‘Thatcher ignored death threats to attend Indira’s funeral’

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had received death threats to her life in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination in October 1984, according to newly-declassified UK government documents.

Thatcher, who described the former Indian Prime Minister as a “member of my own family”, flew down to New Delhi to attend her funeral on November 3 that year against the backdrop of at least two documented threats to her life.

The British embassy in Helsinki had received a telephone call from a man with a “Middle Eastern or Asian accent” who said: “I have a feeling there is going to be an attack on Mrs Thatcher. I have never been wrong before,” according to a telegram to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) released under the 30-year declassification rule at the National Archives in Kew, south-west London. A second telegram records a telephone communication between an anonymous caller and a French operator in Paris: “This is the IRA. Tell your security that we are sending a gunman to New Delhi and he will be a threat to Margaret Thatcher”.

The threats would have assumed greater significance as Thatcher had survived an assassination attempt just weeks earlier when the separatist Irish Republican Army (IRA) exploded a bomb at the Conservative Party conference in Brighton on October 12, 1984.

The then UK foreign secretary, Geoffrey Howe, was understandably concerned and sent the following note to the British High Commission in New Delhi - “In addition to the need for stringent security for Princess Anne and the Prime Minister during their stay you will no doubt also be assessing the risk to High Commission staff and premises in Delhi”.