Official Sparks Furor by Insulting Europe Neighbors : Britain: Thatcher is blasted in Parliament for refusing to fire trade minister who made the scathing remarks.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher fought off a storm of protest in the British Parliament on Thursday after refusing to fire one of her senior Cabinet ministers for likening the European Community to Adolf Hitler, calling French economic leaders “poodles” and labeling a European economic union “a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe.”

Shouting “Sack him! Sack him,” members of the opposition Labor Party charged that the comments made by Nicholas Ridley, minister for trade and industry, had damaged Britain’s image in the Community. They argued that Thatcher’s failure to fire him would imply that “his views are her views.”

Defending her decision to retain him, Thatcher cited the 61-year-old Ridley’s public apology for his statements, which appeared in the current issue of Britain’s Spectator magazine, published here Thursday morning.

“On reflection,” Ridley declared in a one-line statement issued from Budapest, Hungary, where he is attending a series of trade meetings, “I very much regret remarks reported in the Spectator and unreservedly withdraw them.”

Thatcher, straining to be heard through the angry shouts and jeers in the House of Commons, added, “I have always understood that it is the custom of this House . . . that such a withdrawal is gracefully accepted.”

But it was not, not even by several members of Thatcher’s ruling Conservative Party, who joined with the opposition in calling for Ridley’s resignation.

“Mr. Ridley’s comments are outrageous and have seriously undermined Britain’s relationship with West Germany and France,” declared Hugh Dykes, a Conservative member of Parliament. “To liken the Community to Hitler is scandalous.

“It is widely perceived that Mr. Ridley’s views are close to those of the prime minister and typical of the government. To restore Britain’s credibility in the Community, it is imperative that Mrs. Thatcher distance herself and the government from his remarks. Mr. Ridley should resign immediately.”

In the Spectator interview, Ridley is quoted as blasting the European Commission, the Community’s executive body, as “17 unelected reject politicians . . . with no accountability to anybody.

“I’m not against giving up sovereignty in principle, but not to this lot. You might just as well give it to Adolf Hitler, frankly.”

Spectator editor Dominic Lawson, who conducted the tape-recorded interview at Ridley’s 18th-Century home in Gloucestershire, took note during the interview of Ridley’s incessant, angry references to the Germans and then asked the minister, “But surely Herr (Helmut) Kohl is preferable to Herr Hitler. He’s not going to bomb us, at least.”

Ridley replied, “I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather have the (bomb) shelters and the chance to fight back than simply being taken over by economics.”

Speaking of Germany’s emerging role in the European Community as the 12-nation body moves toward economic integration in 1992, he said: “This is all a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe. It has to be thwarted. This rushed takeover by the Germans on the worst possible basis, with the French behaving like poodles to the Germans, is absolutely intolerable.”

In Bonn, Lutz Stavenhagen, an aide to West German Chancellor Kohl, called Ridley’s remarks scandalous and incomprehensible.

Otto Lambsdorff, the leader of the Free Democratic Party, the junior partners in West Germany’s coalition government, said that for anyone to make such remarks, “one must be out of one’s mind.”

“Either he was drunk when he gave the interview or he could not digest the soccer defeat of England against Germany,” Lambsdorff said.

West Germany’s national soccer squad won the World Cup championship July 8 after defeating England 2-1 in the semifinals.

Ridley, the aristocratic son of a viscount whose combination of senior political rank and notorious outspokenness has made him one of Thatcher’s most controversial aides, took over the Trade Ministry a year ago after stirring a similar controversy by challenging conservation policies while serving as environment minister.

At one point during Thursday’s debate, Labor member Dawn Primarolo declared that Ridley’s “track record of insensitive and outrageous statements on a number of issues is well known.”

“Is there anything the secretary of state could say that would actually get him sacked?” she asked the prime minister.

Sources within both the Labor and Conservative parties said Thatcher’s decision to retain Ridley, who has been a minister or deputy minister ever since Thatcher first became prime minister 11 years ago, indicated a deep split within the prime minister’s inner circle over the issue of future European unification. Although none have been quoted as publicly as Ridley, some party hard-liners are known to support his statements of mistrust, especially concerning the economic power of a united Germany.

When asked about such a split, however, Thatcher simply repeated Ridley’s apology again and again, finally declaring, “I have nothing further to say.”

The Ridley controversy greeted Thatcher as she arrived home from the Houston economic summit, clouding what she had hoped would be a triumphant return from the three-day meeting.

Several times during the Ridley debate, she tried to shift the discussion to the summit, stressing that Britain is taking a leading role in unifying the European Community.

“We achieved important, practical results which meet the needs of the times,” she declared in the House in a prepared speech. But few journalists remained in the gallery to record the speech, and many opposition politicians left the hall, apparently in protest.