British Ambassador: Margaret Thatcher's key role in helping to end totalitarianism

(Vatican Radio) The British Ambassador to the Holy See, Nigel Baker, says the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who died this week will go down in history as somebody who alongside giants like Pope John Paul II helped to push over the totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe. Ambassador Baker spoke to Vatican Radio’s Susy Hodges about Baroness Thatcher’s greatest legacy as a politician and also about her Christian values.

Listen to the extended interview with Ambassador Baker:

Ambassador Baker says he believes Margaret Thatcher’s greatest international legacy was her important role in helping to end communist rule in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

“Margaret Thatcher played an extraordinary role, alongside Pope John Paul II and U.S. President Ronald Reagan, in maintaining the pressure of the free world on the Soviet Union and engaging with pragmatists like President Gorbachev (the then Soviet communist leader) and essentially working to undermine the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain.” Margaret Thatcher, he continued, “will go down in the history books as somebody who along with giants like Pope John Paul helped to push over the totalitarian regimes.”

The British ambassador to the Holy See also paid tribute to Margaret Thatcher’s “transforming role” as a politician and her "towering" influence both at home and abroad. “She changed Britain, she changed Europe, with her brand of radical politics.”

Referring to those who have described Baroness Thatcher as a “politician of convictions” Ambassador Baker pointed to her Christian beliefs, saying “Pope Francis in his message of condolence noted the Christian values that underpinned her convictions as a politician.” He also recalled how Margaret Thatcher was the British leader who “quoted the prayer of St Francis (of Assisi) on her arrival in Downing Street as prime minister. Ambassador Baker said that gesture in itself “became part of the myth, part of the legend” surrounding her.