Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Lord Selkirk of Douglas Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selkirk of Douglas]

My Lords, I express sympathy to Mark and Carol Thatcher, and I endorse the view of several noble Lords that Margaret Thatcher was prepared to go the extra mile on small, non-political, non-party matters last thing at night when she returned to her office in Downing Street. I remember being told that by the late Ian Gow, who took me into her office and showed me the kinds of letters that were sent to her, as well as bottles of whisky for charity fetes and the like. Just like an old trooper, she would settle down and sign the lot.

If I may say so, being a Minister in her Government was challenging, interesting and never dull. In Scotland, home ownership went up from about 30% to about 60% under her premiership, which was a massive change. Lady Thatcher believed very strongly in expanding home ownership, and one episode is extremely vivid in my memory. The Prime Minister was in Uphall, West Lothian, for the first rent-to-mortgage sale in Scotland to former public sector tenants. As we stood in their sitting room in that small house, a girl who was the editor of the local school magazine asked Mrs Thatcher, as she then was, what her favourite sport was. The Prime Minister immediately made the surprising revelation that it was skiing. She then went on to say that neither she nor any of her Ministers would be doing any skiing at all, as none of them could afford the time off if they broke a leg. As it happened, I looked across at Michael Forsyth—now the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean—who was Secretary of State for Scotland and was standing just beside her. I knew for a fact that both he and I had just completed our arrangements to go skiing within days, if not hours. We gave each other a smile but said not a word.

After the ceremonial transfer of ownership, I was invited to go with her in the Prime Minister’s car and, as we left, a protestor hurled an egg straight at us. The driver accelerated and the egg landed harmlessly in the road. The Prime Minister looked as though absolutely nothing had happened, and it was then that I realised that she was not called the Iron Lady for nothing.

She may not have made a farewell address to this House but she certainly summed up what she believed in in two sentences in her book on statecraft, showing all her continuing zeal and cutting edge. She wrote:

“The demand that power be limited and accountable, the determination that force shall not override justice, the conviction that individual human beings have an absolute moral worth which government must respect—such things are uniquely embedded in the political culture of the English speaking people ... They are our enduring legacy to the world”.

She was very much at home in the House of Commons. She was a standard-bearer for parliamentary democracy, and that is something of which her own family can be very proud, as can we as parliamentarians.