My interest in State funerals as modern nation-state rituals began when i was investigating the rise of a new elite in relation to new forms of representation (aka 'secularism') and the cult of Darwinism.
There are significant similarities and differences between the final rites of passage for Charles Darwin and Margaret Thatcher, both of whom were given elaborate funerals.
Darwinism and Thatcherism both place a false emphasis on the importance of 'the individual' in comparison with the importance of the wider social collectivity.
In Darwin's case, he was happy (by all accounts) to be interred at the small country location of Downe, where he lived for so many years. After his death his body was effectively snatched by other members of a newly emerging elite and elevated to high status by a State funeral and interment in Westminster Abbey.
For a man who did so much to disprove established religious dogma, burial in Westminster Abbey demonstrated the lack of any similar sacred ceremonies for the secular set. They had to 'borrow' forms of bestowing prestige from the very establishment they were undermining when they replaced rights by birth by a restricted notion of meritocracy.
Darwin's treatment, as a member of a wealthy new class, was very different to that of working class Wallace (who is acknowledged to have co-established a theory of natural selection). Wallace was, i read, invited to Darwin's funeral as an afterthought.
Anyway, the other members of the newly rising elite managed to cement their place in the social order by bestowing the highest form of prestige on their cult hero, Charles Darwin, despite his wishes in the matter.
By contrast, the Ceremonial funeral for Margaret Thatcher was very clearly something which she had given considerable thought to, and planned to bypass the role of Parliament by aiming for a Ceremonial funeral. A Ceremonial funeral, requiring consent only from the Queen, is a notch down from a State funeral, which requires the approval of Parliament.
By comparison with Darwin, there was no need for the members of her elite to snatch the body from the family and local people.
But like the case with Darwin, the elite sought to bestow the highest form of prestige upon their cult hero - and, by extension, upon her methods and upon their own position in the social order.
They did not steal a body, they stole the whole State ritual apparatus.
Princes Diana, Queen Mother ... Margaret Thatcher?
The Ceremonial funeral for Margaret Thatcher is an example of shameless expropriation of a ritual reserved for people who were respected and/or loved across a wide segment of society.
Lacking genuine endorsement from the population at large, and knowing that a State funeral would encounter problems in Parliament, an elite raided the treasury of ritual respectability and attached it to someone who was their champion, but never that of all of those in whose name they presume to rule.
The Guardian reported that a Ceremonial funeral is:
"One rung below a state funeral – normally accorded to sovereigns, although Winston Churchill and the Duke of Wellington were granted the honour – a ceremonial funeral requires the consent of the Queen, which has been given."
Of three notable Ceremonial funerals in the United Kingdom in recent times, two were for much loved members of the Royal Family, Princess Diana and the Queen Mother.
The third member of the series, Margaret Thatcher, took public delight in engaging in a form of civil warfare, directed against working class people within the country.
Her name is synonymous with "divisive" and her methods of government are of the worst kind. Using uncivil methods, her strident use of power was used to forcefully resolve major problems. The better alternatives were consensus and agreement.
Her legacy is one of lasting bitterness amongst a significant section of British society. While the funeral was taking place in London, her effigy was being burnt elsewhere.
The late futurist Robert Theobald wrote about the need to find better ways than those which, for example, left so much bitterness after the civil war in the United States.
His hopes, which I endorse, were for the 21st Century to be the Healing Century.
By providing the equivalent of a State funeral for Margaret Thatcher it is as though her last act was to steal an honour which should only be awarded by the whole nation acting as one, and that was not the legacy of how she operated.
Net result - the Queen, who not only consented to the great honour of a Ceremonial funeral but who broke with tradition by attending the funeral, has clearly demonstrated her alliance with the one side of British life.
This gives a Royal imprimatur to an event which was always known to be something which would open deep wounds inflicted on British life by Thatcher and her ilk. The Queen - whose role in a Constitutional Monarchy is to prop up the pretences necessary for good social order - has arguably failed in her duty by doing this.
Net result - the value of a Ceremonial funeral was lowered a notch - those who divide a nation now qualify.
Net result - those who sought this honour for their champion have reopened deep wounds and must now accept the true social costs of that funeral.
A much better outcome from the death of Margaret Thatcher would have been to use the occasion as an opportunity to bury the hatchet as well. Such is the character of the British people i am sure that, if presented with an opportunity for a healing event, they would have embraced it.
But the ruling elite chose the other option - to use a very expensive form of 'perfume' to try to disguise a form of metaphorical stench - that of high-handed forms of governance which fail to properly value the place in life of all members of society.
For people like me, who see the challenge before us as finding a new sense of identity which will dissolve (and not smash) the modern nation-state, all of this points to an ongoing form of financial and symbolic bankruptcy for European ways of life (which have been in serious trouble since the 1600s).
With European life in the midst of the latest major crisis, after the Thatcher Ceremonial funeral, we can only wonder "What next?"
