LONDON: If it’s true that Margaret Thatcher’s name will be remembered long into the future, these will be among the pictures that will recall her memory. A coffin draped in the union flag, borne slowly by gun carriage through a (mainly) hushed London; servicemen serving as pallbearers; the Queen standing in silent respect as a mourner; the cathedral flooding with sunlight as the doors opened for the coffin’s exit; the crowds outside raising three cheers as they caught sight of it.

And that’s exactly what the planners of this magnificent spectacle wanted. For there will be no clue in such a montage of images that there was any controversy or doubt about such a send-off. On the contrary, future generations will gaze on this archive footage much the way we look at pictures from the 1965 funeral of Winston Churchill now: they

will assume this was an uncomplicated tribute to a woman who had served as little short of a national saviour.

Which is why an all-but-state funeral was controversial, why some opposed granting such a rare, once-a-century honour to the former prime minister. For they knew, and feared, the power of such a ceremony — how it can transform and elevate a onetime partisan politician into something larger, a figure that towers above politics, apparently uniting a nation.

Once these images have aged and yellowed into archive, that’s the story they will purport to tell. The boos reported as the funeral procession passed through Fleet Street were mainly off-screen. Not many will have seen the photograph of an audience of just two watching the big screen coverage of the funeral in an empty part of Leeds city centre. The funeral parties of former miners will be consigned to a footnote.

Instead, three great institutions — regularly at odds during the Thatcher era — came together to stage a lavish funeral pageant. This was a production of the Church of England, the Conservative party and the BBC, executed with the precision and class we’ve come to expect.

The hushed Dimbleby commentary, the soaring choral music, the gleaming military uniforms — it was as good as any royal occasion. The aim: to usher Thatcher into that tiny pantheon of figures deemed fit to stand alongside the monarchy in national esteem.

The BBC provided the gorgeous pictures, the Tory party much of the cast list — beefed up by an international contingent designed to make most leftists come out in a rash, including Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger and Binyamin Netanyahu — with the most important words left to the church.

The sermon from the bishop of London, Richard Chartres, was well written and eloquently delivered and did its bit for the larger project, sanding down the rougher edges of the Thatcher profile, rendering it smooth enough to sit alongside Churchill, Wellington and the like.

Chartres excused the view which still inflicts most damage on her reputation. “Her later remark about there being no such thing as society has been misunderstood,” he said. And, in a neat play on one of her favourite catchphrases — one she deployed for divisive ends, separating friends from foes — he declared that Thatcher was now “one of us”, sharing the common destiny of all mortals.

No such normality was intended from this event. It aimed to make Thatcher anything but normal, to propel her memory into a much higher category. In this, her final journey, surely not many obstacles now stand in her way.

By arrangement with the Guardian