Thatcher and Runcie

According to Roy Jenkins the Church of England was a more effective opponent of Margaret Thatcher than the Labour Party. There is great irony here for Thatcher was a regular church-goer who had known Robert Runcie when they were both members of the Oxford University Conservative Association. Alan Webster alleged that she even intervened in the appointment process to make sure Runcie, not Hugh Montefiore, went to Lambeth. Runcie later confided they had not been close at Oxford; Thatcher thought he was too frivolous. At times they had a stormy relationship when he was Archbishop. The ‘blessed Margaret’ was reported to be ‘spitting blood’ after the Falklands service and she was not pleased by ‘Faith in the City’. Talking to Humphrey Carpenter, Runcie’s biographer, she refused to criticise Runcie saying he was a ‘good and honourable man’ and that she always enjoyed meeting him. In her own memoirs, however, she said she wished Sir Richard O’Brien, who chaired the Manpower Training Commission and also the CNC that appointed Runcie, could have done something to train the bishops.