Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Viscount Bridgeman Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Bridgeman]

My Lords, I too extend my condolences to the family of Lady Thatcher. I hope the message that will come from this debate to them will be simply of the sheer greatness of their mother and grandmother. Shortly after Margaret Thatcher retired as Prime Minister, there was a meeting of the ACP to decide how her retirement would be marked. There was considerable navel gazing but in the end Lord Boyd-Carpenter was deputed to organise a dinner for her and Denis at the Cavalry and Guards Club. I had only recently arrived in your Lordships’ House. We were mixed up career-wise and age-wise, and it was a very jolly event. At the end of the dinner, Humphrey Colnbrook, the then chairman of the ACP, said, “Margaret, this evening is not a time for speeches. I shall say just one thing: you took over the leadership of our party at a time when this country was sinking giggling beneath the waves. Your abiding achievement as Prime Minister is that you restored its self-respect”.

This was a fraught time for Margaret and even a weepy time, as many of her colleagues at that time who have spoken today will testify. We need not have worried. It turned out to be a wholly absorbing overview, a tour de force of her achievements as Prime Minister month by month, week by week and sometimes even hour by hour. She finished with the following sentence: “My Lords, may I leave you with one final thought? The destiny of this country is inextricably bound up with that of the United States of America”.