Queen’s sister and prime minister despair at striking steel workers and discuss luncheons in New York in letters given to National Archives



Princess Margaret complained about a dearth of Trotskyists “to argue with” and Margaret Thatcher boasted about addressing the “biggest luncheon ever” in an unusually revealing exchange of private letters.

The correspondence between the two Margarets, released on Friday to the National Archives in Kew after more than 30 years, shows them commiserating over the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and strikes in the steel industry.

“I suppose if one is an ordinary working man and one’s union tells one not to vote for new machinery or technology because otherwise you will lose your job or your card – you just don’t dare,” the Queen’s sister told the prime minister in early 1980. “The steel strike is depressing.”

The discursive, handwritten notes refer to other messages that had passed between them. Thatcher wrote in January following news that Princess Margaret had been admitted to the London Clinic for an operation to remove a benign skin lesion.

Addressing her as “Ma’am”, Thatcher said she was distressed to hear about the hospital visit. Her six-page letter detours through a New Year’s Eve performance attended in Covent Garden and a trip to the United States. “I cannot help feeling that Washington is much more isolated from America than London is from Britain,” she wrote – an opinion that now, perhaps, seems dated.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Letter from Margaret Thatcher to Princess Margaret. Photograph: aaldridge/The National Archives

“In New York, I spoke to the biggest luncheon ever, some 3,000 people and we took questions afterwards. I found it fascinating – they are so easy to please and so delighted if you say what you really think.”

Industrial relations provoked a characteristic Thatcher sermon: “Alas, the new year has started with a steel strike and it is difficult to see why because the two sides aren’t really far away from one another … People have come to expect an annual increase for nothing, it is difficult to get across the message that more money has to be earned and not just demanded.”

The prime minister signed off with: “I remain your humble and devoted servant, Margaret Thatcher.”

Princess Margaret’s spirited reply, dispatched from Kensington Palace nearly a month later on notepaper headed with a crowned ‘M’ monogram, began “My Dear Prime Minister”.

The “things dug out of my face”, she explained, “weren’t worrying”. As well as expressing sympathy over the steel strike, the sociable royal described a trip to Cambridge for a debate.

It was “rather dull, all about the church, lots of clerics” and full of “rabid conservatives – not a Trotskyist to argue with”. She continued: “They were passionately against the Olympic Games in Moscow. I tried the ‘but isn’t it hard on the athletes’ bit but they were adamant.

“I suppose individuals must choose whether to go as it’s up to the Olympic Committee. If that silly boxer [possibly a reference to Muhammad Ali, who had been sent to Tanzania, Nigeria and Senegal by the US government to campaign for a boycott] doesn’t make a hash of it he might get Africa to cock a snook at the Russians.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Letter from Princess Margaret to Margaret Thatcher. Photograph: aaldridge/The National Archives

The princess added: “I found it quite impossible to find out what is happening in Afghanistan. Are they about to wheel into Iran and get all the oil? More power to your policy of nuclear power stations. I wish they weren’t called ‘nuclear’ as people always think of the bomb. I’ve been advocating that since I was 20.”

With a final flourish, she thanked the prime minister for allocating £10,000 to the NSPCC, of which she was president, and signed off with: “Yours very sincerely, Margaret.”

The easy, conversational tone of the exchange does not contain any heavy-handed lobbying on policy. Few files relating to the royal family have been released to the National Archives in Kew recently; this year several are included.

It is extremely rare for such a private note to surface. A Buckingham Palace official said it was “comfortable” with the release. The princess died in 2001 at the age of 71. Had she still been alive, the letter would have been withheld far longer.

Other prime ministerial files relating to the royals released on Friday include one on visits made to Northern Ireland by the Duke and Duchess of Kent during the 1980s.

In June 1980, the Kents, on their way to a reception to mark the 10th anniversary of the Ulster Defence Regiment at Hillsborough Castle, were reminded that “as is the case of all royal visits, it might be necessary for security reasons to cancel the visit at any time up to the last minute”.

The duchess talked to the prime minister ahead of a 1988 trip. Thatcher added a handwritten note to a document instructing her civil servants: “Urgent. She spoke to me last evening about this visit and asked if there was anything I would like her to do. I suggested that she spend a short time visiting an army unit! Because it is important for their morale. Would you pursue this?”

Scrutinising the list of engagements arranged for the duchess on a one-day tour of the province the following year, the prime minister noted: “It is rather a lot for one day. I hope it is not too much for the duchess.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Princess Margaret in 1991. Photograph: Richard Young/Rex Features

Thatcher was also consulted by the cabinet secretary, Robert Armstrong, about transferring Earl Mountbatten’s private papers to Southampton University in 1980, the year after he was assassinated by the IRA.

The documents filled 38 filing cabinets. Some had not been cleared for release. Thatcher minuted: “If they are available to scholars, that is open to the public … I should not move anything to Southampton unless it can be properly available to the public.”

The Queen’s proposed visit to Brussels, to tour Nato headquarters and the European commission, in November 1980, prompted alarm in Downing Street. In one advance planning document, the prime minister wrote: “Please consider this in relation to a settlement on fisheries policy. The proposed visit could come at very bad time. The deadline for a settlement is end 1980.”

The prospect of the Queen being caught up in a row over fishing rights did not trouble the Foreign Office. “Lord Carrington does not, however, think that this should prevent the visit from going ahead,” an official responded.

Thatcher, it appears, eventually backed down – and not for the first time. “On balance,” a memo recorded, “the arguments in favour of the visit just outweighed those against.”