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| Cameron opens Debate on Thatcher Legacy | | | LONDON: Two days after the death of Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister David Cameron lauded her on Wednesday as “a woman of great contrasts” who had broken through “the thickest of glass ceilings” from her beginnings as the daughter of a greengrocer to make Britain “great again.”
Mr. Cameron was speaking at the start of what was likely to be a protracted debate in Parliament to commemorate Mrs. Thatcher, with members of the dominant Conservatives set to laud her while others offered more qualified testimony to one of the most contentious, best-known and influential figures of modern British history
Mr. Cameron recalled that she had been Britain’s first and so far only female prime minister and that her 11-year tenure from 1979 to 1990 was the longest among British prime ministers for over 150 years.
They say ‘cometh the hour, cometh the man,'” Mr. Cameron said. “Well, in 1979, came the hour and came the lady. She made the political weather, she made history, and — let this be her epitaph — she made our country great again.”
But Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour opposition, recalled what he depicted as errors by Mrs. Thatcher, including her condemnation of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in South Africa as a “terrorist” organization.
Mrs. Thatcher’s critics accuse her of being on the wrong side of history in South Africa, seeming to support the apartheid government in its bloody confrontation with protesters in the 1980s and opposing economic sanctions designed to weaken the country’s white rulers. But some in South Africa say she contributed to Mr. Mandela’s release from prison after 27 years in 1990.
“She exerted more influence in what happened in South Africa than any other political leader,” F.W. de Klerk, the country’s last white president, said in a statement issued in South Africa, according to The Associated Press.
Mr. Miliband, seeking to strike a balance between offering respect and maintaining ideological distance, told Parliament that, while Mrs. Thatcher was a “unique and towering figure,” she “made the wrong judgment about Nelson Mandela and sanctions in South Africa.”
“I disagreed with much of what she did,” Mr. Miliband said, “but I respect what her death means for many, many people who admired her and I honor her personal achievements.”
The parliamentary session was unusual in two senses — both the upper House of Lords and the lower House of Commons had been recalled from recess and the time set aside for tributes was more than seven hours, compared with the 63 minutes devoted to former prime minister, Edward Heath, after his death in 2005.
Mr. Cameron, like many Conservatives, casts himself as a political heir to Mrs. Thatcher, the “Iron Lady” whose ascendancy ended when the same party that is now praising her pushed her from office to be replaced by John Major.
The Thatcher era is generally recalled as a time when Mrs. Thatcher, who died of a stroke at the age of 87 on Monday, unleashed a capitalist revolution that crushed labor unions, decimated staid industries that had once formed the nation’s economic base and inaugurated a period depicted as one of thrusting economic growth that sanctified a generation’s acquisitiveness.
The parliamentary debate on Wednesday came a week before her ceremonial funeral under tight security precautions in central London. It presented a particular challenge to Mr. Miliband, some of whose followers believe that, more than any other postwar leader, Mrs. Thatcher caused distress and hardship for hundreds of thousands of blue-collar Britons as she broke the power of once-mighty mining, print and other unions.
Parliament is to debate a single motion saying they have “considered the matter of tributes” to Mrs. Thatcher. A vote is not expected. Such are the passions stirred by her memory that some opposition lawmakers said they would boycott the session.
John Healey, a former government minister from the Labour party, said Mr. Cameron had sought to use Parliament for his own political purposes. “He’s wrong to recall Parliament, and wrong to hijack it in this way. I will play no part and I will stay away,” he said.
Profoundly contentious in life, Mrs. Thatcher seems also to be stirring debate after her death, with some lawmakers challenging the cost and appropriateness of a funeral similar in pomp and solemnity to those of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997, and the Queen Mother in 2005.
British news reports said there was speculation that guests might include former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and the former American first lady, Nancy Reagan. Given her disputed legacy, security arrangements as her body is borne on a gun carriage to St. Paul’s Cathedral for a service to be attended by Queen Elizabeth II among many others are expected to be similar to those in force for the 2012 London Olympics, the news reports said. Some 700 military personnel will be part of the occasion.
Mark Thatcher, Mrs. Thatcher’s son, said in a statement outside her home on Wednesday that her family was “enormously proud and grateful” that the queen would attend. “And I know my mother would be greatly honored as well as humbled by her presence,” he said.
Two former Labour prime ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, plan to attend the funeral next week, British news reports said.
Even as the debate approached, though, partisan sniping underscored the depth of division about her legacy. The Conservative foreign secretary, William Hague told BBC television that the biggest problem for the British Left was that “they could never beat her” at the ballot box in her three terms in office.
He added: “They claimed to stand for millions of people but they could never get as many votes as Mrs. Thatcher in an election.”
And some figures in the Church of England questioned whether the tone of the funeral service would match the church’s opposition to parts of Mrs. Thatcher’s legacy
Giles Fraser, a former senior cleric at St. Paul’s Cathedral, said the Anglican Church was often the “unofficial opposition” to Mrs. Thatcher’s policies.
“We have to be very, very careful that this is not just an opportunity for political point-scoring through a funeral,” he said in a radio interview. “It is problematic. Every day in that cathedral, the choir will sing about Jesus, that he brought down the mighty from their thrones then lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. They are very strong words. |
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