FORMER Oxford University student Margaret Thatcher vowed to ‘strenuously’ resist forcing women-only colleges to employ men as fellows, according to newly-released official documents.

The Prime Minister showed a personal interest in protecting the status of single-sex Oxford and Cambridge colleges after it was suggested changes encouraged by the European Commission would prevent them from only appointing women.

Mrs Thatcher, who studied at then all-women Somerville College between 1943 and 1947, branded the plans ‘absurd’ and said they would ‘infringe not enlarge liberties’.

The row, revealed in Cabinet Office papers released by the National Archives in Kew, west London, erupted amid pressure for the UK to repeal section 51 of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975.

The change would have removed protection for Oxbridge colleges positively discriminating in the recruitment process.

Daphne Park, principal of Somerville college, informed the Prime Minister of the college’s opposition to the change and desire to find a solution which would ‘safeguard the status quo’, in a letter on June 2 1986.

She wrote: “I hold no brief for resisting change when the time is ripe, but I hope the college will be able to choose its course when the right time comes rather than to have the decision made for us, for reasons which are not germane to the issue.”

In a signed note scrawled on the letter, Mrs Thatcher said: “It is absurd to try to prevent women’s colleges from continuing as women colleges with women fellows.

“To stop it would infringe not enlarge liberties.”

The Prime Minister received assurances from Jacques Delors, president of the European Commission, that ‘common sense would prevail’ in cases involving Oxbridge colleges, according to an internal Number 10 memo. Somerville later accepted men from 1994.