��Ī - Conservative Party

Thatcher papers for 1988 reveal her 'deep enthusiasm' for the single market

sjr81 — Sat, 21 Jul 2018 07:00:58 +0000

Her speechwriting files for Bruges, including drafts and contributions from outsiders, are among more than 40,000 pages of Lady Thatcher’s papers for the year 1988 being opened to the public at Churchill College from Monday.

They show that rather than acting as a call-to-arms for Eurosceptics and attacking the principles behind the single market – of which Thatcher was something of a devotee – her speech was more concerned with the perceived power grab by European Commission chief Jacques Delors, and a possible move to a more ‘federal’ European ‘super-state’.

Historian Chris Collins of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, the only person to date to have read all 40,000 pages of material being released, said: “She wanted her speech to be about direction, rather than point scoring – and she edges back from attacking the Commission, approaching it in a more intellectual style.

“I know she was uncomfortable about the venue, but we are very lucky in that few of her speeches remain in such a complete form as this.

“When you read her papers for 1988, you see her sheer level of enthusiasm for the single market. She goes up hill and down dale with deep enthusiasm because this is practical Europe, this is how it works together. The role of speechwriter Hugh Thomas – a committed Europhile – is also crucial to consider when looking at this speech from a historical perspective.”

The 1988 papers are the latest of Margaret Thatcher’s reign as Prime Minister from 1979-90 to be made available to scholars, researchers and the general public – alongside the papers of Sir Winston Churchill and hundreds of other leading figures at the Churchill Archives Centre.

As well as Lady Thatcher’s papers surrounding the Bruges speech in September 1988, her personal papers also reveal the emergence of plans for a possible fourth term in office, with no obvious end to Thatcherism in sight at that point.

However, 1988 was not without its problems as the government experienced a large number of backbench rebellions on controversial measures, including many with manifesto authority. When Thatcher met with the Executive of the 1922 Committee in January, she was warned that one of the things they wanted to raise with her was the ‘problem of a large majority in the House of Commons and an inadequate Opposition, leading the government being perceived as dictatorial and insensitive to criticism’.

“Unsurprisingly, when this point was indeed made to her face, Thatcher made an indignant response,” said Collins. “There followed a series of rebellions over benefits and the poll tax which she took very personally as relationships with the Conservative parliamentary party frayed.”

Away from frontline politics, the archives for 1988 also reveal that her husband Denis went through a showbiz reception guest list with a fine tooth-comb, querying whether certain celebrities such as Paul McCartney and David Attenborough should be invited to Number 10 for a gathering of those who would be easily recognised by the public and do Mrs Thatcher much good on TV.

The original list of 45 personalities was too low on numbers thought Lady Thatcher and a much longer list of more than 200 names was drawn up by former culture secretary, John Whittingdale – then political secretary to the Prime Minister.

“He (Whittingdale) was not the grizzled elder statesman of the present day,” said Collins. “This was the young man whose evening was spent watching Meatloaf at the Hammersmith Odeon and whose idea of a good party was to invite Paul McCartney, Freddie Mercury and the Jaggers.

Whittingdale, perhaps, did not count on the scrutinous eye of Denis Thatcher – who attacked the proposed guest list with no small amount of red ink, marking ticks against those he ‘would personally like to see included’ and question marks beside ‘those who, I believe, do not help'.

He went on to say: “Whilst I accept of course that not everyone who comes to our receptions are necessarily on ‘our’ side I find it both unpleasant and embarrassing to entertain those who publicly insult the PM. This list needs some careful checking in this regard.”

His favourite name of those listed was comedian Eric Sykes who gained an expansive four ticks. Others to receive enthusiastic backing from Denis included Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Dame Judi Dench, Nick Faldo and Rolf Harris.

McCartney and Attenborough were not alone in having question marks placed next to their name. Sebastian Coe, Shirley Bassey and magician Paul Daniels all fell foul of Denis’ red pen.

In the end, the longer guest list was dropped in favour of the original 45 and the British Winter Olympic Squad – minus Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards, who was double booked and unable to attend.

Margaret Thatcher’s infamous Bruges speech – which helped to coin the phrase ‘Euroscepticism’ – was never intended to be an anti-European diatribe, according to newly-released archive material by the Churchill Archives Centre and the Margaret Thatcher Foundation.

When you read her papers for 1988, you see her sheer level of enthusiasm for the single market.

Chris Collins

Margaret Thatcher Foundation

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‘Don’t put yourself through it again’: Thatcher papers reveal ‘distress’ after bruising election win

sjr81 — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 10:02:33 +0000

But despite winning 376 seats and 13.7 million votes (compared to Labour’s 209 seats and just over 10 million votes), the papers for 1987 are striking in their air of uncertainty and despondency, with one particularly prescient letter from Private Secretary Charles Powell imploring her not to fight another bruising election campaign.

As well as fighting off what Conservatives believed to be a particularly hostile press in the run-up to the election, 1987 proved a particularly troubled and unsettling year for both the Prime Minister and the country at large with the Zeebrugge ferry disaster, Hungerford massacre, King’s Cross fire, Enniskillen bombing, ‘Black Monday’ stock market crash, and the Great Storm all taking place during the course of a turbulent year.

The extraordinary Powell letter, opened to the public in full for the first time by the Churchill Archives Centre and the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, strikes a pleading tone to Lady Thatcher after congratulating the PM on her historic victory.

“All the same I hope you will not put yourself through it again,” says the letter. “The level of personal abuse thrown at you during the campaign was unbelievable and must take some toll, however stoic you are outwardly… In two or three years’ time you will have completed the most sweeping change this country has seen in decades and your place in history will be rivalled only in this century by Churchill. That’s the time to contribute to some other area.”

Responding to the letter ahead of today's opening, Lord Powell said: “I had actually forgotten writing the letter until Charles Moore cited it in his biography. It’s an unusual letter for a civil servant to send a Prime Minister, even on a very personal basis, reflecting the small size and intimacy of Number 10 especially in those days. I had been distressed to observe at close quarters the stress of a third election campaign and the back-biting it involved on Margaret Thatcher’s health and performance. In the light of subsequent events, my advice to her looks pretty sound.”

Although 1987 had its fair share of difficulties – not least a growing Tory disquiet around the upcoming ‘Poll Tax’ – Thatcher did enjoy enormously successful visits to both the USA and the USSR, the latter to meet with Mikhail Gorbachev during March/April.

The success of the visit helped launch her election campaign and put clear water between her and Labour in the polls at a time when the gap had been narrowing, a constriction that provoked much disquiet in the Conservative ranks at all levels of the party machine.

While the Russia visit and resulting photos provided a bump to Thatcher's and Conservative Party popularity, Thatcher had since 1983 consciously sought a better relationship with the Soviet leadership. In truth, Lady Thatcher was yet to be convinced by Gorbachev and played down expectations both before and after the visit, even in the face of overwhelmingly positive coverage both in the UK and behind the Iron Curtain.

The 1987 papers also bring back to light a forgotten episode on eve of poll when Lady Thatcher, being interviewed by David Dimbleby, made what could have been a potentially election-losing and career-ending comment. Asking a question about social division, Dimbleby suggested the PM never actually said she cared. In reply, she said: “Please. If people just drool and drivel that they care. I turn round and say ‘Right. I also look to see what you actually do.’”

Thatcher instantly regretted her choice of words and immediately apologised for her use of the phrase ‘drool and drivel’.

Historian Chris Collins of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, the only person to have read all 50,000 pages of the 1987 papers in their entirety, said: “She was a bit lucky there, I think. Perhaps the immediate retraction and election victory saved her from having to live with endless taunting in later years.

“It’s hard to find anything quite like this exchange in the whole body of her public rhetoric (which amounted to more than 14 million words by the end of her Premiership) and her feelings about it were correspondingly high.”

On a lighter note, the papers for 1987 contain her Press Office briefing notes after Lady Thatcher was persuaded to appear on children’s TV, including the BBC’s Saturday Superstore. A briefing ahead of an interview for Smash Hits magazine carries the ominous warning ‘You may not enjoy this appearance' – and if proof were needed, included an appendix with a short history of punk.

Noting that the genre was at its most extreme phase under the previous Labour government, the briefing went on to outline the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen and Anarchy in the UK, both highlighted in yellow to give these classic punk anthems even greater prominence.

Not content with her brief history of punk, the PM also gave a speech in Jamaica later that year referencing Bob Marley. Powell also sent her the words to Get Up, Stand Up.

While Thatcher may have proved her prowess at winning elections in 1987, she did come a cropper on the domestic front after appearing on a BBC science programme called Take Nobody’s Word For It with Professor Ian Fells of Newcastle University to demonstrate some basic chemistry including a recipe for bread.

“If you offer the viewing public a recipe on a TV programme with a title like that, it better be a good one – ideally foolproof,” added Collins. “Unfortunately this one wasn’t. Horrified officials found themselves receiving letters from people complaining they had tried the PM’s bread. One said it was ‘just like chewing gum’ and another ‘that it was bad enough to cry’. Later that same year, the Roux brothers sent her a book of patisserie recipes, though history does not record whether the gift had any connection to ‘Breadgate’.”

Margaret Thatcher’s third and final election victory dominates the 50,000 pages of her personal papers for the year 1987 – opening to the public from today at Churchill College, ��Ī.

I had been distressed to observe at close quarters the stress of a third election campaign and the back-biting it involved on Margaret Thatcher’s health and performance.

Lord Powell

Thatcher speaking in the White House grounds during her 1987 visit to the USA

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Diaries of Captain Scott's widow secured by ��Ī University Library

sjr81 — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 16:30:26 +0000

Kathleen Scott, the sculptor and widow of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, married journalist and politician Hilton Young, 1st Baron Kennet, in 1922. Her papers include diaries covering a period of over 35 years, records of her sculpture and exhibitions as well as other writings. These include a major series of significant letters from some of the most distinguished and powerful politicans, writers, artists and explorers of her generation.

Of particular importance are the papers and letters relating to her first husband Captain Robert Falcon Scott. Together with her diaries covering the period of Scott's last Antarctic expedition, the material is of the utmost interest for our understanding of the legendary explorer.

The papers also reflect the fascinating careers, interests and connections of Lord and Lady Kennet and are of importance for the study of British military and political history, as well as of literary and cultural attitudes and concerns during the first half of the 20th century.

Edward Hilton Young was a British politician and writer. He embarked on a career in financial journalism, working for various papers including The Economist and the Morning Post prior to serving for the Royal Navy in World War One, where he was awarded a Distinguished Service Order and Distinguished Service Cross.

He entered Parliament in 1915 as a Liberal MP, becoming Financial Secretary to the Treasury in 1921. After the 1922 election, he became Chief Whip for Lloyd George's Liberal Party and in 1926 joined the Conservatives, serving as Minister for Export Credits and then as Minister of Health. In 1935, Hilton Young accepted a peerage as Lord Kennet of the Dene. The archive at ��Ī University Library includes his wartime diaries and logbooks and his political papers and correspondence.

��Ī University Librarian Anne Jarvis said: “It’s a particular pleasure, as we celebrate our 600th Anniversary, to welcome this exceptional archive to the University Library. Lord and Lady Kennet led fascinating lives and these papers will be of great interest to researchers.”

Also accepted were the papers of Wayland Hilton Young, 2nd Baron Kennet (1923-2009) which have been allocated to The Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College.

Wayland Young’s papers detail his political career in both the Labour and Social Democratic parties. The files include working drafts, fragments of memoirs, notes for speeches and articles, and substantial correspondence and papers for Europe Plus Thirty, the EEC project he chaired in 1974-1975 forecasting how Europe would look in 30 years.

Allen Packwood, Director of The Churchill Archives Centre, said: “The Churchill Archives Centre holds the personal papers of figures from across the political spectrum, and is pleased to offer a home to Wayland Young, who was an independent thinker and a lifelong campaigner.”

The acceptance of the collected material settled £402,500 of tax. The Acceptance in Lieu scheme is administered by the Arts Council. The Acceptance in Lieu Panel, chaired by Edward Harley, advises Ministers on whether property offered in lieu is of suitable importance, offered at a value which is fair to both nation and taxpayer and whether an allocation wish or condition is appropriate. AIL enables taxpayers to pay inheritance tax by transferring important works of art and other important heritage objects into public ownership. The taxpayer is given the full open market value of the item, which then becomes the property of a public museum, archive or library. In the last decade the scheme has bought over £250m of cultural property into public collections.

The diaries of Captain Scott’s widow – and the papers of her second husband, Lord Kennet – will be made accessible to researchers at ��Ī University Library following their acceptance in lieu of inheritance tax.

Lord and Lady Kennet led fascinating lives and these papers will be of great interest to researchers.

Anne Jarvis

The National Library of New Zealand

Kathleen Scott pictured with her husband Captain Robert Falcon Scott, 1910

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‘Hectoring, strident and bossy’: Thatcher papers for 1985 reveal plans to soften the Iron Lady

sjr81 — Fri, 09 Oct 2015 15:38:52 +0000

Held by the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, 43,000 pages of papers will be opened to the public from Monday, revealing in close detail the concerns, challenges and crises faced by Thatcher during a year which marked her tenth anniversary as leader and the halfway point in her premiership.

Thatcher’s papers also reveal growing disquiet within Tory Party ranks about Labour’s recovery following the miners’ strike, as well as a general sense of Conservative malaise, and the wrangling Prime Minister Thatcher underwent as she planned and announced her Cabinet reshuffle.

Chris Collins from the Margaret Thatcher Archives Trust, which owns the papers, said the newly-released documents give a sense of the pressures on Thatcher, both domestically, internationally, and closer to home – with her press secretary attempting to soften the image of the Iron Lady.

“The early papers for 1985 are dominated by the unfinished business of the coal strike,” said Collins. “Thatcher’s advisers were worried that Arthur Scargill might still manage to find a way to out-manoeuvre them. The papers show Thatcher closely involved in the aftermath of the strike. Although its outcome is now seen as decisive, the possibility of another strike was not discounted at the time. Thatcher wrote a note on March 7, 1985 saying ‘what a relief it’s all over… we shall rebuild stocks of coal at power stations as a first priority.’”

Elsewhere, Thatcher wrote: “We have shattered the myth that the miners can always bring a government down. And it is clear beyond all doubt that we will never give in to violence.”

But the end of the battle with Scargill and the miners did not provide the boost to Conservative popularity that many in the party imagined. In fact, Thatcher’s papers for 1985 suggest the reverse is true with press secretary Bernard Ingham’s press clippings showing how Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s conference speech won plaudits from both the Sun and the Daily Mail.

Perhaps one of the most curious revelations from the release of this year’s papers comes via the many pages of correspondence generated by multiple branches of the government machine over Thatcher’s potential non-attendance at a St Paul’s memorial service.

The papers for 1985 reveal that the Church of England and Downing Street clashed over proposals to exclude the Prime Minister from the unveiling of the Falklands Memorial at St Paul’s Cathedral.

Thatcher was said to have responded angrily to suggestions that there would not be room for her in the crypt alongside the Queen, church and military officials. The row followed a high-profile falling-out between Mrs Thatcher and the then Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie after the latter had prayed for Argentinian dead in a 1982 memorial service.

Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine unwisely allowed a letter to reach the Prime Minister showing him signing off on the agreement to hold the service without her. On the letter, in Mrs Thatcher’s own hand, she has scrawled the words which must have made many a minister’s blood turn to ice: ‘Kindly ask the secretary of state to see me immediately.’ The word ‘immediately’, just in case her displeasure was unclear, is underlined twice.

Mrs Thatcher’s lack of popularity with the Church of England also seemed to be reflected in the national approval ratings for the Prime Minster and her party as unemployment figures stayed stubbornly above the three million mark throughout the year.

Added Collins: “Private as well as published polling showed the Conservative party falling badly for much of the year, moving into third place in May behind Labour and the SDP-Liberal Alliance. By August, the position seemed worse still. Approval of the government’s record was at minus 42 per cent. Thatcher’s personal rating was minus 35 per cent and the party remained well adrift of its two main rivals in the Tory party’s private polls.”

The disastrous polling figures may have informed attempts by Thatcher’s press secretary Bernard Ingham to soften her image. Ingham, whose papers are also held by the Churchill Archives Centre, sent a five-page memo to the Prime Minister warning that she had gained a public image as “hectoring, strident and bossy”.

Ingham’s plea to employ a softer rhetoric, including the words ‘compassion’ and ‘caring’, seem to have largely fallen on deaf ears as she shied away from using such language in her party conference speech that year.

Added Collins: “Looking at the document there is no sign of dissent from Thatcher; no scribbled notes or underlining like you often see on her personal files. But she simply would never have worn her heart on her sleeve like that, partly because it would have gone against her instincts, but also because, by that point, it would have seemed inauthentic.”

“Her public image was so fixed that she couldn’t win. If she had suddenly shown a softer side, people would not have believed it.”

Massive unemployment, the end of the miners’ strike and a controversial decision to try and exclude the Prime Minister from a Falklands War memorial service at St Paul’s are some of the issues revealed by the release of Margaret Thatcher’s personal papers for 1985.

Kindly ask the secretary of state to see me immediately.

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher Foundation

Margaret Thatcher

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The speech that never was – Thatcher papers for 1984 open to the public

sjr81 — Fri, 03 Oct 2014 16:32:52 +0000

Draft pages of her intended speech – grabbed from the wreckage of the Grand Hotel following the attack on the Prime Minister on October 12, 1984 – detail how Thatcher planned to warn the country from the podium of the Conservative Party Conference that Britain faced ‘an insurrection’.

The ‘speech that never was’ went on to suggest that the Labour Party was the ‘natural home’ of forces whose ambition was to tear the country apart ‘by an extension of the calculated chaos planned for the mining industry by a handful of trained Marxists and their fellow travellers’.

Her own handwritten notes for the speech, released today by the Churchill Archives Centre (www.chu.cam.ac.uk/archives) and online at the Margaret Thatcher Foundation website (www.margaretthatcher.org ), suggest plans to link what she regarded as militant mining communities to General Galtieri – the Argentinian dictator defeated during the Falklands War of 1982. The note, released for the first time, reads: “Since Office. Enemy without – beaten him & resolute strong in defence. Enemy within – Miners’ leaders…Liverpool and some local authorities – just as dangerous…in a way more difficult to fight…just as dangerous to liberty.”

Chris Collins from the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, the only historian to date to have had unrestricted access to the papers, said: “It was a speech which would have been remembered as controversial and would have eclipsed the ‘enemy within’ speech (delivered in private to the backbench 1922 Committee) Indeed it was intended to do that.

“There’s a certain irony that an act of great violence actually softened this speech. In the end, the original speech was torn up and later taped back together, probably by Thatcher herself, who was a dab hand with Sellotape.”

Among the other 40,000 papers being released online and at Churchill College, are documents which reveal the Prime Minister’s deep sense of foreboding about her fate at the hands of the Conservative Party she ruled, prophesising events of seven years later when she would be forced to resign as PM.

She told her secretary John Coles that: “My party won’t want me to lead them into the next election – and I don’t blame them.” Collins said he was amazed to find Mrs Thatcher imagining her own downfall just days after the 1983 General Election victory. The account, written when Coles left Number 10 in June 1984, also reveals that Thatcher’s doubts ran in parallel to a ‘decline in her energy’ after the election win.

More light-hearted pages from the 1984 archive reveal the prickly saga of a rose called Margaret, detailing – in a scene that could have been lifted straight from the scripts of Yes Prime Minister – how an innocent flower sparked a potential diplomatic incident between West Germany and Japan.

The drama began in innocent enough fashion when a West German horticultural association asked for permission to name a rose after Margaret Thatcher, delighting officials in Whitehall wishing to perhaps promote a softer side to the ‘Iron Lady’.

However, the Prime Minister had forgotten an agreement of six years earlier, signed while Leader of the Opposition, that had given a Japanese firm license to grow the original ‘Margaret Thatcher Rose’.

The clearly wounded Japanese firm wrote to the PM’s office and the Whitehall machine acted swiftly to pour oil on troubled diplomatic waters. The incident provoked many pages of notes between Whitehall and Foreign Office officials. In the end, it took a letter from private secretary Charles Powell to draw matters to a close. His reassuring tones of diplomacy to the slighted Japanese company headed off any threats of legal action and potential embarrassment to the Thatcher office.

Andrew Riley, Archivist of the papers at the Churchill Archives Centre, said: “This release of papers gives us a vivid insight into life at Downing Street and into Mrs Thatcher’s state of mind during a very difficult year, both personally and politically.

“The papers provide fresh insights into the often bitter coal strike of 1984, as well as newly released materials on the impact and aftermath of the Brighton bomb.”

Papers opened to the public today reveal how the Brighton bombing stopped Margaret Thatcher from widening her infamous ‘enemy within’ rhetoric to include not only the striking miners but also the wider Labour movement and Party.

It was a speech which would have eclipsed the ‘enemy within’ speech.

Chris Collins

Churchill Archives Centre

A Sellotaped page from the speech that never was. Homepage image: Miner's strike, 1984 by Nick Sarebi (CC: Att)

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Thatcher papers reveal her ‘grimmest year’

sjr81 — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 06:00:35 +0000

More than 35,000 of Thatcher’s personal papers from 1981, a year of internal Tory splits, two cabinet reshuffles and the meteoric rise of the SDP - as well as spiralling unemployment and rioting across the UK - lay bare the politics and back-office story of Number 10 at a time when senior Conservatives worried about the very future of the party.

In conjunction with the Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust, the papers have also been digitised and put online via the Margaret Thatcher Foundation website.

Chris Collins, of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, said: “This was the grimmest year of her tenure as Prime Minister. Politics in 1981 was dominated by the poor state of the economy; unemployment was rising (passing three million in January 1982) and continued rising for the next four years.

“In polling terms, support for the Conservatives dipped as low as a desperately poor 16pc. Thatcher’s net approval rating stood at minus 41 (the Government was minus 47). David Steel, by contrast, was plus 48.”

The papers also reveal the difficult start to relations with the Reagan administration in America as senior Republicans and White House officials moved to distance themselves from the policies of the UK Government; the White House Press Secretary going as far as to hand the press a two-page document outlining the economic differences between Thatcherism and Reaganism.

However, the President himself made no direct criticism - even if he did not stop his juniors from doing so - and the foundations of that most famous transatlantic relationship can be seen to strengthen with each meeting between the two leaders. Thatcher even kept a page of doodles drawn by Reagan at the Ottowa G7 meeting.

Leading the country at a time of crisis could be a lonely business. Hints of the possible strains on the Prime Minister are revealed in a letter to someone who had sent her a cashmere rug as a gift (Thatcher was unusually engaged in personally replying to as much correspondence as she could).

In her letter of thanks, now kept in the strong rooms at the Archives Centre, she said: “It (the gift) came at a difficult time just when I needed a little thoughtfulness and kindliness. This task, to which I have set my hand is the most absorbing and fascinating in the world. But sometimes it is lonely as one struggles to take the right decision.”

The archives also reveal a secret meeting between Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch at Chequers on January 4, 1981, where he told her about his bid to buy The Times newspaper and outlined his future plans, including his aim to introduce new technologies and reduce staff numbers.

This meeting may come as a surprise to many as the official history of The Times specifically denies there was any direct contact between the two during this period, footnoting Rupert Murdoch as the source of the information.

But it is the difficulty of sailing Government through 1981’s rough seas that emerges as the key theme from this year’s papers, released simultaneously at Churchill alongside those of fellow Conservatives Sir Bernard Ingham, Sir Adam Ridley, Sir Alan Walters and Sir John Hoskyns.

The archives reveal some brutal in-fighting at Number 10 and beyond as party divisions led, unusually, to two reshuffles in a single year. Elsewhere, a key party donor is seen to express his deepest discontent while the chairman of the powerful 1922 Committee told Thatcher to her face of his unease with Government monetary policy.

Plans for a Party Political Broadcast in July, only days after the riots in Toxteth, also saw the head of the Policy Unit, John Hoskyns, scathingly damn the script by John Selwyn Gummer as “the worst example of platitude-laden undeliverable clichés and nonsense I have ever seen…it is terrible.”

That year’s Budget went down badly both in the party and among the public – opinion polls showing it to be the most unpopular for 30 years with only 24pc of the public believing Chancellor Geoffrey Howe to be doing a good job. Some 73pc thought the budget unfair (22pc believing it fair – the previous low being 33pc in 1961). And with strong echoes of today, by far the most unpopular aspect of the Budget was an increase in petrol duty – of which a massive 87 per cent disapproved.

Following a purge of the Cabinet ‘wets’ in the September reshuffle, Thatcher’s 1981 Government was then faced with a possible wets rebellion and the startling rise of the SDP. The Crosby by-election of November 13 brought the SDP its first MP, Shirley Williams. Overturning a huge Conservative majority of 19,000, Williams’ victory led Tory Central Office to believe it was staring into the abyss.

The author of a Research Department document named ‘The Way Ahead’ could see none and declared: “This new phenomenon (the Alliance)…threatens to sweep the Conservative Party into a small minority position, worse than anything we have experienced for over 100 years.”

And the archives also reveal that long before Meryl Streep played The Iron Lady, Thatcher agreed to attend a production of the farce Anyone for Denis, although the papers suggest she may have done so through gritted teeth, writing ‘NO’ no less than five times on a memo detailing the arrangements. Thatcher was played on that occasion by Angela Thorne with John Wells at Denis.

Finally, approaching the end of a fraught 1981, Thatcher’s Christmas card list was finalised with recipients including Fidel Castro, Colonel Gaddafi, General Pinochet, Ken Livingstone and Kim Il-Sung.

Thousands of papers relating to perhaps the toughest year of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership are to be opened to the public at ��Ī University’s Churchill Archives Centre from Monday.

This task, to which I have set my hand is the most absorbing and fascinating in the world. But sometimes it is lonely as one struggles to take the right decision.

Margaret Thatcher

Churchill Archives Centre

Detail from a page of doodles by President Ronald Reagan, kept by Margaret Thatcher

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�������������Ī - Conservative Party

Thatcher papers for 1988 reveal her 'deep enthusiasm' for the single market

‘Don’t put yourself through it again’: Thatcher papers reveal ‘distress’ after bruising election win

Diaries of Captain Scott's widow secured by �������������Ī University Library

‘Hectoring, strident and bossy’: Thatcher papers for 1985 reveal plans to soften the Iron Lady

The speech that never was – Thatcher papers for 1984 open to the public

Thatcher papers reveal her ‘grimmest year’

��Ī - Conservative Party

Diaries of Captain Scott's widow secured by ��Ī University Library