Thatcher: No sex talk please, we’re British!
Handwritten notes reveal former PM’s outrage at plan to ask about people’s love lives as part of AIDS campaign
MARGARET Thatcher’s outraged opposition to her own Government’s bid to protect gay men from AIDS is revealed today – in her own handwriting.
She scrawled across a Downing Street document setting out the plans ‘I am absolutely against this’ and ‘No Government money’ should be spent on the matter’.
To make the strength of her opinion clear, the former PM used capital letters and heavy underlinings, saying the Government did not have the right to meddle in private lives.
And she suggested it was all a waste of taxpayers’ money, stating it would only ‘possibly reduce the margin of error’ in curbing AIDS.
The fresh insight into Mrs Thatcher’s views is contained in a book, People Like Us, by her former No10 private secretary Caroline Slocock. It says Mrs Thatcher initially blocked a Government campaign warning people of the dangers of AIDS.
She was worried about ‘alerting children to the existence of certain practices’ – and said the adverts should be posted in ‘public toilets, not broadcast on television’.
She also suggested they were against the Obscene Publications Act.
Ms Slocock says Mrs Thatcher’s ‘sensitivity about discussing sex’ emerged when she put into her prime ministerial Red Box a Health Department briefing on a national survey into sexual practices.
The aim was to calculate how many people were at risk from AIDS and how to minimise the risk. Ms Slocock writes: ‘She scrawled over my measured minute, “All this just to reduce (possibly) a margin of error. I am absolutely against this. I think people rightly would be deeply offended by questions of this kind.”’
Ms Slocock says that despite Mrs Thatcher’s protests, the research went ahead but without Government backing. According to the author, Mrs Thatcher saw ‘any positive mention of gay sex in schools as subversive, potentially corrupting young minds away from family life’.
Ms Slocock says many people have never forgiven Mrs Thatcher for her ‘infamous Section 28 law’ that prohibited the promotion of homosexuality in schools.
But she adds Mrs Thatcher’s ‘strong interest in gay sex’ was demonstrated by her response to another document put in her Red Box, an explicit 30-page Whitehall document on sexual practices.
An aide wanted her to ban it on the grounds that it was ‘bordering on pornographic’.
The book continues: ‘It was a view Mrs Thatcher heartily endorsed. It went into exhaustive, explicit and colourful detail about every imaginable form of sexual practice that might be “safe”.
‘If you followed the advice, “You could have safe sex with hundreds of strangers and never catch anything”.’ It came back with more outraged scrawlings – but for all
‘People will be offended by these questions’
her indignation, it was obvious she had read it from beginning to end.
‘The underlinings sometimes veered off the horizontal, as they did when it was late at night and her pen was dropping as she was nodding off. But she kept going. She wanted to know everything, and nothing was going to stop her.’
However, Ms Slocock denies Mrs Thatcher was anti-gay, pointing out she was one of the Tory MPs to vote for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967.
Ms Slocock says she saw at first hand Mrs Thatcher’s ‘kindness, empathy and sympathy’ towards two men dying from AIDS when she made a private visit to London’s Mildmay Hospital – the same hospital visited by Princess Diana.
‘My diary recalls how sweet and tender she was toward them. It made a great impression on me. I’d seen the woman, not the politician, and the woman had an open heart.’