Thatcher laid to rest amid pomp and protest

A flag draped coffin with the body of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher arrives by gun carriage to St Paul’s Cathedral prior to her funeral service in London yesterday.Reuters/LondonBritain gave Margaret Thatcher its grandest political funeral in half a century yesterday as her flag-draped coffin was borne through central London on a horse-drawn gun carriage, though a few boos were a reminder of her divisive rule and legacy.In an event comparable to Winston Churchill’s funeral in 1965, the Queen joined top British and foreign politicians past and present to pay her final respects to the “Iron Lady” who - for better or for ill - transformed the country. Thousands of supporters lined the streets of London as Thatcher’s casket made its final journey from the centre of British political power in Westminster to St Paul’s Cathedral.Honoured with a gun salute from the Tower of London every minute and the silencing of the bells of Big Ben, military bandsmen played Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Chopin.More than 700 military personnel and thousands of police provided security.Thatcher, who ruled Britain from 1979-1990, died after suffering a stroke on April 8. She was the country’s first and only woman premier, its longest-serving prime minister of the 20th century, and won three consecutive general elections.She sought to arrest Britain’s post-war decline by smashing the trade unions and privatising Britain’s national assets, while boosting home ownership and the services sector. More than 20 years later, her supporters view her as a modernising champion of freedom, while her foes accuse her of destroying communities and of ushering in an era of greed.As a bell mournfully tolled, a party of soldiers and sailors carried her casket on their shoulders into St Paul’s Cathedral. Beneath its giant painted dome - the same place where Horatio Nelson’s funeral was held and Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer were married - more than 2,000 mourners then heard a sombre service filled with hymns and reflective readings.“After the storm of a life lived in the heat of political controversy, there is a great calm,” the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, told mourners. “There is an important place for debating policies and legacy ... but here and today is neither the time nor the place.” In death, as in life, Thatcher polarises opinion. While the vast majority of onlookers clapped her cortege as a mark of respect and threw blue roses into its path, some chanted “Ding dong the witch is dead” and about two dozen opponents turned their backs on the procession. One man held up a placard reading “Boo!” and some shouted “scum”. In contrast, Finance Minister George Osborne had to wipe away his tears during the funeral service.The Bishop of London brought smiles to the faces of former leader Tony Blair, Prime Minister David Cameron’s wife Samantha and other mourners when he recounted a story about her telling him not to eat duck pate because it was fattening.Cameron and Amanda, Thatcher’s 19-year-old granddaughter, read from the New Testament while patriotic hymns echoed around the imposing 300-year-old cathedral.Two heads of state, 11 serving prime ministers and 17 foreign ministers looked on. Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger also attended.The music included Thatcher’s favourite hymns, among them I Vow to Thee My Country.Military bandsmen played Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Chopin to accompany the grandest funeral for a British politician since that of Thatcher’s hero, Churchill, in 1965. Polls have shown that many Britons are unhappy that the estimated £10mn bill for the ceremonial funeral is being picked up by the taxpayer at a time of austerity and spending cuts.But Cameron dismissed such criticism. “She was the first woman prime minister, she served for longer in the job than anyone for 150 years, she achieved some extraordinary things in her life,” Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, said.“What is happening is absolutely fitting and right,” the prime minister added. People gathered along the funeral procession route early in the morning with placards that reflected a range of views. “You gave millions of us hope, freedom, ambition,” one read. Another said: “Over £10mn of our money for a Tory funeral.” “This country was pretty well down on its knees in the ‘70s,” said Roger Johnson, among the admirers lining the pavement in central London. “Margaret Thatcher came along and sorted everything out. Her legacy is that she put the word ‘great’ back into Great Britain,” he said.There were notable absences. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Nancy Reagan, the widow of Thatcher’s great US friend and ally Ronald Reagan, were too frail to attend. The guest list for her funeral has prompted talk of diplomatic snubs. The US did not send a senior figure from President Barack Obama’s administration. Argentina’s ambassador refused to attend after Britain failed to invite Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, at the Thatcher family’s request, amid renewed tensions over the Falkland Islands. Relations have been strained since the 1982 war, when Thatcher ordered a task force to retake the South Atlantic territory after Argentinian troops seized it. Thatcher’s body was later cremated and her ashes were to be placed alongside those of her late husband Denis in southwest London. Her supporters say they want to raise funds for a library and study centre dedicated to her beliefs and erect a statue of her in a prominent place in London, a thought that horrifies her ideological opponents.The abiding domestic images of her premiership will remain those of conflict - police confrontations with massed ranks of coalminers whose year-long strike failed to save their pits and communities, Thatcher riding a tank in a white headscarf, and flames rising above Trafalgar Square in riots over the unpopular “poll tax” which contributed to her downfall. Cameron said Thatcher’s battles, particularly her crushing of strike-prone trade unions, had reduced divisions.“She was a bold politician who recognised the consensus was failing ... She took tough and necessary decisions and in many ways created a new consensus,” he said. Even Thatcher’s critics concede that she transformed the face of Britain, albeit in a way they loathe.In 1979, when she came to power, Britain was in the grip of a long post-war decline with troubled labour relations and low productivity and was being outperformed by continental rivals France and Germany. She turned that around, but the price in growing inequality and the closure of large swathes of Britain’s industrial base left parts of the country struggling to create new jobs and rebuild communities, leaving a bitter taste which endures. The Bishop of London said her funeral was a time to put politics to one side.“Lying here, she is one of us, subject to the common destiny of all human beings,” he said.Effigy torched as ex-miners celebrate deathIn a former colliery village in northern England, ex-miners still bitter about the 1980s coal pit closures under Margaret Thatcher’s government celebrated her funeral yesterday by torching her effigy. The demonstrators paraded the effigy of Britain’s deeply divisive first woman premier through the streets of Goldthorpe in a mock coffin before setting it ablaze on a makeshift pyre of wooden pallets and a sofa.Flames and black smoke filled the sky above the town’s boarded-up, graffiti-tagged terraced houses as hundreds gathered around the blaze, taking pictures on their camera phones as youngsters looked on. Several onlookers spat on the coffin as the flames took hold, destroying the life-size figure of the “Iron Lady”—a papier mache head on a body clad in a red dress, black tights and red shoes. “She destroyed our community. No jobs—people have no jobs. Goldthorpe used to be a thriving community,” said Heather Hopwood, 51, the landlady of the local pub and the daughter of a miner.Goldthorpe, near the town of Doncaster, is one of a string of pit villages in the south Yorkshire coalfield that to this day are still feeling the effects of the demise of its local colliery and the defeat to Thatcher’s government in the 1984-1985 miners’ strike.Villages like it revolved entirely around the mine and the jobs it provided. Thatcher remains a hate figure in the area and parties celebrating her death, which came last week at the age of 87, have been planned for decades. The bunting was up and there was a festive atmosphere outside the Rusty Dudley pub. England flags adorned the walls inside, while the balloons and ex-miners’ tops bore the slogan “coal, not dole”, which was common at the time of the strike.“Thatcher the Iron Lady - rest in rust,” read a banner pinned up outside. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Thatcher’s Britain has gone bust,” read another. The year-long strike pitted the National Union of Mineworkers and its charismatic leader Arthur Scargill against Thatcher’s Conservative administration, which wanted to close unprofitable and heavily state-subsidised pits. Thatcher was determined not to be brought down by a miners’ strike, as happened to her Conservative predecessor Ted Heath in 1974. The strike ultimately collapsed in a major turning point for industrial relations in Britain, depriving the NUM of its political power and accelerating the coal industry’s long post-war decline.In Goldthorpe’s High Street, it was party time outside the Union Jack Memorial Club, where a hundred people cheered, applauded and whistled when NUM banners were paraded past. Just hours after Thatcher’s funeral took place amid pomp and splendour in London’s St Paul’s Cathedral, a horse and cart pulled up outside the club in Goldthorpe bearing the replica coffin containing an effigy of the former Conservative leader. A piper played as the “hearse” led a parade up the High Street. “She was willing to let children starve,” said Robbie Conroy, 66, a miner for more than 30 years who wore a hat with “rust in hell” written on it. “I came down here in 1963 from Scotland because our pit closed. We were promised a future. Twenty years later it closed,” he said. “There used to be 179 pits and 198,300 miners. Now there are three pits and 1,100 miners,” he said, adding that there were still millions of tonnes of coal under the ground going to waste.