Word: thatcher
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...choose a Woman of the Year instead? Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is my proposal...
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher tried to answer some of these questions during an extraordinary debate in the House. She said Britain's intelligence chiefs had not wished to tip off Blunt's former employers in Moscow that he had been caught by removing him from his royal curatorship. The security service had told the Queen's private secretary that Blunt was thought to be a Soviet agent; the secretary, however, was also advised that the Queen should not seek to remove him. Beyond that, Thatcher said, "the immunity was offered to Blunt to get information on Soviet...
...Thatcher's position was upheld by two of her predecessors as Prime Minister in what Callaghan called "a calm and rational debate." Speaking from the corner Commons seat once occupied by Winston Churchill during the '30s, Edward Heath strongly denied that there had been any "coverup" and insisted that Blunt's disclosures about other Soviet spies had provided "a great deal of valuable information." Callaghan agreed with Heath, but allowed, with hindsight, that "the advice at the time about Blunt being allowed to stay in a palace post was wrong." And Callaghan added the icy comment...
...Thatcher's version is different. According to her, British intelligence questioned Blunt eleven times between 1951 and 1964. In the initial investigation of Burgess and Maclean, said Thatcher, an unnamed source told the spy catchers that Maclean had said he was a "Comintern agent" as early as 1937 and that Blunt was one of his contacts. But the investigators could find no concrete evidence of treason, and finally decided that only an offer of immunity could induce Blunt to talk. The offer was made, Thatcher said. Blunt confessed and "subsequently provided useful information about Russian intelligence activities." The Queen...
...before Thatcher made that public statement, an official of the Cabinet Office discreetly warned Blunt of the impending disclosures and the erstwhile curator immediately vanished from his London flat. "The situation is quite scandalous," declared Labor M.P. James Wellbeloved. The Prime Minister's spokesman replied that the warning was a "common courtesy" and denied that Blunt was a fugitive from justice. Though the Queen stripped him of his knighthood last week, he apparently will incur no other punishment. Reflecting widespread public indignation over the incident, the Guardian charged that the cover-up by successive governments was "a totally abject...