Andy Ffrench looks at a book detailing The Iron Lady’s tactics in taking on her enemies

The release of Margaret Thatcher’s personal and political papers from 1985 has made Clive Bloom’s detailed investigation of her leadership particularly timely.

Charles Moore’s biography of the Iron Lady has won most attention but Bloom’s carefully considered study should not be overlooked. For anyone who grew up in the 1980s, Thatcher’s Secret War will make fascinating reading.

Bloom draws on a variety of sources and official documentation to shed light on how the Conservative government took on the so-called ‘enemy within’, whether it was Labour activists, striking miners, poll tax protesters or rioters in Toxteth, Brixton and Broadwater Farm.

Bloom also analyses the way Thatcher took on her enemies not so close to home.

His chapter on the Falklands crisis is revealing, recalling a TV interview Mrs Thatcher gave on the Nationwide programme in May, 1983.

The Prime Minister finds herself exposed as the interviewer presses her on whether the Argentine cruiser Belgrano was sailing away from the Falklands when it was hit and sunk.

Bloom carefully weighs the evidence and concludes: “The argument has raged ever since, even though the captain of the Belgrano and secret British intercepts suggested the ship was manoeuvring for an attack.”

The chapter entitled Taking Pot Shots at Arthur, about the miners’ strike, is another highlight.

Bloom suggests the intelligence services were used to monitor National Union of Mineworkers’ leader Arthur Scargill and that police spent 40 million hours on policing the strike Some people look back at the 1980s through rose-tinted glasses as they wallow in nostalgia by watching old episodes of Top of the Pops. Don’t You Want Me sang the Human League at the beginning of the 1980s, a question the Prime Minister must have asked herself as the troubled decade wore on.

Thatcher’s Secret War by Clive Bloom is published by The History Press, price £20