Archives reveal Thatcher hostile to Asian immigrants

MARGARET Thatcher complained in private about the numbers of immigrants coming to Britain from south Asia, saying they were being given council houses at the expense of “white citizens”, it was disclosed yesterday.

Papers released to the National Archives at Kew, west London, under the 30-year rule cast fresh light on the former prime minister’s attitude towards immigration.

They record a meeting in July 1979 between the premier, foreign secretary Peter Carrington and home secretary William Whitelaw to discuss the plight of hundreds of thousands of “boat people” fleeing communist persecution in Vietnam.