Thatcher's Brummie brush-off

Conservative Party officials looked on in horror yesterday when Mrs Thatcher walked into a Birmingham science park and was told she was not welcome and had not been invited.

In the biggest upset of the Prime Minister's smoothly-run campaign, Mr Clive Wilkinson, leader of the Labour group in Birmingham City Council and a director of Birmingham Technology Limited, the company which runs the Aston Science Park, met her at the entrance as part of the welcoming party and said: “Many of us resent you coming here. You have not been invited” .

Mrs Thatcher, obviously taken aback, told Mr Wilkinson that if Labour politicians had been invited in similar circumstances she hoped they would have been treated with respect.

Embarrassed officials hurriedly moved her on to look round the company's factory. Mr John Butcher, former MP for Coventry Southwest and the Industry Minister with special responsibility for the West Midlands, shouted to Mr Wilkinson: “This is a disgrace.”