Baroness Thatcher to receive ceremonial but not state funeral

Telegraph Co. ^ | 3:53PM BST 08 Apr 2013 | Martin Evans

[brityank]

Baroness Thatcher to receive ceremonial but not state funeral

Baroness Thatcher will receive a ceremonial funeral with full military honours at St Paul’s Cathedral, it has been announced.

The funeral will have official status, similar to that accorded to the funeral of the Queen Mother, but it will not be a full state funeral in line with her own wishes and those of her family.

Lady Thatcher will not lie in state and there will be no military fly-past.

Full details of the ceremony will be announced in coming days but Downing Street said a “wide and diverse range of people and groups with connections to Lady Thatcher” would be invited.

The statement added: “The service will be followed by a private cremation. All the arrangements being put in place are in line with wishes of Lady Thatcher's family.”

On the day of the funeral, Lady Thatcher’s coffin will begin its journey from the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft in the Palace of Westminster, the place she dominated for more than a decade.

[napscoordinator]

She didn't want that. She was very private in life and I guess death. Good for her. Save a bunch on money on something she won't enjoy anyway. I think once again she is putting England before herself. She probably would want to cancel the entire thing and just do the cremation part, but figured she needed to do at least a small funeral for the fans.

[napscoordinator]

The least the House of WIndsor could do is loosen up the purse strings a bit for a state funeral. Have they learned nothing from the Diana fiasco? Let her lie in state like Winston

The dang woman didn’t want it. Sheesh. let’s forget freedom and ignore her final desires. Great.

[napscoordinator]

I would rather Joe than the President himself. Think about that for a moment.

[napscoordinator]

I would also expect to see Bush41

No way. He is way to frail to make that trip. I am surprised he didn’t go before her.

[napscoordinator]

I guess you don’t want her to be with her husband. Is that what you are saying????????

[uncommonsense]

"I guess you don’t want her to be with her husband. Is that what you are saying????????

No, not at all! Her wishes are paramount.

But, having been in many of the resting places of the great leaders all over the USA and Europe, I believe she deserves a place where the many who admire her can visit and contemplate her accomplishments / place in history. Westminster Abby has many interned who, IMHO, are not near the leader and significance of Margaret Thatcher.

[chessplayer]

She is too hated by a great many people in GB for a state funeral. There would be riots in the streets. No way the ceremony would proceed uninterrupted, over and over and over.

[uncommonsense]

Wow! Typical of the comments:

The sycophants now praising Margaret Thatchers resolve. Conveniently forget that she famously said that she wouldn't sit down with terrorists, yet she praised and entertained the Jewish terrorist and murderer of British servicemen, Menachem Begin.

[JCBreckenridge]

Drewh, she herself requested no state honors.

[GraceG]

[ Wow! Typical of the comments:

The sycophants now praising Margaret Thatchers resolve. Conveniently forget that she famously said that she wouldn’t sit down with terrorists, yet she praised and entertained the Jewish terrorist and murderer of British servicemen, Menachem Begin. ]

Don’t you know it is not anti-Semitic to blame a conservative as liking the Jews and then turn around and call conservative anti-Semites.

My God the Democrats/Liberals/Labor party are not5hing but a bunch a racists bastards that get away with calling the Conservatives Racists because the media empowers them to do so....

[Flotsam_Jetsome]

The funeral will have official status, similar to that accorded to the funeral of the Queen Mother, but it will not be a full state funeral in line with her own wishes and those of her family.

That's a clumsily written sentence. A simple comma placed right after "funeral" would have made it more bedda.

[Vanders9]

Apparently she didn’t want that.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

I’m going to be a dissenting voice here and suggest that giving her either a state or ceremonial funeral is a mistake. Much as I think that Thatcher was a great Prime Minister who grasped the nettle that needed to be pulled, I can understand why she is a divisive figure.

Old mining and manufacturing towns in the North where devastated in the wake of Thatcher’s reforms, and although I primarily blame the unions and the weak-willed pre-Thatcher politicians of the 60s and 70s for getting them into a state requiring such drastic measures, I believe Thatcher could have handled the way it happened a lot better and given those communities time to find alternative industries instead of allowing them to collapse virtually overnight and allow the towns to descend into into a spiral of unemployment, crime and drug abuse that still persists in many towns in the North, Scotland and Wales.

[UKrepublican]

You are right but she specifically requested not too have that, so I think it’s right.

This will still be a very nice ceremony.

[Vaquero]

Here final wishes...no state funeral. respect that.

[Biggirl]

I am very surprised by this decision because she was PM.

At least the “great communicator” had a state funeral if my memory is correct.

[Biggirl]

Sorry, correct myself.

Read the article again. THANKS!

PLEASE diregard previous. SORRY!!!!

[Biggirl]

Please disregard post number 56. Thank-you.

[RetiredArmy]

She and the Gipper were a pair!!

[cornfedcowboy]

It has been reported that the funeral will be equal to what Churchill received.