The Funeral of Baroness Thatcher - Edited Coverage

Cathedral where, earlier today, the funeral service for Margaret

Thatcher, Lady Thatcher, took place. It's been a day of grand ceremonial

with full military honours. A moving service with fine music. A

thoughtful address by the Bishop of London. Lady thatch -- Lady

Thatcher's coffin stayed overnight at Chapel of St Mary's Undercroft.

The hearse beginning the first part of its journey to St Clement Danes.

Down Whitehall, past Downing Street, her home for over 11 years. Among

the guests arriving in St Paul's, Lord Tebbit and former Prime

Minister Sir John Major, Tony Blair behind him. And Gordon Brown, with

his wife Sarah. The hearse arrives at St Clement Danes. And the purpose

of this part of the ceremony is simply to remove the coffin into the

church, await the arrival of the gun carriage of the King's Troop Royal

Horse Artillery and, during that period, say prayers over the coffin.

Back here at St Paul's, the sand laid out for the gun carriage to

arrive. The Prime Minister and his wife going to take his place. The

Thatcher family arrives. Sir Mark Thatcher there on the right, his

wife Sarah and Michael Thatcher and Amanda Thatcher will be taking part

in the service and the partner of Carol Thatcher there with the black

at St Clement Danes and the coffin is gently laid on it by the bearer

party, representatives of the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 70 seconds

to St Paul's, led by the Band of the of Edinburgh. The Great West Door is

only open for ceremonial occasions, giving this wonderful view from the

centre of the Cathedral down the the West Door and the steps of St

Paul's Cathedral where the Guard of Honour of the Welsh Guards stands

facing the Cathedral. The In Pensioners of the Royal Hospital

standing g to attention -- standing to attention. The bearer party for

the coffin, hats removed, now very gently lifting the coffin off the

gun carriage and will carry it up chime and -- half-muffled bell rings

arrives here in the West Door. On the left there, Amanda Thatcher, the

19-year-old granddaughter of Baroness Thatcher and Michael

Thatcher, her brother, stand with the cushions which will bear the

Insignia of the Order of the Garter and the Order of Merit. They will be

laid on the Altar just in front of # I am the resurrection

# And whosoever liveth # Shall never

# And that he shall stand at the # And though after my skin worms

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# And it is certain # The Lord gave

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 70 seconds

directly under the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, where it will lie during

the service. The bearer party leave and, in a moment, the service begins

with the Bidding given by The Very Reverend David Ison, the Dean of St

We come to this Cathedral today Margaret Hilda Thatcher, to give

and to commend her into God's hands. We recall with great gratitude

her leadership of this nation, her courage, her steadfastness,

and her resolve to accomplish what she believed to be right for

the common good. We remember the values by which she lived,

her diligence, her courtesy,

and her personal concern for the wellbeing of individuals.

And as we remember, so we rejoice in the lifelong companionship

she enjoyed with Denis, and we pray for her family and friends

and for all who mourn her passing. We continue to pray for this nation,

giving thanks for its traditions of freedom, for the rule of law

and for parliamentary democracy, remembering the part we have played

in peace and conflict over many centuries

and in all parts of the world; praying for all today who suffer

and sorrow in sickness, poverty, oppression or despair, that in

harmony and truth we may seek to be channels of Christ's faith,

hope and compassion to all the world;

joining our prayers together as we say:

Our Father, who art in heaven hallowed be thy name

Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven

Give us this day our daily bread

And forgive us our trespasses

As we forgive those who trespass against us

And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil

For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory,

For ever and ever.

Amen.

# He who would valiant be 'Gainst all disaster

# Let him in constancy Follow the Master

# There's no discouragement

# Shall make him once relent

# His first avowed intent To be a pilgrim

# Who so beset him round With dismal stories

# Do but themselves confound His strength the more is

# Then fancies flee away! I'll fear not what men say

# I'll labour night and day To be a pilgrim. #

Finally, my brethren,

be strong in the Lord,

and in the power of his might.

Put on the whole armour of God,

that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,

against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world,

against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God,

that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all,

to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth,

and having on the breastplate of righteousness;

And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;

Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able

to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit,

which is the word of God:

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit,

and watching thereunto with all perseverance

and supplication for all saints.

# Hear my prayer, O Lord, And let my crying come unto thee

# And let my crying come

# Hear my prayer, O Lord

# And let my crying come

# And let my crying come

# And let my crying come unto thee

# Hear my prayer

# And let my crying

# And let my crying

# And let my crying come unto thee. #

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.

In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so,

I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again

And receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.

Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest,

and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him,

I am the way, the truth and the life:

No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

by Lady Thatcher for the service at her

her husband's

her husband's funeral,

her husband's funeral, Sir

her husband's funeral, Sir Denis Thatcher. This is How Lovely Is Thy

Dwelling Place, the music by # For my soul, it longeth

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 70 seconds

# For my soul, it longeth # For my soul, it longeth

# My soul and body crieth out # My soul and body crieth out

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 70 seconds

given by a friend of the Thatcher family and of Lady Thatcher, the

The storm of conflicting opinions the Mrs Thatcher who became a

But today the remains of the real Margaret Hilda Thatcher

are here at her funeral service. Lying here, she is one of us,

subject to the common destiny of all human beings.

There is an important place for debating policies and legacy;

for assessing the impact of political decisions

on the everyday lives of individuals and communities.

Parliament held a frank debate last week -

but here and today is neither the time nor the place.

This, at Lady Thatcher's personal request, is a funeral service,

not a memorial service with the customary eulogies.

At such a time, the parson should not aspire to the judgments

which are proper to the politician;

instead, this is a place for ordinary human compassion

of the kind that is reconciling.

It is also the place for the simple truths

which transcend political debate.

And above all it is the place for hope.

But it must be very difficult for those members of her family,

and those closely associated with her,

to recognise the wife, mother and grandmother

in the mythological figure.

Our hearts go out to Mark and Carol and their families,

and also to those who cared for Lady Thatcher with such devotion,

especially in her later years.

One thing that everyone has noted is the courtesy and personal kindness

which she showed to those who worked for her,

as well as her capacity to reach out to the young,

in the world's eyes, "important".

The letter from a young boy early on in her time as Prime Minister

is a typical example. Nine-year-old David wrote to say:

"Last night when we were saying prayers,

"my daddy said everyone has done wrong things except Jesus."

And I said, "I don't think you have done bad things

"because you are the Prime Minister. Am I right or is my daddy?"

Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that the Prime Minister replied

in her own hand in a very straightforward letter

which took the question seriously. And she said:

"However good we try to be, we can never be as kind,

"gentle and wise as Jesus. There will be times when we do or say

"some thing we wish we hadn't done and we shall be sorry

"and try not to do it again."

She was always reaching out

and trying to help in typically un-coded terms.

I was once sitting next to her at some City function.

In the midst of describing

how Hayek's Road To Serfdom had influenced her thinking,

she suddenly grasped my wrist and said very emphatically,

"Don't touch the duck pate, Bishop - it's very fattening."

She described her own religious upbringing in a lecture she gave

in the nearby church of St Lawrence Jewry:

"We often went to church twice on Sundays,

"as well as on other occasions during the week.

"We were taught there always to make up our own minds

"and never take the easy way of following the crowd."

Her upbringing of course was in the Methodism

to which this country owes a huge debt.

When it was time to challenge the political and economic status quo

in 19th-century Britain,

it was so often the Methodists who took the lead.

The Tolpuddle Martyrs, for example, were led not by proto-Marxists

but by Methodist lay preachers.

Today's first lesson describes the struggle

with the principalities and powers.

Perseverance in struggle and the courage to be

were characteristic of Margaret Thatcher.

In a setting like this,

in the presence of the leaders of the nation,

it is easy to forget the immense hurdles she had to climb.

Beginning in the upper floors

of her father's grocer's shop in Grantham,

through Oxford as a scientist and, later,

as part of the team that invented Mr Whippy ice cream,

s

By the time she entered Parliament in 1959

she was part of a cohort of only 4% of women in the House of Commons.

She had experienced many rebuffs along the way,

often on the short list for candidates only to be disqualified

by prejudice against a woman - and, worse, a woman with children.

She applied herself to her work with formidable energy and passion

and continued to reflect on how faith and politics

related to one another.

In the Lawrence Jewry lecture she said that:

"Christianity offers no easy solutions

"to political and economic issues.

"It teaches us that we cannot achieve a compassionate society

"simply by passing new laws

"and appointing more staff to administer them."

She was very aware that there are prior dispositions

which are needed to make market economics

and democratic institutions function well:

the habits of truth-telling, mutual sympathy,

and the capacity to co-operate. These dispositions are incubated

a

In her words, "The basic ties of the family

"are at the heart of our society and are the nursery of civic virtue".

Such moral and spiritual capital is accumulated over many generations

but can be easily eroded.

Life is a struggle to make the right choices

and to achieve liberation from dependence,

whether material or psychological.

This genuine independence is the essential pre-condition for living

in an other-centred way, beyond ourselves.

The word Margaret Thatcher used at St Lawrence Jewry

was "interdependence".

She referred to the Christian doctrine

"that we are all members one of another,

"expressed in the concept of the Church on Earth

"as the Body of Christ. From this we learn our interdependence

"and," as she said, "the great truth that we do not achieve

"happiness or salvation in isolation from each other

"but as members of Society."

Her later remark about there being no such thing as "society"

has been misunderstood and refers to some impersonal entity

to which we are tempted to surrender our independence.

It is entirely right that in the Dean's bidding

there was a reference to "the life-long companionship

"she enjoyed with Denis." As we all know,

the manner of her leaving office was traumatic

but the loss of Denis was a grievous blow indeed,

and then there was a struggle with increasing debility

from which she has now been liberated.

The natural cycle leads inevitably to decay,

but the dominant note of any Christian funeral service,

after the sorrow and after the memories, is hope.

It is almost as perplexing to identify the "real me" in life

as it is in death. The atoms that make up our bodies

are changing all the time, through wear and tear,

eating and drinking.

We are atomically distinct from what we were when we were young.

What unites Margaret Roberts of Grantham

with Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven; what constitutes her identity?

The complex pattern of memories, aspirations and actions

which make up a character were carried for a time

by the atoms of her body,

but we believe they are also stored up in the Cloud of God's being.

In faithful relationships, when two people live together,

they grow around one another and the one becomes a part of the other.

We are given the freedom to be ourselves and, as human beings,

to be drawn freely into an ever-closer relationship

with the divine nature.

Everything which has turned to love in our lives

will be stored up in the memory of God.

First there is the struggle for freedom and independence

and then the self-giving and the acceptance of inter-dependence.

In the gospel passage read by the Prime Minister, Jesus says,

"I am the way, the truth, and the life".

That "I am" is the voice of the divine being.

Jesus does not bring information or mere advice

but embodies the reality of divine love.

God so loved the world that he was generous:

he did not intervene from the outside but gave himself to us

in the person of Jesus Christ, and became one of us.

What, in the end, makes our lives seem valuable

after the storm and stress have passed away

and there is a great calm?

The questions most frequently asked at such a time concern us all.

How loving have I been? How faithful in personal relationships?

Have I found joy within myself,

or am I still looking for it in externals outside myself?

Margaret Thatcher had a sense of this,

which she expressed in her address

to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland:

"I leave you with the earnest hope that may we all come nearer

"to that other country whose 'ways are ways of gentleness

" 'and all her paths are peace'. "

TS Eliot, in the poem quoted in this service sheet, says:

"the communication of the dead is tongued with fire

"beyond the language of the living."

In this Easter season Death is revealed, not as a full stop

but as the way into another dimension of Life.

As Eliot puts it:

"What we call the beginning is often the end

"And to make an end is to make a beginning.

"The end is where we start from."

Rest eternal grant unto her O Lord

and let light perpetual shine upon her.

Now one of Lady Thatcher's favourites,

favourites, the

favourites, the hymn

favourites, the hymn Love

favourites, the hymn Love Divine, # Love Divine, all loves excelling

# Jesu, thou art all compassion Pure unbounded love thou art

# Visit us with thy salvation Enter every trembling heart

# Finish then thy new creation Pure and spotless let us be

# Let us see thy great salvation Perfectly restored in thee

# Changed from glory into glory Till in heaven we take our place

# Till we cast our crowns before thee

# Lost in wonder Love, and praise! #

Let us pray.

Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live,

and is full of misery.

He cometh up, and is cut down,

like a flower;

He fleeth as it were a shadow,

and never continueth in one stay.

In the midst of life we are in death:

Of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord,

who for our sins art justly displeased?

Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts;

Shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer; but spare us

Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour,

Thou most worthy Judge eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour,

for any pains of death, to fall from thee.

Like as a father pitieth his own children:

Even so is the Lord merciful unto them that fear him.

For he knoweth whereof we are made: he remembereth that we are but dust.

The days of man are but as grass:

For he flourisheth as a flower of the field.

For as soon as the wind goeth over it, it is gone:

And the place thereof shall know it no more.

But the merciful goodness of the Lord endureth

For ever and ever upon them that fear him:

And his righteousness upon children's children.

O merciful God, the Father

of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Who is the resurrection and the life;

In whom whosoever believeth shall live,

Though he die; and whosoever liveth, and believeth in him,

Shall not die eternally; Who also hath taught us,

By his holy Apostle Saint Paul, not to be sorry,

As men without hope, for them that sleep in him:

We meekly beseech thee, O Father, to raise us from the death of sin

when we shall depart this life,

We may rest in him, as our hope is this our sister doth;

and that, at the general Resurrection in the last day,

We may be found acceptable in thy sight; and receive that blessing,

which thy well-beloved Son shall then pronounce to all

That love and fear thee, saying,

Come, ye blessed children of my Father,

Receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world.

Grant this we beseech thee, O merciful Father,

Through Jesus Christ, our Mediator and Redeemer.

Amen.

Almighty God, Father of all mercies

and giver of all comfort:

Deal graciously, we pray thee, with those who mourn,

that casting every care on thee,

they may know the consolation of thy love;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O heavenly Father,

who in thy Son Jesus Christ

has given us a true faith,

and a sure hope: help us,

we pray thee, to live as those who believe and trust

in the Communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins,

and the resurrection to life everlasting,

and strengthen this faith and hope in us all the days of our life:

through the love of thy Son, Jesus Christ our Saviour.

Amen.

I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me,

write, from henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord:

Even so, saith the Spirit; for they rest from their labours.

Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God,

be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

# I vow to thee, my country All earthly things above

# Entire and whole and perfect The service of my love

# The love that asks no question The love that stands the test

# That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best

# The love that never falters The love that pays the price

# The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice

# And there's another country I've heard of long ago

# Most dear to them that love her Most great to them that know

# We may not count her armies We may not see her King

# Her fortress is a faithful heart Her pride is suffering

# And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase

# And her ways are ways of gentleness

# And all her paths are peace. #

Go forth upon thy journey from this world, O Christian soul

Go in the name of God the Father Almighty who created thee

In the name of Jesus Christ his son who suffered for thee

In the name of the Holy Spirit who strengthened thee

Aided by angels and archangels

And all the armies of the heavenly host

May thy portion this day be in peace

And thy dwelling place in the heavenly Jerusalem.

Support us, O Lord, all the day long of this troublous life,

until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes,

the busy world is hushed, the fever o

Then, Lord, in your mercy grant us a safe lodging, a holy rest,

and peace at the last, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Now unto him that is able to keep us from falling,

and to present us faultless before the presence of his glory

with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour,

be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and for ever.

And the blessing of God Almighty,

the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit be with you

and remain with you this day and always. Amen.

# Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace

# According to thy word

# Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people

# To be a light to lighten the Gentiles

# To be a light to lighten the Gentiles

# And to be the glory of thy people Israel

Mortlake Crematorium for a private family

family cremation

family cremation and

family cremation and her

family cremation and her ashes will be interred tomorrow at the Royal

Hospital Chelsea. Margaret Thatcher, the longest-serving British Prime

Minister of the 20th Century. It is the politician rather than the

policies that have been commemorated here. The policy also be the subject