38656356325923

and perhaps to avoid the repeated conjecture that she was upstaging the monarch. The
newspapers accused Mrs Thatcher of ambulance-chasing and elbowing the royal family
out of the limelight by dashing to be the first on the scene of disasters like the sinking of
the ferry Herald of Free Enterprise at Zeebrugge or the destruction of the Pan-Am airliner
over Lockerbie. IRA outrages found the Prime Minister swiftly comforting victims (she
had, after all, nearly become a terrorist statistic herself in the Brighton hotel bombing).
‘She wanted to demonstrate solidarity with the people who suffered and to show that
terrorists would never break British determination,’ an aide said. None the less,
Downing Street was conscious of the impression that was being given and sensitive
about it; there seems to have been a breakdown in communication between Prime
Minister and Palace as to who should go where and when. ‘The royal family couldn’t be
relied on to go,’ a Thatcher aide said defensively and indeed there was widespread
resentment when Elizabeth did not go to the Lockerbie disaster area but sent Prince
Andrew instead.
Mrs Thatcher is sparing in her references to the Queen in her memoirs of her Downing
Street years. The most she would say about her audiences with the Queen was:
Anyone who imagines that they are a mere formality or confined to social niceties is quite wrong; they are
quietly businesslike and Her Majesty brings to bear a formidable grasp of current issues and breadth of
experience. And although the press could not resist the temptation to suggest disputes between the Palace
and Downing Street, especially on Commonwealth affairs, I always found the Queen’s attitude towards the
work of the government absolutely correct. 19
Suggestions that Mrs Thatcher might be interviewed on the subject were met by the
Palace response, ‘I doubt if she’d say anything, she’s too loyal.’
The impression persists among politicians and Commonwealth members that
Elizabeth did act as a restraining influence on Mrs Thatcher in some of her more
intransigently tactless moods. There is speculation that it was advice from the Palace
which widened the celebration of the Downing Street anniversary from a dinner to
which Mrs Thatcher and her Cabinet invited Elizabeth, an occasion with strictly party
overtones, to one to which all party leaders and descendants of former Prime Ministers
were invited. Another occasion was the Cenotaph ceremony held on Armistice Sunday in
Whitehall, at which the Queen and the leaders of the political parties lay wreaths. Mrs
Thatcher originally refused to allow the newly formed SDP to take part. A leading
member let the feelings of his party at being thus excluded be known – indirectly – to
the Palace. Mrs Thatcher gave way. Mrs Thatcher, however, could be obdurate on
certain issues. Elizabeth would have liked to have visited the European Parliament in
Strasbourg; her Prime Minister resolutely opposed the idea of giving royal countenance
to that despised institution. Elizabeth did not go.
Mrs Thatcher’s major innovation in British politics has been the fearless determination
with which she set about attacking the sacred cows and ancient institutions of Britain.
Doctors, lawyers, the universities, the trades unions, the nationalized industries, the BBC