LONDON — As someone who frequented Margaret Thatcher and her inner circle at the height of her power and prestige — when, in the whole world, only John Paul II and perhaps Ronald Reagan were equivalent celebrities — I would like to draw a few lessons from her funeral on Wednesday, which I was pleased to attend.

Notwithstanding the anti-Thatcher carping of the BBC and the unspeakable Guardian newspaper, the crowds of protesters and demonstrators did not materialize. Everything that the abominably reckless and irresponsible majority of the national British press could do to incite such a debacle came to nothing. Instead, as the world watched, tens of thousands stood up to 20-deep along the parade route followed by the marching band and guard escort of Lady Thatcher’s caisson-borne and flag-draped coffin, doffed their hats and applauded politely, as “the lady” passed away and into legend.

There were picketers, but they were more than 10-to-one in favor of Thatcher. And as I walked with my wife, a few friends and the mayor of London (my former editor at the Spectator magazine, Boris Johnson) from St. Paul’s Cathedral to the Guildhall for the reception, between still-thick crowds of spectators who had every opportunity to jeer the formally dressed mourners but were entirely cordial, I thought of three comments from Canadian political history that seemed to me to be very pertinent.

The first was from the one-time publisher of the Quebec newspaper Le Devoir, Gerard Filion. Though one of Maurice Duplessis’ most relentless opponents, he wrote of Duplessis when he died in office in 1959: “Because he never feared responsibilities, he assumed them fully.” Margaret Thatcher, likewise, often suffered from performance anxiety, feared for the members of Britain’s armed forces in action, but never feared for an instant the duties of her great office.

The second was John Turner’s typically gracious remark on the occasion of his crushing defeat at the hands of Brian Mulroney on election night 1984: “In a democracy, the people are always right and the fact that they have not voted in my favor tonight does not shake my faith in them or in our system.”

The British people voted for Margaret again and again, and voted for her personally chosen successor when she was no longer Tory leader. In their way, they voted for her once more, on the last day. They were right, every time.

The last comment summoned to mind was W.L. Mackenzie King’s remark, as he walked in the funeral cortège of his long-serving Quebec lieutenant (and effective co-prime minister), Ernest Lapointe, in 1941: “How much one owes to be true to the people.”

There are many still who would challenge Mr. King’s right to claim those virtues for himself. But no one could dispute the right of the supporters of Margaret Thatcher to think that about her, an almost guileless champion of straight political talk, and to feel the force of the truth of that comment on Wednesday.

In the aftermath of this last great Thatcher victory, the anti-Thatcherites, unable to acknowledge that they had been completely humiliated by a corpse in whose previous descent into dementia they had wallowed and gamboled for a decade, took all the cheap shots available.

The Financial Times — which had parted company with Margaret Thatcher over Europe and is still steering by Euro-stars that went dark and cold a decade ago — retreated to aerated suppositions that most of the crowds that watched the funeral cortège pass were composed of the indifferently curious. Tens of thousands of people don’t stand for extended periods in cool and intermittently rainy weather to have a one-minute snapshot of something that arouses their indifference.

Much was made of the antiquarian terminology of the high Church of England: the profusion of virgers (a word that the FT managed to misspell), acolytes, crucifers, the lord mayor’s “sword of mourning,” a ceremoniarius. The observation that the deceased lay under the “perfect curves” of the great dome of Sir Christopher Wren in St. Paul’s, in contrast to the “sharp angles” of her career, was asinine sophistry.

The service was not only inspiring. It vastly transcended the sniggering about antiquarian Henrician ecclesiastical terminology. It was also traditional Britain at its best. All knew that the women should wear hats and the men morning coats or dark suits. Practically everyone knew the great hymns and didn’t have to consult the program. There was no talking during the service nor any impatience to exit at the end of it, and all the appropriate ecclesiastical gestures and deferences to the monarch were observed.

The reception at the Guildhall was also a victory for Thatcherism. Few of the old grandees had gone on to greater things, but almost all of them were there, including many in their 90s, and all had the dignity of age, the ruggedness of survival, and the bearing of those who had served with distinction and with pride, and were without apology now.

Britain is adrift today, and the country is clearly skeptical that those contending for its approval are worthy of it. But despite the carping of all those who would debunk every British tradition and historic achievement, the people, led by their monarch of 61 years, (who turns 87 on Sunday,) would not be deterred from honoring one of Britain’s greatest and most arresting leaders.

Another political utterance resonates, from the far-left Labor MP, Dennis Skinner, who said in Parliament on the day after Margaret Thatcher announced that she would retire, in 1990, that she could “wipe the floor” with her opponents and rivals. She has, and may she, as we all incanted on Wednesday, enjoy eternal life and perpetual light.

cbletters@gmail.com. From the National Post.