Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby]

My Lords, in paying my tribute to Margaret Thatcher, I can now share with the House a little piece of history. I was Airey Neave’s unofficial PPS in 1975, and chief bag carrier. My job was to help him organise the future leader of the Conservative Party. In the initial stages, we met in Room J3 in the House of Commons; it was my job to book it, et cetera. The first person that the Neave team supported was not Margaret Thatcher; it was Edward du Cann. That campaign produced 80 or 85 supporters; it was around those sorts of numbers. However, Edward came to that group and made it clear that he did not wish to stand as the future leader, because he had recently married and he and his wife had discussed the situation and he was withdrawing his candidature.

We had an immediate meeting of the group and went through the others forecast to be running, and the consensus was that we should ask Margaret to join us. At that point, the information was that Margaret had precisely two supporters. I was asked to make contact, which I did, and Margaret came to address our meeting in Room J3. It was clear from the way that she addressed that meeting that this was a woman of considerable potential. Several Members this afternoon have mentioned “strategy”; she had a very clear strategy at that meeting, and had sensed what the party wanted in a new leader. Airey turned to me when Margaret had finished and said, “We’ll have no questions now. Would you be kind enough, Michael, to take Margaret to the room next door and come back?”, which I did. We had a fairly lengthy discussion. The unanimous view of the people present, except for three, was that we should support Margaret Thatcher. Most of the rest is history, other than that I was in charge of trying to persuade the 1974 intake to support Margaret.

The second example I give of Margaret and her ability and understanding of people and countries was after we took over in 1979 and I was on the Back Benches as a PPS in Northern Ireland. Even then, I had an interest in Sri Lanka. Judith Hart had commissioned something called the Victoria Dam in Sri Lanka. I knew about the dam—it would cost about £100 million—and I asked to see the Prime Minister to suggest to her that the project should go ahead. I had an audience with her, and with the then Overseas Development Secretary of State, and Margaret said, “Michael, there are two points I make to you: first, that if we as a country have an agreement with another country”—as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, said earlier today—“we stick to it. So the agreement is that the project will go ahead. Not only will it go ahead but, secondly, I wish to be there at the opening”.

Some years later I was pleased to be there with Margaret and Denis, and we had a garden party before the formal opening at the dam. The big thing in Sri Lanka in those days was the President’s elephant named Raja. Denis was asked whether he wished to give bananas to the elephant, and of course accepted. Unfortunately for Denis, he was not too good on the anatomy of an elephant. Denis decided that elephants took bananas through their trunks. Just as Margaret was about to tell him, “No, don’t put it in his trunk”, it was too late. Denis put half a dozen bananas in the trunk of the elephant, which then did a typical elephant snort and the rest of us were covered by bananas. Margaret said, “I thought I told you early on, ‘Put it in his mouth, not in his trunk’. Did you not hear me?”.

Those are my two personal memories. As some of you know, I take a great interest in history. If Cromwell was the catalyst of parliamentary democracy, then in my judgment Margaret Thatcher will go down as the person who was the catalyst to change our country into the country it is today.