FURTHERMORE

Why I am no longer Thatcher's child

PETRONELLA WYATT

Ihave felt it coming for some time now. It has crept up on me like the symptoms of flu. First a few irritations that I hoped would pass away, then a fear that things were becoming worse, at last the conviction that the case was full-blown — I was becoming sick. I was becoming sick of Lady Thatcher.

I never dreamt I would say this. I have been a child of Thatcher in an almost literal sense. I first met her when I was ten. She was leader of the Opposition. It was a spring day and I was wearing a silly badge which said: 'British Smile Day'. Mrs Thatcher bent down. 'That's right,' she said. 'Keep smiling.'

Those words came to mean a great deal. After the Winter of Discontent, even as a child I could feel the despair of the adults I knew. The rubbish was piled high outside our house. It was like the aftermath of the Blitz, only everyone scowled. Keep smiling. Mrs Thatcher was coming to save us.

I don't think anyone can ever really esti- mate her psychological importance. Hers was an empire of the imagination. Before she came, most people in this country, par- ticularly the middle classes, used to skulk around as if they were ashamed of being English. It was the Suez syndrome. Lady Thatcher gave us back our pride.

Where were you when Kennedy was shot? Where were you the day Lady Thatcher resigned? It is seared into my memory. I spent the evening with a friend in a restaurant. We both cried. It was the first time that I had wept in public. I didn't care when people stared. I had lost my Earth Mother, the symbol of my youth. My goddess had been expelled from Olympus.

Whenever people were unkind about her, I thought of all the great things she had done. There was nothing mean or small about Lady Thatcher. When I was at the Sunday Telegraph she gave me an inter- view. I do not know what it is like to spend time with the Queen of Heaven, but I felt I was in the presence of Rider Haggard's imperial She. There was a visible majesty, a divine stamp; it was not all good, but nonetheless it was glorious.

That was a year or so after she had ceased to be prime minister. Even then, one heard rumours of depression and bitter invocations against her successor. I chose not to believe them — at least not the last. It was fabricated, surely, by the press. My goddess was above petty rancour. Her sub- lime patriotism would always put the good of the country above personal things.

Then slowly the proof became too much. Her criticisms of the Government, which began like thunderbolts from heaven, took on the nature of barbs and squibs. Reliable friends reported to me some of the bitter comments she had made about Mr Major. At one party, Sir Denis declared a hope that the Government would go under.

Worse, my goddess made remarks about Mr Blair, which, if not quite endorsements, enabled some commentators to claim that he was her anointed heir. Lady Thatcher's majesty was still there from time to time, but an awful malice seemed displayed upon her features — just because Mr Major was not graven exactly in her image. I never thought I would have to compare her to Sir Edward Heath, but as Sir Edward's 80th birthday approaches, one cannot but note the similarities between them.

Perhaps what Lady Thatcher is doing is worse. At least Sir Edward's refrains have been consistent. But she is giving succour to the leader of the Opposition whose poli- cies she professes most to fear — a federal Europe, most probably a single currency and the break-up of the United Kingdom.

There is no precedent for a deity chip- ping away at her own pedestal. But this is what Lady Thatcher is doing. Then, on 14 June, she took such a whack at it that it tot- tered. She went public with a large dona- tion to Mr Bill Cash's European Founda- tion, less than 24 hours after Mr Cash was forced by the Whips to break his financial links with Sir James Goldsmith.

I like Mr Cash as a person, but I am afraid that he and his supporters are Lil- liputians. They fight bitterly over the ends of the same egg. Mr Major is their last best hope — their only hope — but they are 'You'll be happy to hear that we pay peanuts.' doing their utmost to bring about his destruction, and with this a federal Europe. Sir James I like also. But he knows nothing about English politics. He has been a politi- cian only in France and he persists in con- fusing that country with ours. Worse, the France in which his spirit lives is a pre-1789 agrarian monarchy. Sir James is an oppo- nent of free trade, something, ironically, that Mr Cash worships as a Holy Grail.

Sir James is also capricious. He is a polit- ical tease. I learnt recently that he is plan- ning to field his Referendum Party candi- dates quite indiscriminately against Tory and Labour MPs alike. What is more, he intends to stand them against not only Tory 'wets' but known Eurosceptics, to the con- sternation of even his own followers.

Thus day by day Lady Thatcher destroys her tabernacle, as the temple of Jerusalem was destroyed after Solomon allowed false idols into the city. Her old followers are left with nothing but the remnants and memo- ries of their faith. Last week, one of them who worked in her office told me, The only charitable explanation is that she is bonkers.'

To some, it looks horribly like that. She is surrounded these days by youths who might be the henchmen of some weird junta. They are flak-jacketed 'movement troopers' whose political minds have not yet graduated from the university debating society. They are against Mr Major because he is not a 'proper leader', by which they mean a fanatical ideologue who makes con- tinuous loud noises. They want Wagner when Mr Major is more like Mendelssohn.

But loud noises do not a leader make. Often they are only a cover for bombast. The truth is that the European record of poor, pathetic Mr Major bears examination better than much of Lady Thatcher's. It was she, after all, who signed the Treaty of Rome. It was she who took us into the ERM (bullied by Lawson or not). But who engineered our opt-outs? Her reviled suc- cessor.

I wish she would stop it. There is still time to repair the temple. But it must be done soon or not at all. Lady Thatcher is in danger of being treated less kindly by histo- ry than she has been by her contempo- raries. And her worst crime is to betray us, her first-born children. When the goddess is discredited, the canons of the faith also fall into disrepute. Thatcherism is bigger than her. She should remember that.