Thatcher funeral protesters get police go-ahead to turn backs on coffin

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30. Thatcher funeral to match theatre of Churchill's – but differences are stark

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/15/thatcher-funeral-scale-churchill-differences



It was, Patrick O'Donovan noted in the Observer, as if "the City was stopped and was turned into a theatre, and it was all performed as a drama that all men understand". The funeral cortege moved slowly from the Palace of Westminster to St Paul's cathedral, through packed streets lined with silent troops, "their heads bowed over their automatic rifles in ceremonious grief". Beneath heraldic banners and attended by straight-backed officers, the gun carriage carrying the body of the former prime minister "moved, huge and red with the union flag, past hotels and steamy restaurants and newspaper offices and pubs" on its solemn journey to the cathedral.

For those who witnessed the funeral of Winston Churchill on 30 January 1965, there will be a great deal in Margaret Thatcher's funeral on Wednesday that will be very familiar. Like the wartime leader, who also died from a stroke, Thatcher's coffin will travel up Ludgate Hill to St Paul's in a display of full military pomp, accompanied by bands playing slow laments, their drums covered with black cloths. Political leaders will be joined by dignitaries from around the world in paying their respects, as her body is carried with great dignity by ten soldiers up the west steps of the cathedral. The bells of Big Ben will be hushed for the first time since Churchill was laid to rest.

Though the baroness's body will not formally lie in state to allow members of the public to file past – as the wartime leader's did, attracting more than 300,000 people to Westminster Hall – at her own request her coffin will spend the night before its funeral and cremation in the medieval parliamentary chapel of St Mary Undercroft to allow MPs and peers to pay their respects.

And critically, just as she was 48 years ago, the Queen will be there, the first prime ministerial funeral she has attended since then, during which no fewer than six prime ministers have died – Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Home, Harold Wilson, Edward Heath and James Callaghan.