Raiders of the lost archives
Released Government records give insight into cover-ups, corruption, lies and spies in British high office last century John Major tried desperately to reassure a furious Margaret Thatcher as he began moves to axe her flagship poll tax. His letter is amon
JUST weeks after John Major took over as prime minister in 1990, a bitter rift emerged with his predecessor Margaret Thatcher.
Thatcher had made it clear that Major was her preferred candidate during the leadership race.
But the strains between the ex-PM and the man who served as her chancellor were quick to appear.
In March 1991, she snapped, using a US television interview to complain: “I see a tendency to try to undermine what I achieved.”
The timing could not have been worse for Major, who was preparing to axe one of his predecessor’s flagship policies – the hated poll tax.
Now the extraordinary letter in which he tried to placate Thatcher has been released by the National Archives at Kew.
Major sought to reassure the irate former premier that he was committed to carrying forward her legacy, even as he set about dismantling the poll tax.
Protests over the tax had swept the nation, starting with its introduction in Scotland in 1989, a year before the rest of the UK.
That had been a key factor behind the unrest which drove Thatcher from office.
She, however, like many Tories, remained fiercely opposed to a return to funding local government through a property-based tax – which Major was now proposing with the council tax. In an attempt to avert a clash, he sought to explain his thinking in the five-page letter.
Beginning “Dear Margaret” and ending “Yours ever, John”, he said “responsible citizens, overwhelmingly our supporters” were being hit with rising bills as councils set the poll tax at levels far higher than expected.
He wrote: “Having consulted widely throughout the party, I am convinced that it would never be accepted as equitable and that it would never be properly collectable either.
“I do not think we could long defend a situation in which some people were paying more in community charge (the poll tax’s official name) than in income tax.”
Major then sought to sweeten the pill by passing on an invitation from the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to visit Moscow.
He added a handwritten PS, assuring her of his continuing commitment to her policies and rejecting the “hurtful” attempts to divide them. But his hope of ending talk of rifts was a vain one.
Thatcher’s deepening unrest over his policies – particularly those on Europe – was to cast a long shadow over his premiership.