Speaking for Myself (50 page)
She smiled and repeated, “I just don’t go out.”
On leaving I said that I hoped that one day she could visit me in the UK. It didn’t happen. What did happen was that six months after my visit, she became pregnant. I hope that in due course she will find her voice and be able to play a bigger role in her country.
The role of leaders’ wives is particularly important, I believe, in Muslim countries. When I was in Pakistan, the Prime Minister’s wife gave her first public interview in which she used the word “breast” and in so doing may have saved thousands of lives. The work being done by Sheikha Mozah in Qatar is an example of what can be achieved. Her Shafallah Center for disabled children is world-class, with facilities that put the West to shame. In my role as patron of Scope, a UK charity that works for people with cerebral palsy, I addressed a conference at the Shafallah Center on the way forward for children with disabilities in the Gulf region. There the battle is not about money, but about removing the stigma of both physical and mental disabilities. In my discussions with the families at the center, a number of the young women spoke of how, as sisters of children with disabilities, their marriage prospects were considerably diminished, and this is one of the reasons families are prepared to keep these special children behind closed doors.
My colleagues from Scope could only marvel at the standard of the facilities available, yet they were also able to share their expertise about inclusion and integration, as well as their belief that this approach is not only better for the children but also a matter of basic human rights. Around 10 percent of the world’s population, or 650 million people, live with a disability. They are the world’s largest minority. Their special needs have now been recognized in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. I was able to speak about what the convention meant not only at the Shafallah conference but also on Al Jazeera TV. The UK was among the first countries to sign the convention, in March 2007, and Qatar followed in July.
Over the ten years we were in Downing Street, I had access to people with real power to make things happen, and I’m not ashamed to say that I made full use of it on behalf of the charities I was involved with. As an example, in April 2007 I visited both Qatar and Kuwait in my capacity as president of Barnardo’s. Many people still think of Barnardo’s as running orphanages, but in fact the last Barnardo’s orphanage closed in the early 1970s. Barnardo’s experience with disadvantaged children stretches back a century, yet it is always looking at innovation. Its mission today is to provide the services children need wherever and whenever they need them. Its main focus is keeping children with their families, and it runs a huge number of programs to help disadvantaged youngsters. I have been lucky enough to visit many of these programs, such as the Dr. B’s restaurants, where young people with disabilities learn practical skills in the catering industry at a pace more suited to their abilities. Barnardo’s always needs money, and in 2007 I accepted a check for £500,000 from the Kuwaiti government.
As I have seen everywhere I have traveled, women are tremendously resourceful. Not only do they keep their families together, but they are sources of wisdom and strength, prepared to walk miles to fetch water or carry their children to health centers where they know treatment is available. Yet so often these same women are at the mercy of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. I remember visiting a labor ward with Salma Kikwele, the First Lady of Tanzania, and seeing a young girl, no more than sixteen, sitting by herself. Her baby had been stillborn. There was no chance of privacy here, either in birth or in death. We were being followed by local news photographers, and there was no sense that perhaps this wasn’t appropriate. We also saw the last push of a baby being born, and we were introduced as the little girl was put on her mother’s breast. We were told afterward that the woman was going to call her daughter Salma Cherie.
Each culture brings its problems. In countries where sexual activity is rife, you have HIV/AIDS. In countries where young women are married as soon as they become sexually active, too-early pregnancies result in fistulas — where the vagina is torn and the bladder leaks into it. It is relatively easy to repair, but for young women in the middle of nowhere, treatment is not available. Often leaking and smelling, they are considered unclean and rejected by their families. We in the West can’t even begin to understand such problems.
My religion and my family are the two fixed planets that give my life meaning. Yet because my mother wasn’t Catholic, I can hardly claim to have been brought up in a conventional Catholic household. Perhaps as a result, my views and the church’s sometimes differ, usually for reasons of pragmatism. In the conventional sense, therefore, I cannot be considered a “good Catholic,” and indeed for a period in my twenties, my attendance at Mass was sporadic to say the least. But once my children were born, that changed, and I have found that the weekly period of reflection that Mass affords me is incredibly important. After so many years the rituals are second nature to me, and that in itself brings solace and reassurance.
The Pope is seen by Catholics as the successor to Saint Peter, and to meet him is considered the ultimate benediction. As my faith deepened following the birth of Leo, I hoped that Tony and I might have the opportunity to meet him. The beginning of February 2003 was a hard time to be living in Downing Street. War drums were beating in the background, and every time we went out, it was to a chorus of jeers and shouts of “B-Liar” and “Blair Murderer.” We were existing in an atmosphere of enormous tension and stress.
One of Tony’s foreign policy advisers was Francis Campbell, a committed Catholic from Northern Ireland, who also worked with Tony on multifaith projects. By this time he knew that Tony was genuinely interested in religion. Downing Street had been very resistant to the idea of Tony meeting the Pope; drawing attention to his dubious practice of going to church was singularly ill-advised. But as the Iraq War loomed ever larger, even they saw that such a visit might serve a diplomatic purpose. Apart from anything else, the Vatican had contacts with Iraqi Christians.
As religion was such a contentious issue, however, it was decided not to announce the visit until the very last moment. This meant that we couldn’t stay in the British embassy in Rome, so Francis arranged for us to stay at the Pontifical Irish College, which trains priests from Ireland. This solution also had its problems. Not only was the Irish College
very
Catholic but there was also the whole Irish dimension, the Catholic Church having always supported the cause of a united Ireland. It was the first time that a British Prime Minister had stayed there. We were originally put in the cardinal’s room, but the implications of a married couple sleeping in the cardinal’s bed proved too much, and we were moved next door.
As schools were on break, we were able to take the children, apart from Nicholas, who was away on vacation. John Paul II was not only the Pope but also a major historical figure, and I was delighted that several of our Catholic associates, from one of Tony’s chief advisers to some of the ’tecs, were able to join us.
A papal audience is a big occasion, whatever the circumstances. But my emotions ran away with me when I thought of how proud my grandma would have been. All those admonitions to behave, to learn my catechism, had not been in vain.
Francis had briefed us as to what was going to happen, but the reality was so awe-inspiring that I felt as wonder struck as a child. The ritual had probably remained unchanged for hundreds of years. Once we were inside the Vatican, our private visit had become official, and we were led by the gentlemen of the guard in solemn procession through wonderfully decorated corridors into the medieval heart of the complex. In those surroundings — massive blocks of stone and marble — you cannot fail to be aware of history, but I was very conscious of just how historic Tony’s coming here was. He was still a practicing Anglican, though he had been coming to Mass with the children for many years. I knew that Francis would have let this be known, and my fervent wish was that he be allowed to take Communion following our audience with the Pope. Under Francis’s guidance I had written a letter to that effect, but whether it would happen, I did not know. Nor did I know whether we would be invited to kiss the Pope’s ring.
I had been brought up to venerate the papacy and all that it stood for. The feeling was so deep, it was visceral, and part of me wondered whether Tony realized just how momentous it was. The history he had learned in school was Anglican history. For Catholics, the history of England was rather different: Elizabeth I was a bad Queen, and Mary Tudor was misunderstood. It was as if all my life had been leading up to this moment, leading down this endless succession of corridors and throne rooms. All these years, I thought, English Catholics had been in the minority, and suddenly I felt as if we weren’t a minority anymore.
Finally we reached the Pope’s private chambers. I realized that we were in the very heart of the Vatican, the room behind the balcony from which he blesses the crowds in St. Peter’s Square. While Tony was having his private audience with the Pope as Prime Minister, Vatican officials asked whether Leo would like to sit on the papal throne, which of course he did (though he was too young to appreciate the honor). After about twenty minutes I was ushered in to join my husband. John Paul II was sitting in a chair, a very old man dressed in his papal white, frail and clearly very tired. He talked to me about my having Leo at such a late age and what a good example it was. Then everyone else in our group came in to be introduced, one by one. When it came to Leo’s turn, the Pope stretched out his hand for the ring to be kissed, and Leo simply handed up a little picture he had done. We still have the most beautiful photograph of that moment, Leo looking straight into the Pope’s eyes, and it is signed by John Paul himself. It is very precious.
In Tony’s conversation with the Pope, the question of Iraq did come up, he told me later. The Holy Father made it clear that he was antiviolence but finished by saying, “In the end it’s your decision and your conscience. It’s your job to take these decisions, and whatever you do, I’m sure you’ll do the right thing.” I know that Tony took a lot of comfort from that.
The press later reported that the Pope gave Tony a hard time. That wasn’t true. He actually gave him a very kind time, and as a sign of favor, we were taken to the Crying Room, the anteroom where the newly elected Pope is left for a few minutes to reflect on the immensity of what has just happened. Often, apparently, he cries.
While we were being shown some of the unseen corners of the Vatican, along with the magnificent Sistine Chapel and the catacombs, word came through that we were invited to join the Pope at Mass in his private chapel the following day and that Tony would be allowed to take Communion. That was another moment of pure joy for me. Francis Campbell and I had chosen some English hymns just in case, and as a thank-you for their hospitality, we invited two seminarians from the Irish College to join us, as well as two from the Scottish College and two from the English College. When we arrived in the chapel the following morning, the Pope was already before the altar, hunched over in a chair, bent nearly double. He had been praying for an hour, a nun explained in a whisper. He seemed to me then such an extraordinary symbol. In spite of his frailty, he was still Pope, and I sensed no diminishing of his power, as if within his weakness lay his strength. When he stood up and faced us, an enormous energy filled the chapel.
In my mind socialism and Catholicism have always been inextricably connected. The liberation theology of the Young Christian Students that so marked my girlhood was fundamental to my view of politics: Christ as the radical feeding the poor. This was where Tony and I had first come together, and this extraordinary man from the Polish working class, who had grown up under the cloud of Nazism, then communism, exemplified everything my husband and I believed in, political in the best sense of the word. Being given his blessing was of enormous comfort to us both.
Unlike the long-awaited audience with John Paul II, I had no expectation of meeting his successor, Benedict XVI. Three years later I was in Rome to address the Pontifical Council of Social Sciences. After my talk was over, an official from the Vatican approached me.
“The Holy Father would like to meet you,” he said.
“But I’m not dressed appropriately,” I said. “I haven’t even got my head covered.” The protocol surrounding papal visits is very exact. As a woman from a non-Catholic country on an official state visit, I was expected to wear black. White or cream can be worn only by queens from Catholic countries. And here I was wearing cream.
He brushed my objection aside. “The Holy Father won’t mind at all,” he said. “Just come along now and meet him.” So I did, together with my two friends who were with me. I spoke with the Pope for about twenty minutes, about Tony’s proposed conversion to Catholicism, and also about his plans for a faith foundation, for which I knew Tony hoped for the Pope’s support. I said that I felt my husband would very much like to discuss both matters with him and asked if it would be possible. He said yes, of course, and one of the last visits we made during Tony’s premiership was to Rome to meet Pope Benedict. This time I was in a long black skirt, black jacket, and mantilla, as custom decrees.
After that first audience with Pope Benedict, a photograph was published of me dressed in that cream outfit. The British press had a field day. A Conservative woman MP and high-profile Catholic convert chose to join in the hullabaloo, saying, “Who does she think she is? The Queen of Spain?”
No. Just a Crosby girl who got lucky.
Leaving
O
ne great pleasure of the past ten years has been my chancellorship of John Moores University. JMU is a grouping of several famous institutions: the Liverpool Mechanical Institute and the Liverpool College of Art (where John Lennon famously studied), to name just two. In March 2002 Yoko Ono and I unveiled a statue of Liverpool’s most famous son at the newly named John Lennon Airport. When I introduced her to JMU’s new vice chancellor, Michael Brown, he said, “You know that your husband used to go to our university.” She looked at him, and her eyes opened wide. It turned out she’d been giving money to the wrong university all these years! She’d even endowed a scholarship in his honor.