UK Edition
She has been widely praised as being one of the most capable Prime Ministers of recent decades.
But there was one thing aides were concerned about when it came to Margaret Thatcher – her driving.
In fact, senior staff appeared to be so worried that she might crash during a public test drive of a new Rover in 1986 that they organised for the vehicle to be secretly smuggled to Chequers so she could fit in a practice session before the event.
They were also haunted by the memory of a red car being delivered to Downing Street, matching the Labour party's traditional colour instead of the Conservative's blue, newly-uncovered documents show.
The private papers, which have been released on Monday by the Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust at the Churchill Archive Centre in Cambridge, show the Prime Minister's agreement to test drive the flagship vehicle for Rover's 800 series caused quite a stir.
While aides agreed that it would be good publicity, there appeared to be concerns about her carrying out a difficult reversing manoeuvre in front of cameras.
The new release shows a number of letters were sent between staff as early as April – three months before the event – as they discussed the best way to ensure there were no undignified slip-ups.
Their first battle was the colour of the vehicle. Bernard Ingham, Mrs Thatcher's chief press secretary, remembered a time when “they brought a blue (not a red) car” while private secretary Mark Addison was forced to make sure they were “fully aware of the importance of getting the right colour this time”.
It was also decided that to ensure Mrs Thatcher had the best possible chance of not messing up in front of the cameras, the vehicle would be towed to Chequers – her country house retreat the week before the live event.
Plans were put in place to ensure the press did not discover what was going on and members of the public did not see the car. On July 4, the details were revealed in a note to the Prime Minister from Mr Addison.
“You are trying out the Rover 800 tomorrow at Chequers between 1000 and 1030 to familiarise yourself with the car before the test drive in front of the cameras in Downing Street next Thursday,” he told her. “The car will be arriving, covered, towed behind a Range Rover… This is only an opportunity to familiarise yourself with the car. There will be no publicity.”
A separate note gave further detail. The Rover would be pulled by a white Range Rover and would “arrive under cover, for obvious reasons, on a trailer”. She would be shown it by Ray Axe, the chief designer, as well as the director in charge of the project.
After the test, Mr Addison contacted the Prime Minister again to discuss what she was going to do in the car in front of the cameras. One “simple” option, he said, would be to “walk down to the car at the bottom of Downing Street and drive it back to the front door”.
But Mrs Thatcher insisted she wanted to drive the car from the front door, before reversing up a side street and returning. “You would need to feel fully confident about manoeuvring the car into the side road and back out again,” Mr Addison warned.
On the day, she was provided with a “top of the range” version of the vehicle, which included an automatic gearbox.
Chris Collins, a historian at the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, said the plans were likely put in place as aides had a “dark fear” that she would crash or that it would all go “horribly wrong”.
He said part of the problem was that cars had become “a policy issue rather than a personal thing” and she was no longer familiar with “the machine”.
“She hadn’t driven for many, many years - maybe 10 years since she had been round in a car, with herself behind the wheel,” he explained. “I wouldn’t think she had driven since 1975 – except for the previous attempts to do this, of course. There may be a memory of a previous drive… that had gone wrong.”
Despite fears, the stunt went well and the Prime Minister later wrote to Graham Day, chairman of the Rover group, to say she had “very much enjoyed” the opportunity to drive such a “splendid” car.