Tributes to Baroness Thatcher

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

The House has already heard much about Margaret Thatcher as a huge political figure—the iron lady who dominated British politics and world politics—but my wife and I grew to know her after she retired from the House of Commons. We came to know someone who was far from the arrogant or heartless figure portrayed by her adversaries. She was someone who must have forced herself to be strong, to hide any self-doubt, to deny herself any weakness, in order to live up to an ideal of herself. She was anything but arrogant.

I do not know how many times we saw her reject the adulation that was so often heaped upon her. She felt undeserving of such praise and standing ovations. She would say how she could never have achieved anything on her own, that her Governments were a team effort in which many played their part. This was genuine humility, not arrogance. And we have read and heard so much about her acts of personal kindness.

It was her passion for the truth that made her such a dangerous adversary in argument—a danger which she harboured long into old age—and she loved a good spat. She met some bright young candidates before the 1992 election—me included—[Interruption.] I beg your pardon. Two now serve as senior Ministers of state. As they tried to justify UK membership of the exchange rate mechanism, she scorned the one who had worked closely in her Government with heavy inflection. “Oh,” she said, “I am so disappointed with you.” She listened to the other, who argued that the exit from the exchange rate mechanism would involve too much loss of face for the Government. She retorted: “Loss of face? What is loss of face compared to the loss of 350,000 jobs? If you think that, you’re a fool. There’s the door!” Not an easy introduction for an aspiring candidate.

What we miss from politics today is her certainty, her seriousness, her clarity of principle, her fusion of the practical with her sense of moral purpose. Those who disagreed with her undoubtedly felt that to be arrogance on her part, but she felt she was a guardian of greater truths and principles, which were far more important than her mere self. This, with her formidable intellect, gave her an extraordinary prescience about the world. How right she was about the exchange rate mechanism, and about the Maastricht treaty and monetary union. I would caution those who try to use her name in support of the EU, as it has become, as though she would ever have put her name to the Lisbon treaty or anything like it.

Another myth that this debate helpfully dispels is that she had no sense of humour. When she arrived in Essex in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) for the 1992 election campaign, a junior reporter from the Essex County Standard breathlessly caught up with her hectic pace and asked, in front of 200 other journalists, “Do you agree that the Conservative campaign is lacking in oomph?” Mrs T retorted, with heavy irony, “That’s what I’m here for, dear.”

She will always be revered as a woman of principle with iron determination, even by those who disagree with her. Her premiership was about restoring national self-belief, something few can deny she achieved, and that is what we must now do for ourselves. It has become an axiom in the coverage of reaction to Margaret Thatcher’s death that she was divisive, which ignores the fact that the UK was already bitterly divided. We need to hear about the scars that industrial decline has left in many constituencies represented on the Opposition Benches, but that should not detract from her achievements; nor should she be blamed personally for what was, in many respects, an inevitable transition of economics.

We should regard some of the more unseemly reactions to her death as a backhanded tribute to her, a reminder of the attitudes she had to overcome in order to achieve what she did, but let the argument about her legacy be based on the facts and not the myths which her opponents would prefer to believe. Spending on health, education, pensions and welfare continually increased under her premiership. The number of people in work increased by 1.8 million. Manufacturing output was significantly higher when she left office than when she was first elected. Wider home ownership and share ownership spread wealth more widely than ever before; social mobility was greatly increased. The incomes of every section of society, including the poorest, increased in real terms. Income taxes paid by the richest 1% of the population increased from 11% to 15% of the total tax take.

As she grew older, we regarded Lady T less and less as a former Prime Minister, more and more as a favourite aunt or grandmother. Sometimes it was hard to believe that this small, frail lady had once held the world in the palm of her hand. The whole nation will be for ever in her debt.