Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

If I may draw your Lordships’ attention to an entirely different aspect of the life and character of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, it to mention her origins as a good Methodist. This has already been mentioned by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford. Lady Thatcher was born in Grantham in the county of Lincolnshire, and of course John Wesley was himself born in that same county, at Epworth. She was born into a very devout Methodist home, and the pieties and religious practices of that home, as well as the values and principles, were early learnt. I believe she had them processed into her very being, and I shared my views about that with her later on in her life.

I want to register where she comes from in terms of the primordial energies that shaped her character. She came down to London to pursue her career, although while at Oxford, as well as pursuing her scientific career, she was part of a preaching team that went around the villages near Oxford to take the Gospel and pronounce good news. Some of those who were in the team with her are still alive and will tell you their own tales. If only we could get the Appointments Commission to bring them into your Lordships’ House they would regale us with many a tale.

I believe therefore not just that I should introduce an element that is artificially drawn in, granted the grand themes that have already been adumbrated in previous speeches, but that I should describe something that was essentially her. She and Denis were married at Wesley’s chapel, where I have the privilege to be the minister, and Carol and Mark were baptised there a little later. She had an enduring fondness for the chapel and came back regularly. I say to many visitors who come our way that if they look at the handsome communion rail that was given to us by Margaret Thatcher, it is the kind of evidence that everybody needs that, despite all those who say the opposite, she did actually help some people to their feet. It is worth noticing that as a vice-president of the Friends of Wesley’s Chapel she was a faithful friend, although, of course, as many Methodists do, she was translated into the other place, namely the Church of England, and made that her spiritual dwelling place on a regular basis.

I would have loved to have shared with her my feelings about her quotation of a sermon by John Wesley when she was in Edinburgh. It was a sermon on money, and of course, she was well known to have her own views about that. I think that she wanted to draw John Wesley very much into her own thinking and to make him suit her purpose. She quoted two points of Wesley’s sermon: that it was the responsibility of all Christians to earn all they can—that is all right—and to save all they can, although I can personally attest that with a 0.5% interest rate there is not much point in doing that these days. However, she omitted the third point of John Wesley’s argument—that having earned, and having saved, good Christian people should be altruists, spending and giving all they can for the common good.

As I say, she was a great friend. It is interesting that as well as being the minister of the church where her marriage service took place, I happen to be an honorary canon of the cathedral where her funeral service will take place. I shall be there next Wednesday in that capacity.

There are many points upon which I disagreed fundamentally with her. When she came, for example, to open one of the two museums that we have on our site—it was in 1981 and things were not going well for her at that time—many of us who championed the cause of the poor and were very radical young Methodists were out there, shouting the odds and sounding a different music from what was inside the building she was opening. She was as well briefed for a humble visit to the Methodist chapel as she ever was on matters of policy in the ways that have been alluded to in previous speeches. She knew the answers even though we who were there all the time often did not. It is strange that God, or whatever noble and secular Lords want to substitute for God, has put a sense of humour at the heart of things. This young Turk who was asking for this chapel to be pulled down and for the money raised to be given to the poor is now the minister of the very chapel that he wanted to be destroyed and disposed of.

However, she was a friend to the end. She wanted to come to church the week after their 50th wedding anniversary. Unfortunately, she suffered a stroke in the course of a short holiday that she was then taking in Madeira and was not able to come. I count it a great privilege to have known her just a little. She exchanged some opinions with me—for example, about South Africa at a crucial stage in its life. She said “The chief’s the man”, meaning of course Chief Buthelezi of the Inkatha Freedom Party—and she could not have been more wrong, could she? At the same time, she did things which I suspect we on our Benches would be glad of because they were things that we would have liked to have done but perhaps did not have the right positioning to do.

Hers was a very complex character. History will tell, but she was larger than life. The inhabitants of the county of Lincolnshire are known popularly as yellowbellies. She was not one of those.