Thatcher 'knew of UDR infiltration before she took office'

Margaret Thatcher was warned the British Army suspected the Ulster Defence Regiment was heavily infiltrated by Protestant extremists in the North four years before she became UK Prime Minister, it was claimed today.

According to files unearthed in the British Public Records Office and published in a Belfast newspaper, Mrs Thatcher was alerted to the Army’s suspicions during a September 1975 Downing Street briefing when she was leader of the Opposition in the British House of Commons.