Chapter 31
When tragedy strikes, there’s a profound need to make sense of it. It wasn’t long, however, before my “What are we doing here?” turned into “What am I doing here?” Increasingly I knew I needed to find my own voice.
One of my last conversations with Fiona in the summer of 2003 had made me acutely aware that something had to change. “You have to go underground,” she said. “Go back to being a mother and a barrister and nothing more. The press all hate you. They have all the cards, and you will never win.” But how could I do anything in terms of the press if that was how she felt? Once the team changed, things gradually got better.
Decisions often emerge from negative experiences, and at least I knew now what I was not prepared to do. I was not prepared to spend the rest of my life worrying about what people thought about the way I dressed. It didn’t matter in real terms, and it certainly didn’t matter to me. What did matter to me, I realized, was helping other women find their voices. Women make up half the world’s population and yet continue to be underused at best, and abused and defiled at worst.
By the summer of 2005, Laura Bush and I had known each other for more than four years, and although our politics were different, we were definitely friends — always delighted to see each other and catch up.
At the Gleneagles summit, Laura had proposed that I join her on a visit to Africa immediately following the G8. She was going with her daughter Jenna to visit South Africa, where her other daughter, Barbara, had been working in an AIDS clinic. They were then going on to a number of other countries before visiting Rwanda. Having been involved with the International Criminal Court, I was interested to see what impact the Rwanda tribunal had made, and everyone — which is to say Tony and the Foreign Office — seemed keen that I should go. Then came the inevitable question: who was going to pay? Laura’s offer of a lift was rejected as “inappropriate,” and in any event, I couldn’t do the whole trip, as I had legal commitments. Obviously Rwanda was too poor even to think about paying. The Foreign Office said it wouldn’t pay. Downing Street said, “We don’t have a budget.” So after going round the houses, Sue Geddes was informed that I would have to pay my own way.
This was the final straw. “You claim to want to highlight the cause of Africa, yet you won’t back it up,” I told the private secretary concerned. “And as for handing over two thousand pounds of my own money for Sue and me to represent Britain, I am simply not doing it. I shall tell Laura Bush that I can’t go because the British government doesn’t think it sufficiently important.”
It was ridiculous. The UK was Rwanda’s main development partner, with direct aid running at more than £34 million a year. On many levels it was a success story, an oasis of stability and economic growth, and if we wanted to have influence in the areas of concern — democratization and human rights — then it made sense for me to visit at the same time as the First Lady of the United States. Not to go would be a wasted opportunity to fly the flag for Britain. Fortunately Gus O’Donnell, Cabinet secretary and head of the Civil Service, finally decided that the visit should be paid for by the British government. Once that was agreed, everything fell into place.
I flew via Nairobi and, following the success of our Olympic bid, decided to visit a project for young soccer players in a local township. I took as many 2012 T-shirts and soccer balls as I could stuff into my suitcases and, with a local hero by my side — the great marathon runner Paul Tergat — consolidated the message that the Olympics weren’t just about London but about sports round the world, and that they have the ability to lift the impoverished everywhere. That night, at a dinner at the Kenyan High Commission, I met both the Chief Justice and human rights lawyers and learned firsthand about the rapidly deteriorating situation in the country. At that point this situation was not generally known, and I left the next morning feeling thoroughly depressed. When I’d landed, I’d been quickly spirited along, but now, back at the airport, I realized the inroads China was making when I saw every sign translated into Chinese.
An idiosyncratic rendition of the national anthem greeted our arrival at Kigali airport, and as the red carpet was unrolled, I realized we were in for a full state visit, with Janet Kagame, the President of Rwanda’s wife, there to greet me with her welcoming delegation. As for the British delegation, it consisted of myself, Sue, and Ken McKenzie, our protection officer. Twenty minutes later the band struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the First Lady’s plane whispered to a halt. The door opened, and out poured fifty people, with Laura and Jenna bringing up the rear. Among the welcoming party was the British Ambassador, and all four of us squashed into his Range Rover, while helicopters patrolled overhead. Anything that moved had been commandeered by the American Secret Service, including fire engines. As for the ceremonial exit from the airport, we had no alternative but to sneak into the slipstream of the American convoy.
Our first stop was the Gisozi Genocide Memorial, where we laid a wreath before going into the museum itself. Set up with the help of the UK-based Aegis Trust, it presented the background and history of the civil war that had devastated the country and shamed the rest of the world. More than 800,000 Tutsis had been murdered and a lesser number of Hutus. In most conflicts children are absolved of responsibility and are treated with compassion, but in Rwanda that had not been the case. As with rape, infanticide had become a weapon of war. Tutsis were like cockroaches, the propaganda went, and to eradicate them, babies and toddlers had been held by their legs and their heads cracked against walls. It is hard to imagine a more hideous example of a crime against humanity, and Laura and I stood in this room and wept. Later we met some survivors — mothers and rape victims — who even ten years on found it hard to talk about the genocide.
When Laura left, I stayed an extra day, wearing my legal hat. The leaders of the genocide were facing trial at the International Criminal Court for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, but the cases handled there were only the tip of the iceberg. Back in Rwanda there was a huge backlog of cases waiting to be dealt with by the internal courts, but the system could not cope. Based on numbers alone, it would take two hundred years to process all of the cases currently before the courts. While those awaiting trial in Arusha were, rightly, receiving proper medical treatment for illnesses such as HIV/AIDS, their victims, mainly women who had been repeatedly and brutally raped, were dying before they could give evidence, unable to get similar treatment.
While the tribunal deals with the major perpetrators, Rwanda itself is pioneering a system for the “lesser players” known as Gacaca courts, based partly on traditional tribal methods of solving disputes and partly on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. I went to see one of these courts in operation, accompanied by Janet Kagame, a tall, imposing mother of four in her forties.
We watched as men accused of individual crimes of violence and theft were brought before a village gathering of what appeared to be many hundreds of people. My abiding impression was one of color: the dresses of the women, the forest of umbrellas used as sunshades, and the accused, who were dressed entirely in pink. Witnesses were called, the accused answered questions, and an appointed group of nine elders from the locality gave judgment. It all takes place within the course of a day. There is no capital punishment, but individuals who are found guilty can be sentenced to more then twenty years in prison. Rough justice indeed.
The idea behind the Gacaca courts is that the harm caused by the genocide was done to the community as a whole, and so the community as a whole should judge what happens to the perpetrators. For lawyers brought up on the common-law view of due process, there is some disquiet. Issues of bias and the rights of the accused come to mind. But what is the alternative? How do you heal a country after a civil war of such magnitude and horror? I’m not saying the Rwandans have the answer, but it was both instructive and fascinating to talk about what works and what doesn’t. One thing is clear to me: on such a grand scale, in a country as poor as this, the idea of trial by jury, or even trial by a tribunal of three judges, is not really a practical possibility. Yet to throw up your hands and not deal with these crimes at all is no answer either. Not to acknowledge them would leave festering resentment. At least giving these victims the opportunity to tell their stories is an acknowledgment of what they went through.
I can’t pretend that I know the answer, but part of the solution must be to go along with the grain of the society concerned, to go along with a system that is already embedded in its culture, rather than imposing one from the outside. This is not an uncontroversial view, however. Following my visit I addressed an international law college in Geneva, and it was clear from the response that not all the professors and students were willing to see this as a way forward. For some due process was all.
On my next visit to Rwanda, in March 2007, I opened a survivors’ center, provided by the British government and run by a foundation that provides not only practical advice but training for trauma counselors. Now that the country’s immediate needs for shelter and food are beginning to be met, there is a real need for psychological counseling.
The focus of that second visit was a seminar of women parliamentarians from across the world, but particularly from Africa. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the President of Liberia, is a shining example, a true role model. To take up the reins of a country so devastated by war, with no infrastructure to speak of, is a huge task at any age, let alone at sixty-eight. I had been invited to speak on violence against women, and listening to other delegates, I realized how far we had traveled in the UK. In the Sudan, for example, there isn’t even a word for rape.
As a result of the war, women outnumber men six to four in Rwanda. One positive consequence is that 49 percent of the MPs are now women, which inevitably changes the government’s priorities. In stark contrast, the Kenyan delegate was one of only six women MPs in Kenya’s parliament. She explained how she had been trying to get through a law on wife beating and rape for years, but the attitude in the Kenyan parliament, she explained, was no different from that of the male population as a whole. She quoted a male MP as saying, “It is well known that when an African woman says no, she means yes.”
The night of the official dinner was one of the most extraordinary of my life. Toward the end of the evening, the charismatic and legendary “Princess of Africa,” Yvonne Chaka Chaka, began to sing. Little encouragement was needed for the delegates to take to the floor, and soon even the two Presidents were dancing, while I was handed the microphone to join in with “No Woman No Cry.” And so, in spite of the difficulties that women in Africa face, this was a joyous celebration of life, a spontaneous display of warmhearted exuberance.
The retreat by the Cabinet office over that first visit to Rwanda in the summer of 2005 marked a turning point, not only in my relationship with Downing Street but also, to some extent, in my relationship with the press. From then on, I felt I was being heard on issues I was highlighting, issues that increasingly related to women.
Every year Breast Cancer Care focuses on a particular area of concern, and in October 2005 it produced a report showing that the organization was still not getting its message across in minority and ethnic communities. Within the Muslim community, in particular, the taboo against discussing women’s bodies made it hard to achieve the breast awareness that is so necessary for early diagnosis. With this in mind, Breast Cancer Care invited the Pakistani High Commissioner to share the findings. The problem was even greater in Pakistan, she said, and as a result, she invited me to visit her country early the following year, with the aim of highlighting the breast-awareness message. Breast Cancer Care paid my travel expenses, and the government agreed to pay Sue’s expenses so the charity didn’t lose money. The Foreign Office also agreed that I could continue on to Afghanistan. I had maintained contact with the Minister for Women there, and she was very keen for me to see for myself what was being achieved in the wake of years of Taliban rule.
As all women with a growing family can attest, the crunch comes when your children start to leave home — and let no one underestimate how hard that is. Just as they have to learn to live without you, so you have to learn to live without them. Painful though it is, there are advantages. When I had four children at home, I rarely went away for more than three days at a time, but I was now able to take longer trips. By the time of my visit to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Euan and Nicky were away at university. For me it was never a case of “out of sight, out of mind,” though, and I would speak to Leo and Kathryn daily, timing the calls so that they could tell me about their days. Even in the ten years since we’d arrived at Number 10, communications had totally changed. Now the kids knew that wherever I was in the world, I was always reachable by cell phone. There was something both surreal and grounding about finding myself in a truck negotiating a mountain pass or smearing antimosquito cream on my arms in equatorial Africa, and having Leo on the line asking where I’d put his goggles, or Kathryn asking if she could borrow a pair of my shoes and did I think black or brown mascara was better.
The two destinations of that trip in early 2006 couldn’t have been more different. Among the Pakistani middle class, gender is no barrier to high achievement, and the women I met included a general, three newly qualified fighter pilots, and the governor of the central bank. They lived in an entirely different world, however, from those who packed the refugee camps set up in the wake of the 2005 earthquake and those who lived in Kashmir, where the women I met were completely covered, so conservative is their culture.
Pakistan has the highest rate of breast cancer in Asia, due partly to environmental conditions but also because they don’t examine their breasts. In the developed world 80 percent of women going to the doctor with a nonbenign breast lump have a stage 1 or 2 tumor, for which there are many good treatments leading to a positive prognosis. In Pakistan, by contrast, 80 percent of the women presenting with a lump already have a grade 3 or 4 tumor. As a result, the prognosis is not good, and many can be offered only palliative care.
I talked to one woman sharing a bed with another woman, lying top to tail. She was crying. When I asked about her condition, she pulled aside her hospital gown and showed me a suppurating tumor on her left breast. She was forty-two with young children. She had only come to the hospital, the British doctor told me, once she could no longer ignore the pain. There was very little they could do for her. In the UK, he said, doctors would rarely see a tumor like this, as it would be unlikely to get that far without treatment.
I had been due to meet Madame Chirac in Kabul; however, Sue and I turned up at the airport to find that our flight had been canceled. Luckily a UN flight was going there early the following morning, and we were allowed to hitch a lift.
We drove in from the airport through a capital laid waste by war. The Minister for Women had arranged for me to visit the largest girls’ school in the city, where the age range went from five to twenty-one. There were eight thousand pupils, and in order to accommodate them all, the school functioned on a shift system. Many classrooms were filled with rubble, and there was no glass in the windows, yet classes continued, as they needed to make up for lost time. The school was desperately in need of a science lab, the head told me, as well as sports equipment. As for books, I saw girls reading dog-eared copies of low-grade Pakistani magazines and the Koran, and that was it. Accompanying us on the trip was a Times journalist, and on our return to England, enough money was raised to provide six new classrooms and a science lab. A Swiss charity called Smiling Children has since taken up the school’s cause and is providing training for the teachers.
I knew there was an issue in Afghanistan concerning the appointment of women judges to the Afghan supreme court. Chief Justice Shinwari was an old-fashioned conservative who was claiming that women did not possess the necessary qualifications in Sharia law. Taking the bull by the horns, I raised the issue with President Karzai. He wasn’t surprised, and later that afternoon a group of women MPs told me they’d been bending his ear about this very subject for some time. Afghanistan’s new constitution stipulates that one-third of MPs should be women, and they were already beginning to show their muscle. The men had wanted segregation in the debating chamber, but the women had simply refused, and all the MPs now sit alphabetically. Sitting literally beside the women MPs, the men were obliged to notice their existence. The women told me that they were determined to challenge the idea that no women were qualified to sit on the supreme court, and they did. I later learned that they had organized a campaign in the Afghan parliament, and when President Karzai renominated Shinwari for Chief Justice in 2006, the parliament refused to accept him, and a more liberal Chief Justice was appointed.
There is no doubt that President Karzai is under enormous pressure from the conservative elements within his government. One example of the concessions he is having to make on women’s issues is his own wife. Before the Taliban came to power, she had worked as a doctor, but now she is no longer allowed to work.
I was granted the rare privilege of meeting Mrs. Karzai. I knew from the President that she longed for a baby — an admission that astonished me at the time — and that he feared that she wasn’t able to have one. When I met her, I sensed a real aura of sadness. When I discussed the implications of living in a city so inherently dangerous, she told me that it didn’t affect her because she never went beyond the palace. She hadn’t even been permitted to join Madame Chirac at that morning’s opening of a children’s hospital. “It’s not safe,” she explained.
“But surely if it’s safe for the French President’s wife, it must be safe for you?”
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.