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Whatever you think of Margaret Thatcher, today’s funeral was an extraordinary moment in London’s recent history.
In most capitals, grand public events are standard fare. But Londoners usually see such lavish pomp and circumstance only on royal occasions such as Diana’s funeral or William and Kate’s wedding.
The extraordinary thing about Thatcher’s ceremonial funeral — which, let’s be honest, was a state funeral in all but name — was that it happened at all. War leader Winston Churchill excluded, most prime ministers have had rather quieter send-offs. Even Clement Attlee, whose reforming Labour government laid the foundations for modern Britain, had a remarkably low-key funeral when he died in 1967, with fewer than 150 people attending a modest service at Westminster’s Temple Church. The crowd outside was just 30 strong and the TV cameras were nowhere to be seen.
Given that Attlee had fought in the First World War, where he was badly wounded in Iraq, and was Churchill’s deputy in the struggle against Nazi Germany, it was remarkable that his send-off had no military content at all.
By contrast, even though Mrs Thatcher herself never saw action, her funeral was above all a military spectacle, with her coffin being carried into St Paul’s by servicemen from regiments involved in the Falklands War.
Since military success was so central to Mrs Thatcher’s image as an icon of popular patriotism, perhaps this is hardly surprising. Still, I can’t help thinking there is something odd about the fact that Harold Macmillan, who was almost killed at the Battle of the Somme and walked with a limp thereafter, was buried quietly in Sussex in 1987, whereas Mrs Thatcher had a spectacular send-off surrounded by hundreds of soldiers.
The difference is that Macmillan lived and died in an era of emotional restraint. Indeed, nobody better embodied the values of the stiff upper lip. By contrast, London has now become a city of conspicuous emotional spectacle. The tipping point was the funeral of Princess Diana in 1997, which seemed to mark a transition from flint-hearted austerity to teary-eyed incontinence.
Being something of a repressed stick-in-the-mud, I pine for the days when prime ministers were buried in front of three men and a dog. But I have to admit that Mrs Thatcher’s funeral is probably more in keeping with our national character.
For the truth is that the stiff upper lip was really only a short-lived Victorian interlude. Indeed, grand, sentimental state funerals have long been a London tradition.
At Nelson’s state funeral in 1805, for example, the commemorations lasted a staggering five days, with a river pageant in Greenwich and a vast procession from Whitehall to St Paul’s. So many people turned out to watch, many of them in floods of tears, that by the time the head of the procession had reached the cathedral, Nelson’s body was still stuck in Whitehall.
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As for Wellington’s funeral in 1852, some observers thought it unrivalled as a display of shameless sentimental patriotism. More than a million people lined London’s streets — again, many of them wailing and sobbing — as the Iron Duke made his last journey in a funeral car of unparalleled vulgarity.
“For form of ugliness, horrible combination of colour, hideous motion, and general failure,” wrote Charles Dickens afterwards, “there was never such a work achieved as the Car.”
By these standards, Mrs Thatcher’s last journey was positively modest. Still, I suppose she got the send-off she deserved. In her own mind, at least, she was a national hero to rival the military champions of the Napoleonic Wars. Little wonder, then, that she demanded a funeral to match.