During Margaret Thatcher’s first months in power she clashed with ministers, cold-shouldered civil servants and declined an offer of 20 “karate ladies” to guard her at an international summit, secret government papers reveal today.
One of her first moves on taking office in May was to start cutting Civil Service jobs. The Government machine needed cutting by at least 5 per cent, she insisted, but ideally closer to 20 per cent.
Any minister who tried to block her was given short shrift. “This paper is much too sketchy and cannot possibly be included,” she wrote on a draft paper in which Christopher Soames, the Lord President of the Council, suggested that the mass redundancies planned by the Prime Minister were less than prudent. “What are we doing with 566,000 that can’t be done with 500,000?”
There was no let-up in her battle with the Civil Service, even over Christmas. Sir Ian Bancroft, head of the Civil Service, asked in a letter dated November 20 whether the Prime Minister might send a Christmas message “to make it clear” that ministers “do appreciate the work done by the services”, and to avoid public servants seeking sanctuary with the unions. A suggested message was even
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