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.

According to the minutes, Carrington, who had visited refugee camps in Hong Kong where some refugees were being held, gave a “vivid account” of the conditions he found and suggested Britain should accept 10,000 people over a two-year period.

He expressed concern that if Britain did not come forward with a significant offer, there would be a “damaging reaction” at home and abroad. Anything less than 10,000, he said, would be “difficult to sustain internationally”.

Thatcher said that there were already too many people coming into the country.

She said that “with some exceptions there had been no humanitarian case for accepting 1.5 million immigrants from south Asia and elsewhere. It was essential to draw a line somewhere”. Whitelaw said it was a mistake to mix up immigrants and refugees. He further antagonised Thatcher by adding that his postbag was showing a shift in opinion in favour of accepting more boat people.

“The prime minister said that in her view all those who wrote letters in this sense should be invited to accept one into their homes,” the minutes noted.

“She thought it quite wrong that immigrants should be given council housing whereas white citizens were not.”

Thatcher then raised the question of the implications of such a move in the light of the expected exodus of the white settler population from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) once majority rule was established.

She added however that she had “less objection to refugees such as Rhodesians, Poles and Hungarians, since they could more easily be assimilated into British society”.