Queen ‘so enraged’ by Maggie on apartheid she wanted to scrap their weekly meeting
A handbagging for Major from Mrs T – just weeks after she resigned
‘PM’s moods can make life difficult’
THE Queen was in a rage with Margaret Thatcher over her refusal to back sanctions against South Africa and considered scrapping their weekly audience, newly declassified files reveal.
Her Majesty is said to have fumed that the then prime minister had damaged ‘ her Commonwealth’ by refusing to support hardline actions against the racist apartheid regime.
Her anger, which apparently erupted after a 1987 Commonwealth heads of government summit, is revealed in official Irish files released under the country’s 30-year rule.
A Buckingham Palace source briefed an Irish diplomat on the situation who in turn reported back to the Irish prime minister.
The Commonwealth summit took place in Vancouver, with tighter sanctions against South Africa among the issues that were discussed.
During the talks 47 other leaders agreed to increase pressure on the country to end its apartheid system in which black people were segregated from whites.
But Mrs Thatcher refused to back the calls to end the discriminatory practice – and Britain was blamed for thwarting the move.
The conference ended in bitterness and recriminations among presidents and prime ministers from the former colonies. Mrs Thatcher was seen as having ‘blundered badly’.
An Irish diplomat based in London reported back to Dublin that ‘she well knows but cannot admit her mistake’.
After speaking with a source inside Buckingham Palace, Richard Ryan, a former chargé d’affaires at Ireland’s embassy in London, sent a memo to his prime minister’s office.
‘There is a wide view too that the Queen is in a rage with Mrs Thatcher over her handling of the sanctions question (not because of the substance of the argument but because of its style: the Queen, it is said, sees the insensitivity as further damaging “her” Commonwealth at a sensitive time),’ he wrote.
Such was the Queen’s anger she considered scrapping her weekly audience with Mrs Thatcher, the Palace source told Mr Ryan. The Queen can use the audience to express her views on government matters.
The diplomat – referring to the Queen as Brenda, a nickname coined by the satirical magazine Private Eye – reported: ‘A source in the Palace said that “Brenda” was seriously considering cancelling last night’s Tuesday audience with the prime minister.
‘This audience is a standard matter, as regular as Cabinet meetings, which has existed for more than a century.’
Mrs Thatcher’s ‘moods’ at the time also caused concerns about their possible impact on Anglo-Irish relations.
She was ‘in very bad form’ over problems in the financial markets which ‘badly set back’ her plans to sell off the Government’s remaining stake in the once state-owned oil giant BP.
Mr Ryan warned that difficulties in Dublin-London relations could be worsened ‘in the short term at least by Mrs Thatcher’s present mood’.
In a footnote, the diplomat suggested that his information on her frame of mind need not be given ‘too much weight’ but added: ‘We have, though, in the past seen some examples of how the PM’s moods can make life more difficult for those around her and doing business with her. They tend to add a measure of harshness to her tone and increase her tendency to fix on and reiterate single and simple points.’
The files also reveal that the Queen was ‘very much in favour’ of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, saying it was a step ‘in the right direction’.
The accord, signed by Mrs Thatcher and her Irish counterpart Garret FitzGerald in 1985, aimed to bring an end to the Troubles by giving the Irish government an advisory role in Northern Ireland’s affairs. It sparked mass protests among Unionists in Northern Ireland.
In 1987 the Queen’s then press secretary Michael Shea had lunch with an Irish diplomat who reported back to the Irish premier’s office.
In his report of the private meeting he said ‘the Monarch’ was in favour of the accord, and a ‘fan’ of Mr FitzGerald.
‘Historic error’ ‘Approached with trepidation’
MARGARET Thatcher tore into John Major over his handling of the economy at a meeting held little more than a month after he succeeded her as prime minister in 1990.
Although he was regarded as her anointed successor, the Iron Lady still took him to task on interest rates and the poll tax.
Records of the fraught meeting, which are among the latest papers to have been released by the National Archives in Kew, west London, reveal that she told him he risked making a mistake of Churchillian proportions over the pound’s value that could plunge Britain into recession.
Mr Major, now Sir John, would have his revenge, cutting Mrs Thatcher out of key general election events in 1992, despite her indications that she would be ‘hurt’ if this happened.
In a scathing memo, his aides even proposed blocking her from attending an election rally because the party wanted to be ‘forward-looking’.
Relations between the two soured quickly after Mr Major became prime minister. She felt he was tearing up her legacy, he resented her interference.
Mrs Thatcher was furious that he had pledged to abolish her flagship reform of domestic rates, the poll tax, one of the factors which led to her resignation on November 28, 1990.
In an effort to improve the situation between them, Mr Major wrote to her a month later asking for a meeting.
He wrote, nervously: ‘I am a little concerned at some of the Press comment on a “new style” as this suggests new policies and I don’t wish to change the drift of policy.’
The meeting, which took place in January 1991 in Mr Major’s room at the Commons, was tense. A ‘note for the record’ reveals that the pair clashed.
Mrs Thatcher lambasted Mr Major on his approach to the economy, telling an apparently silent prime minister that setting ‘excessively high’ interest month before her resignation Mrs Thatcher oversaw Britain’s entry into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), which saw the pound’s value pegged against the strong Deutschmark.
Mr Major found his voice and replied that the current situation was ‘not remotely comparable’. Mrs Thatcher’s warning would prove to be prophetic as the UK tumbled out of the ERM less than two years later.
The memo notes that the discussion turned to the poll tax, which Mr Major warned her was not ‘politically sustainable’ before Mrs Thatcher launched into a defence of the tax. The meeting ended on a cordial note but Mr Major still abolished her initiative, pronouncing it ‘unfair, uncollectable and indefensible’.
Mr Major played in a cricket match involving other world leaders at a Commonwealth conference in Zimbabwe in 1991, the files reveal.
An aide told Mr Major if he batted ‘a bowler who can be relied on to bowl a slowish longhop outside off stump will be carefully chosen’. Mr Major said later he had approached the match with ‘trepidation’ but it had been ‘a great success’.