"NOT A SCRIPT FOR ME":

Thatcher and Carter: the not-so special relationship: Newly released documents from Margaret Thatcher's first year in office reveal her widespread distrust of the Establishment - especially the BBC - and her growing impatience with the Carter administration (Anthony Seldon, 06 Feb 2010, Daily Telegraph)

Thatcher's close relationship with Ronald Reagan was a key feature of her premiership. Was it foreshadowed in her year and a half with Carter? Her fondness for the United States shines through the documents.

In her first full letter to the Democrat Carter in June 1979, she assures him of total British support in the ratification of the SALT II nuclear arms treaty ("We will do all we can to assist you"). But a certain froideur is in evidence with Carter himself from the outset.

When he phones her to congratulate her on the general election victory, he speaks, almost mechanically, of a "tremendous personal victory for you. […] We look forward to working with you on an official basis."

Contrast this with the warmth, later that month, when she phoned Joe Clark, the incoming prime minister of Canada who had beaten Pierre Trudeau's Liberals. Thatcher tells him: "We've been watching [the election] anxiously the last few days. […] The great thing is that the tide is moving all over." Clark asked for her advice. "You just get stuck in, that's all," she says, "you have to get stuck in, and really rely on your own instincts."

It is evident from the documents that Thatcher does not consider Carter a soulmate, worries that he is naive when it came to relations with the Soviets, and shows herself willing to stand up to him, as over Iran, where she refuses resolutely to agree to reduce the British embassy presence at his behest. On Northern Ireland, she bemoans that attitudes to Ireland in America "are still apt to owe more to the 19th century than to the facts of the present day world". In December 1979, on her visit to the United States, she berated Carter for not allowing the sale of weapons to equip the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Thatcher's tough and critical stance towards the Soviet Union had earned her the "Iron Lady" sobriquet several years before she became Prime Minister. The papers suggest she lost none of her Cold War warrior zeal inside No 10.

In October 1979, she writes to Carter: "I share your concern about Cuban and Soviet intentions in the Caribbean. This danger exists more widely in the developing world. It is essential that the Soviet Union should recognise your resolve in this matter. […] I am therefore especially encouraged by your statement that you are accelerating efforts to increase the capability of the United States to use its military forces world wide."

Her appetite is abundantly clear when she tells, or perhaps lectures Carter, that "I welcome our continuing personal conversation". And again, three days after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, on Christmas Eve 1979, when she wrote to Brezhnev that she was "profoundly disturbed", and "frankly puzzled" by the defence that the Soviet invasion was at the invitation of the Afghan government. "It is clear that the Soviet Union has sought a pretext to impose its will on a smaller neighbour. . . I should welcome your assurance that all Soviet troops will be withdrawn at a very early date."

Thatcher's euroscepticism is also on display. In 1979, the Conservatives were still the "party of Europe" in British politics, having taken the UK into the European Community, in the face of Labour hostility, earlier in the decade under Heath. But the salaries of "Eurocrats" was one of the first issues to prick her: "They are paid much too much – from our taxpayers' money. It looks like a real gravy train."

During the European elections held in June 1979, she refused to deliver a speech prepared for her by scriptwriter Ronnie Millar, scribbling: "This is not a script for me – I just couldn't say some of those things." When Millar wrote back to her that "the British had never entirely understood Europe", she responded in the margin: "Maybe they did understand it! That's what it sounds like!"