‘used to deflect attention’ from nuclear protest
ONE of Margaret Thatcher’s top aides sought to exploit TV footage of the infant Prince William to deflect attention from a major peace march against the deployment of US nuclear missiles in the UK, the newly-released files reveal.
Ministers feared the scale of the anti-nuclear protests could prevent the stationing of the missiles at the Greenham Common airbase in Berkshire going ahead.
Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine ordered RAF Regiment troops to be stationed around the perimeter amid concerns that US soldiers guarding the missiles could open fire if they were confronted by protesters, sparking a major political incident.
The move to deploy US cruise missiles to Britain and other European countries in 1983 after Russia targeted its SS-20 missiles on the West came at one of the tensest moments of the Cold War.
It led to a massive expansion of the peace movement – with membership of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) rocketing from just 3,000 to 70,000 in the space of four years.
As a women’s peace camp was established at Greenham Common, Foreign Secretary Francis Pym advised Mrs Thatcher there was a risk the demonstrations could become so widespread that “deployment would actually become difficult or even impossible”.
By Easter, the focus was on a planned 14-mile “human chain” with tens of thousands of demonstrators linking up in a line extending from Greenham Common to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston and the Royal Ordnance Factory at Burghfield.
Fearing a major propaganda coup for the peace movement, Mrs Thatcher’s press secretary Bernard Ingham hit on the idea of using the visit to Australia of Charles and Diana, the Prince and Princess of Wales, with their nine-month-old son William, to try to draw the media’s attention away from the protests.
“I think Good Friday is a lost cause. This is the day when the CND chain will (or will not) be formed between Aldermaston and Greenham Common. It is also a day when there is not much sport,” he wrote.
“However, what would take the trick would be press and TV pictures, for TV release on the evening of Good Friday and/or Saturday newspapers of Prince William in Australia.”
However, Mr Ingham’s scheming could not prevent huge publicity for the protests.