take on the trade unions as she did, even though the human consequences were dire. But Mr Farham – who accurately states in his letter that there are “hundreds of thousands like me” – has every right to believe what he does. He is a British citizen just as much as the most ardent of Thatcher fans, with the proviso that, as a miner, he probably worked harder and risked more for his country than they did.

 

Yet the British Establishment is now planning to insult Mr Farham, and the many honest and patriotic people who agree with him, by making Lady Thatcher the first prime minister to be given a state funeral since Churchill. This cannot be right. Clem Attlee was deputy prime minister during the Second World War, and went on to lead the Labour government which founded the National Health Service and created the modern welfare state. He was mourned at a quiet funeral at Temple Church near Westminster. Harold Macmillan was put to rest at a small service near his Sussex home.

 

Such modesty does not suit our self-aggrandising modern politicians. Wander around Portcullis House (itself a hugely expensive monument to the hubris of the political class). There are gorgeous portraits on the wall, paid for by the taxpayer, even of absurdly minor figures: Diane Abbott, Menzies Campbell, Paul Boateng.

 

Prime ministers used to retire quietly. Now they expect to be treated as if they were ex-presidents, with entourages and large corporate offices. And once Lady Thatcher has been given her state funeral, why not Brown, Blair, Major and Cameron?

 

It is nearly 50 years since Sir Winston Churchill died. When the boat containing his coffin passed through Docklands, London dockers lowered their cranes as a mark of respect. It was such a profoundly moving moment because these working men were saying that, while Churchill had been born an aristocrat, he was also one of them because he had led them in the war against fascism. I wonder how many of those dockers would have paid such a tribute to Margaret Thatcher.

 

She cannot be blamed for this. The proposal for a state funeral came from Gordon Brown, who used it, I would guess, at least in part as a device to suck up to the Conservative Right at a time when he was trying to destabilise David Cameron.

 

By all means allow Margaret Thatcher to be buried, as Attlee was, in Westminster Abbey. This greatest of modern politicians should be honoured beyond measure when she dies. But David Cameron, the Prime Minister who loves to pretend that “we are all in this together”, would be well advised to lay the idea of a state funeral to rest. Telegraph