再Thatcher - A final farewell, April 20th 2013 P54 (サッチャー)
There were some protesters, of course. As Margaret Thatcher's funeral cortege rumbled along the Strand on April 17th, a few dozen scruffy lefties turned their backs and jeered. Yet none lobbed lumps of coal at it, as had been promised. And there were plenty more Tory loyalists on show - respectful City types and purposeful-looking pensioners carrying packet lunches and banners that read, simply, ゛Thank You゛. Swelling their numbers - to the relief of the leaders of Lady Thatcher's Conservative Party, who had feared a poor turnout - were many foreign tourists, cheering gamely with the rest as the Iron Lady's mortal shell rumbled by on a gun carriage. They can claim to have seen one of Britain's grandest pagents - a state funeral in all but name - and one of the last, it may be, of its kind. Inside St Paul's Cathedral - as viewed from the eyrie to which your columnist had been assigned - the British genius for public ceremony went some way to dampening the squabbling that has erupted over the Tory prime minister's legacy since her death on April 8th. The presence of the queen - for only her first prime ministerial funeral since Winston Churchill's in 1965 - lent authority to the proceedings and revived memories of that time, between 1979 and 1990, when Britain's two top jobs were held by women. The hymns were old favourites, in which it is possible to finda Thatcherite stamp. What is ゛To be a pilgrim゛, with its commitment to vanquishing giants, if not an injunction against U-turning? A lovely Wesleyan hymn, ゛Love divine, all love excelling,゛recalled the former prime minister's Methodist upbringing in Grantham, including chapek twice on Sundays. Many credited her remarkable discipline to that influence. Others called it the Methodism in her madness. For students of pageantry, there were rich pickings；ermine robes, garters borne on cushions, ancient orders of precedence and the Lord Mayor wielding an impressive black blade - the mourning sword. Transcending the frippery was St Paul's itself, symbol of London's wealth and resilience, into whose cavernous dome the voices of choristers rose, ushering Lady Thatcher's soul to her god. This is why Britain, a modest-sized and, despite Mrs Thatcher's efforts, still-declining power, can get away with such portentous state theatre：it does it so well. Even George Osborne, the tough Tory chancellor oe the exchequer, shed a tear. But the glory of the cathedral's acoustics could not quite compensate for the awkwardness of the occasion. This was the first ceremonial funeral (a status almost indistinguishable from a state one) for any Briton since the queen mother, in 2002, and of any commoner since Churchill. Notwithstanding the well-wishers along the Strand, few have shown much enthusiasm for it；and, amid the rowing over her record, many hated it. On April 13th a few thousand former miners and anarchists protested violently against Mrs Thatcher's memory in Trafalgar Square, recalling the bitter industrial strife that characterised her early years in power. In Corby and probably elsewhere, Labour councillors staged a walkout protest during a tribute to the former prime minister. In Scotland, Wales and northern England, where Mrs Thatcher is widely loathed, regional newspapers took no pain to hide it. ゛We will never forgive her,゛trumpeted the South Wales Evening Post. Polls suggest only half approved of the decision to grant Mrs Thatcher a ceremonial send-off. The country still bears scars from the 1980s. But resentments have been sharpened by a sense that Mrs Thatcher's legacy, which only a few years ago had seemed redemptive of Britain's fortunes, now appears rather less so. Deregulating the City, though well done, is harder to celebrate in the wake of the financial crisis. The callousness with which miners were consigned to the dole queues, though probably necessary, is harder to gloss after five years of on-off recession. Restoring Britain's global influence, through the special relationship with America in which Mrs Thatcher took such pride, seems a temporary affair in the wake of the bungled wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Even some Tory politicians, among whom the Iron Lady is revered, have dared to qualify their eulogies. Michael Gove, the influential Tory education secretary, drew a distinction between the needs of Mrs Thatcher's time in office and today.゛Social bonds need to be nurtured more carefully,゛he wrote. (後略)
