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The core of this site is a substantial database of Margaret Thatcher’s statements across the years (speeches, interviews, press conferences, etc), searchable by date, subject, importance and keyword. The Archive section contains thousands of documents – most of them declassified or previously unpublished – relating to Margaret Thatcher’s personal and political life, from childhood onwards. There is a specific search term for 'Northern Ireland', which captures documents which do not include the words 'Northern Ireland' but which refer to 'Ulster' or the 'Six Counties'. These include an outline of British policy on Northern Ireland in a letter to President Carter in 1979 in which it is noted ‘It is an unhappy fact that perspectives on Ireland and not only in the United States – are still apt to owe more to the 19th Century than to the facts of the present day world’; the British stance on the Hunger Strikes of 1981, including the authorisation of communication with the Provisional IRA and the appropriate language to use in order to 'make the statement acceptable to the provos [sic]’; outrage at the IRA Harrods and Brighton bombs; and a meeting between Reagan and Thatcher at Camp David in December 1984 during which Thatcher suggested that: ‘Despite reports to the contrary, she and Garret [sic] FitzGerald were on good terms…’
Complete files from Thatcher’s official papers are made available as they are released. Selected documents from these papers andmany other sources are committed to a powerfulonline database, enabling the researcher to create their own collection of documents sorted by date or period, source, subject, name or keyword. Multimedia section for photos, film and audio material.
Papers have been digitised and are available immediately in PDF format. All material on the site is freely available for private and educational use. The original copies of the papers are at the Churchill Archive, Cambridge but the site also contains material from other key collections, including several overseas such as the US Presidential Libraries.
info@margaretthatcher.org