Archive

MT's official files as Prime Minister, 1979-90

MT's official files as PM can be read on this site as they are released, in full and free to all - the confidential files originally stored at No.10, the core record of her premiership.

The files have been copied at the British National Archives (TNA) at Kew in London and can be downloaded precisely as they appear in the reading room.

We are doing something more to help people make sense of this mass of information. The files are subject-based, logically enough, but that system makes it difficult to reconstruct the flow of paper across the Prime Minister’s desk at any point in time, depriving us of a sense of context, of the political cross-winds, some of them overwhelming.

To combat this effect we are uploading a large selection of the most important documents from these files – thousands in total – to our powerful site database. You can search and sort by date, subject and other parameters, getting as close as anyone can now get to reconstructing the Prime Minister’s daily "Red Boxes", the rich diet of foreign and domestic policy papers submitted to her by the No.10 Private Office.

List and links to the PM’s files

Below are links to the downloadable files in numerical order. The subject terms are those used in the original filing system.

An average file has around 200 pages.

You can read here an account of how filing worked at No.10, and the system for archiving MT’s Prime Ministerial papers, both of which had their quirks.

Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Private Office files, 1979-1989

1979-89: Chancellor’s Private Office files [links to hundreds of digitised files from the Chancellorships of Sir Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson]

Engagement Diaries

An alternative way through the material is to read MT’s engagement diaries, jumping day to day.

The engagement diaries link directly to relevant documents in the site database, so this is a good way to recover the perspective from the Red Box.

Showing items 3126 - 3150 of 3726

Per page:
File name File title Begins Ends Release date Any docs withheld? Classification Pages
PREM19/3261 Defence (Intelligence gathering operations) (Part 5) Begins: 1989 Jul 1 Ends: 1991 Oct 24 Date of release: Retained Under Sec 3.4
PREM19/3262 Disasters (Lockerbie bombing, 21 December 1988: Pan Am 747 air crash) (Part 2a) Begins: 1989 Dec 2 Ends: 1991 Nov 15 Date of release: Temporarily Retained by Department
PREM19/3264 Disasters (Piper Alpha oil platform explosion, 6 July 1988) (Part 1) Begins: 1988 Jul 7 Ends: 1991 Mar 25 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Classification: Secret Pages: 131
PREM19/3266 Dominica (Dominican general election, July 1980: Prime Minister's message to new Prime Minister of Dominica, Miss Eugenie Charles; visits of Miss Charles) (Part 1) Begins: 1980 Jul 1 Ends: 1991 May 15 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Classification: Confidential Pages: 131
PREM19/3267 Dubai (UK/Dubai relations; Prime Minister's call on Shaikh Rashid of Duba, June 1981) Begins: 1981 Jun 19 Ends: 1986 Aug 27 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Any docs withheld? 2 Classification: Confidential Pages: 23
PREM19/3268 East Timor (Situation in East Timor) Begins: 1982 Nov 5 Ends: 1991 Nov 11 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Classification: Confidential Pages: 27
PREM19/3269 Economic Policy (Briefing for the Prime Minister by Sir Alan Walters) Begins: 1989 May 10 Ends: 1991 Jan 15 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Classification: Secret Pages: 35
PREM19/3273 Economic Policy (Consumer Credit Act 1974: licensing; consumer lending; credit marketing) Begins: 1979 Jul 4 Ends: 1991 Sep 19 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Classification: Secret Pages: 256
PREM19/3274 Economic Policy (Domestic monetary policy) (Part 22) Begins: 1990 May 3 Ends: 1991 May 31 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Classification: Secret Pages: 271
PREM19/3275 Economic Policy (G7 Summits: 'Sherpa' papers) (Part 4) Begins: 1988 Aug 2 Ends: 1991 Apr 19 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Classification: Confidential Pages: 312
PREM19/3276 Economic Policy (Financial services: report of the Review Committee on Banking Services Law; Stock Exchange; company investigations; Diamond Report, 'A Review of Security Interests in Property' other than land) (Part 6) Begins: 1989 Feb 7 Ends: 1991 Dec 19 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Any docs withheld? 7 Classification: Secret Pages: 313
PREM19/3277 Economic Policy (G7 Summit - Paris, July 1989) (Part 27) [filed out of sequence] Begins: 1989 Jan 13 Ends: 1989 Jul 7 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Classification: Secret Pages: 301
PREM19/3278 Economic Policy (G7 Summit - London, July 1991) (Part 31) Begins: 1988 Aug 22 Ends: 1991 Mar 29 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Any docs withheld? 5 Classification: Confidential Pages: 249
PREM19/3285 Economic Policy (Market reports) Begins: 1988 Jun 30 Ends: 1991 Jul 2 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Classification: Secret Pages: 229
PREM19/3287 Economic Policy (Policy towards privatisation: disposal of public sector assets; contracting out of public sector functions) (Part 17) Begins: 1989 Jan 19 Ends: 1991 Mar 29 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Classification: Confidential Pages: 279
PREM19/3288 Economic Policy (Public spending) (Part 45) Begins: 1990 Sep 4 Ends: 1991 Mar 23 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Classification: Secret Pages: 284
PREM19/3291 Economic Policy (Speeches by the Governor and Deputy Governor of the Bank of England) (Part 3) Begins: 1986 Oct 16 Ends: 1991 Jul 2 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Classification: Unclassified Pages: 381
PREM19/3294 Education (General policy on education) (Part 27) Begins: 1990 Nov 13 Ends: 1991 Mar 28 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Classification: Confidential Pages: 259
PREM19/3299 Education (Training: Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI); city technology colleges) (Part 3) Begins: 1986 Jul 1 Ends: 1991 Jan 7 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Any docs withheld? 2 Classification: Confidential Pages: 185
PREM19/3300 Education (Payments to school and college governors: college governing bodies) Begins: 1980 Feb 13 Ends: 1991 May 14 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Classification: Confidential Pages: 14
PREM19/3302 Elections (Election procedure) (Part 4) Begins: 1990 Sep 5 Ends: 1991 Jan 30 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Any docs withheld? 4 Classification: Secret Pages: 175
PREM19/3306 Environmental Affairs (Environmental pollution: climate change; Environment White Paper) (Part 18) Begins: 1990 Sep 14 Ends: 1991 May 29 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Classification: Confidential Pages: 385
PREM19/3307 Ethiopia (Internal situation: relations with UK) (Part 1) Begins: 1982 Dec 1 Ends: 1991 Oct 31 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Any docs withheld? 8 Classification: Secret Pages: 245
PREM19/3308 European Policy (European Community Budget: developments in the European Community) (Part 48) Begins: 1990 Nov 1 Ends: 1991 Feb 27 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Any docs withheld? 3 Classification: Secret Pages: 293
PREM19/3314 European Policy (European Convention on Human Rights: Prime Minister's visit to Paris for Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) Summit, November 1990) (Part 3) Begins: 1989 Oct 4 Ends: 1990 Dec 17 Date of release: 2017 Jul 20 Any docs withheld? 6 Classification: Secret Pages: 365
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