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Margaret Thatcher’s government secretly considered stockpiling chemical weapons in the 1980s in response to the Soviet Union’s chemical arsenal, according to newly released official files.
Publicly ministers claimed that they had no plans to restore the nation’s chemical warfare (CW) capability, which had been voluntarily relinquished in the 1950s.
However files released this week show that, behind the scenes, Thatcher suggested the government could be considered “negligent” if it did not build its own chemical arsenal.
For 80 years, survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings have pleaded “never again,” for anyone. But are we listening, asks Linda Pentz Gunter
SOLOMON HUGHES explains how the PM is channelling the spirit of Reagan and Thatcher with a ‘two-tier’ nuclear deterrent, whose Greenham Common predecessor was eventually fought off by a bunch of ‘punks and crazies’
