Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Lord Young of Graffham Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Graffham]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to be able to pay tribute to the memory of Baroness Thatcher. I was her creation. The noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, put me in the Manpower Services Commission; she invited me into Cabinet. For five years, I had the privilege of working closely with her. I do not want to talk about those. Much has been said about the trials and tribulations of what happened over that decade. However, taking the words of Premier Chou En-Lai, when asked whether the French Revolution had been a success—“It is too soon to say”—I believe that the perspective on Margaret Thatcher will change as the decades go by and that her reputation will grow.

However, there is one aspect that has not really been covered which I would like to mention. It has been covered partially. I refer to her compassion and her greatness as a human being. Much has been said about the Falklands, but a little known fact about the Falklands is that every night during the six weeks of the campaign she would have a list of the casualties and every night, before going to bed, she would write a long, hand-written letter to the parents or partner, explaining how they lost their lives and in what a good cause it really was.

I was to experience this myself two or three years later. My young brother, Stuart, who was chairman of the BBC, died. On the day he died, by the time I got home, there was a three-page letter from Margaret, condoling me and talking about Stuart. An hour later, I got a phone call from Shirley, his widow. She had just received a similar letter, entirely different in content. Later on that day, my mother rang me. She had also received a letter from Margaret. How many serving Prime Ministers would take the trouble actually to do that?

One other little story shows that side of her character. After she had left office, my wife and I took her and Denis out for dinner. We were sitting at the Savoy when a waiter spilt something over my wife’s dress. Margaret grabbed my wife’s arm and said, “Don’t say a word. If you complain, he’ll lose his job”. How many people would actually think that way? With all the talk about the Iron Lady, I pay tribute to a very human lady who accomplished so much for us all.