Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Lord Flight Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, I pay tribute to Margaret Thatcher, who I believe was easily the greatest Briton of my adult lifetime. I will refer to six particular points, some of which have been touched upon by others. First, something which has struck me strongly has been the enormous loyalty, devotion and affection felt towards Lady Thatcher by all those who have worked for her, including the police who were responsible for her safety, and which she very much reciprocated. She was in many ways such a warm person, quite the opposite of her public image.

The second point, which is related to that, as many noble Lords pointed out earlier, is that she was a person of great kindness, compassion and modesty. Ahead of every general election she would pack her bags at No. 10 because she by no means took it for granted that she would win an election, even if she was ahead in the polls.

For millions of British people from all walks of life, men and women, she was their heroine. So many people who met her have said to me, “That was the highlight of my life”. They realised greatness when they were in its presence.

Fourthly, and again, this is a point that was made by others but which comes out so strongly, she was someone of great integrity, honesty and principle, and she had a strong sense of duty both in national politics and in her own private life. She was also the key champion of personal aspiration and of equality of opportunity, and this was not only about enabling people to own their own houses, but about enabling them to start their own businesses and buy shares. She was the person who very much got rid of damaging old-fashioned class loyalties and turned a majority of this country into the broad, non-offensive label of middle class. What she achieved has led to that.

She was also the architect not just of our turning round the British economy after the problems of the 1970s but of a business revolution. I will give some brief quotes from leading businessmen, by no means all members of the Conservative Party. The noble Lord, Lord Browne, formerly of BP, said that she,

“breathed life into free enterprise”.

The noble Lord, Lord Sugar, said that she created the,

“opportunity for anyone to succeed in the UK”.

Sir Richard Branson said that she,

“understood what was needed to make business thrive and to turn the country into a country of entrepreneurs”.

Many people forget that before her time even the terms venture capital and entrepreneur hardly existed in the English language, and certainly there was very little of it in practice. So much of what has been a success story in this country since then has been the growth of small businesses and new businesses, employing more than 13 million people. I cite, although it is perhaps a little specialist, the Cambridge cluster that has come up: 629 businesses with a turnover of more than £11 billion, employing 53,000 people, and in the key new areas of IT and technology, life science and physical sciences. Lady Thatcher would have been proud of that, and she would have seen that it promised a promising economic future for this country. Certainly, in the first 20 years of my own life, we never even thought about the ability to be entrepreneurs and to get new businesses up and running.

I was privileged to have got to know Lady Thatcher a little after she became Prime Minister, and the more I knew her the more I admired her. I echo the comments of others, even in the latter parts of her life, as regards her beauty, and those amazing eyes. I often think warmly of when I put her into her car after events which I had attended. If she had had a good conversation, particularly with young people, she showed even then how much she had enjoyed her evening.

I end by also conveying my condolences to her family. The loss of a mother, no matter who she is or at what age, is always harrowing and I think of the country as a whole which has lost, I repeat, its greatest figure in my lifetime.