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."
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Image: Detail from a page of doodles by President Ronald Reagan, kept by Margaret Thatcher
Credit: Churchill Archives Centre
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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