Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Baroness Trumpington Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Trumpington]

My Lords, I think we owe a debt of gratitude to the staff who have turned up in the middle of their holidays. The food was warm and this place is as warm as it ever gets. Everything ran smoothly, as though it were a perfectly ordinary weekday event in the middle of the Session. We owe the staff a big debt of gratitude.

I had to speak today because I owe Margaret Thatcher everything. In 1980 she delivered her first Honours List. There were six men and me—rather like today.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

Hear, hear.

[Baroness Trumpington]

I was so lucky to come here and to have worked for her and with her, and fought with her. The fighting was part of the process. She liked to have something to fight against. It gave her ideas and helped her make up her mind later. I remember a poor man who sat between us at a dinner. I said, “The Daily Mirror is quite right about the mentally handicapped”. She said, “The Daily Mirror is never right”. That started us off. I think the poor man thought we were going to hit each other, and probably him, in the middle of the dinner. That was the way it was.

The alternative was the incredible kindness on one occasion when in terror I had to attend a full Cabinet meeting simply because my boss was unable to get there. I only had one remark, which was, “Professor So-and-So should get the job. The Department for Education agrees”. In terror I said it three times. I also had not had the opportunity to see how the Cabinet worked. It was quite a revelation. When the meeting was over and she was leaving, she came up to me, patted me on the shoulder and said: “I’ll see that your professor gets the job”. That was the way in which we operated. It was either death to the end or eternal friendship—and I know which I would choose. I send my very warmest sympathy to her family and say what a great loss it is to me personally and to all her friends and admirers, wherever they are.

I will say one more thing. It is curious that all the speakers today, apart from the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, have been men, and none has commented on her beauty.

[Noble Lords]

Lady Williams.

[Baroness Trumpington]

I beg her pardon. None commented on her beauty. She was a beautiful woman. It took a French President to appreciate that, even if his remark had a twist—but that is typically French.