The British government says former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s funeral will be held April 17.
Undertakers on Tuesday removed the ex-leader’s body from London’s Ritz Hotel, where she died Monday, amid preparations for a ceremonial funeral with full military honors.
A van carrying Thatcher’s casket left the hotel for an undisclosed location.
Officials say Thatcher’s funeral will be held with full military honors at St. Paul’s Cathedral. It is not technically a state funeral, which requires a vote in Parliament, but is the same level of honor given Princess Diana and the Queen Mother Elizabeth.
Thatcher’s coffin will lie overnight at the Houses of Parliament before the funeral, and then travel on a horse-drawn gun carriage to the cathedral along a route lined by military personnel.
“The Iron Lady” died at 87 after suffering a stroke.
“It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning,” Thatcher spokesperson Lord Bell said Monday in a statement.
Thatcher led Britain’s Conservatives to three election victories from 1979 to 1990, the longest continuous period in office by a British prime minister since the early 19th century. Alongside former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, Thatcher battled against communism and saw the Berlin Wall get torn down in 1989.
“We have lost a great leader, a great prime minister and a great Briton,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a statement.
Tony Blair, a former British prime minister, said Thatcher had a vast impact on the world.
“Very few leaders get to change not only the political landscape of their country but of the world,” he said. “Margaret was such a leader.”
President Barack Obama said with Thatcher’s death, America has lost a “true friend,” while former President George W. Bush echoed Blair’s sentiment, calling Thatcher an “inspirational leader.”
“Prime Minister Thatcher is a great example of strength and character, and a great ally who strengthened the special relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States,” Bush said in a statement.
Buckingham Palace said Queen Elizabeth II was sad to hear the news of Thatcher’s passing, adding that she would be sending a private message of sympathy to the family.
It said the funeral will be attended by a “wide and diverse range of people,” and the service will be followed by a private cremation.
During 11 bruising years as prime minister, Thatcher transformed her country by a ruthless dedication to free markets and infuriated European allies. She transferred large chunks of the economy from the state hands to private ownership.
“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money,” she once said, according to Reuters.
To her fervent admirers, battling Maggie was an icon, a national savior who ended Britain’s post-World War II cycle of confrontation and decline — eclipsed as a 20th-century British leader only by Winston Churchill.
Her vehement critics, however, saw her as a bellicose figure at home and abroad, a destroyer of industries and, with it, a way of life.
She was a sharply divisive figure even within her Conservative …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
