Falling for the Thatcher school milk myth

I see Paul Doran (Letters, April 10) has fallen for the myth that Margaret Thatcher was responsible for withdrawing free milk in schools while she was education secretary.

In her autobiography Mrs Thatcher wrote “I learned a valuable lesson from it. I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit.”

The actual facts are that free milk for secondary school pupils was abolished by Edward Short, who was education secretary before her and Mrs Thatcher just happened to be unlucky enough to have been in office when the withdrawal came into effect, after having tried to reverse it but not receiving any support from her colleagues at Cabinet, all of whom were male and public schooled, of course, with no concept of how important having free milk was for the less well-off.