Thatcher was adamantly opposed to this special status, which had come into effect earlier in the 1970s when Northern Ireland's "Troubles" flared. "Crime is crime is crime. It is not political, it is crime," she declared.

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In May 1981, Bobby Sands, the most well-known of the hunger strikers, had died after 66 days of not eating. His death sparked an international outcry. Nine others would also perish.

Sanders, whose constituency in New England comprised many of Irish descent, was irate.

“We are deeply disturbed by your government’s unwillingness to stop the abuse, humiliation and degrading treatment of Irish prisoners now on hunger strikes in Northern Ireland," he wrote.

"We ask you to end your intransigent policy towards the prisoners before the reputation of the English people for fair play and simple decency is further damaged in the eyes of the people of Vermont and the United States."

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The original document, housed in an archive at the University of Vermont, is shown below:

It's unclear whether (and highly unlikely that) Thatcher even registered the protest of one American mayor from a small town in the Northeast.

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Sanders was clearly undeterred. As a story in the Guardian details, Sanders used his post to dash off all sorts of correspondence around the world. He hailed the "heroic revolution" of the leftist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, urged military disarmament at the United Nations and inveighed against apartheid in South Africa.

Many of his positions, indeed, would have put him at odds with Thatcher, a Cold Warrior whose steadfast opposition to the Soviet Union sometimes placed her on the wrong side of history elsewhere in the world.

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Just this week, newly unearthed documents revealed how her office attempted to subdue a Foreign Office memo in 1986, pleading with her to take a tougher stand on South Africa's apartheid regime. The memo was marked "please bury deep" by Downing Street officials.