Rotherham MPs to snub Thatcher tributes

Wentworth and Dearne MP John Healey said he was staying away in protest at the destruction of the coalfields led by the Tory PM in the 1980s.

Rotherham MP Sarah Champion revealed that she was not planning to attend the debate, preferring to the concentrate on constituency business instead.

Mr Healey said: “Individual, family and community lives have been broken then blighted for years by Margaret Thatcher’s determination to destroy a proud British industry and its trade union.

“In areas like South Yorkshire, we can’t forget, or forgive. So many abhorred her Government’s actions, and detest her memory.

“They want to celebrate her death not her life but basic British decency holds people back in public, as it should.

“But Parliament is being used today for narrow political gain by the Prime Minister, as a platform for his Party’s ideology not just eulogy.

“He’s wrong to recall Parliament, and wrong to hijack it in this way. I will play no part and I will stay away, with other things to do at home in the constituency.”