Thatcher hampered government support for IT, papers reveal

The Iron Lady did not see the need for an IT minister

Margaret Thatcher has emerged as one of the main obstacles to gearing up Britain for the information age when she won office in 1979.

The Iron Lady and some – but not all – of Britain's top civil servants actively resisted attempts 30 years ago to launch a government strategy on IT and shake up the Whitehall machine.

Confidential Cabinet papers from 1979 to 1980 released by the National Archives reveal consternation in Whitehall over pressure from the Advisory Council for Applied Research and Development and others for government action.

Tory MP Kenneth Baker, who went on to become Britain's first IT minister, sent a letter giving advance notice of a speech he was about to make to Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert Armstrong, the head of the civil service, urging a national strategy for IT, pointing out it was the one industry certain to grow despite the recession.

Fellow Tory MP Ian Lloyd – a supporter of the computer industry – put down a formal question in the Commons to the Prime Minister.

Senior civil servants did not like the idea of an IT strategy, with one warning that "the reception by ministers to the idea is .... doubtful".

A number of departmental heads voiced their concerns about a prospective shake-up of government machinery, but Sir Robert took up the cause.

Thatcher's own reaction was to rule out a new minister or department for IT and call for "some central group" of senior civil servants to look into what needed to be done instead.

A few months later she went back on that, with 10 Downing Street sending a note in which she rejected Sir Robert's proposals for a group at Cabinet level "to stimulate and keep developments in IT under review," with power to resolve conflicts between departments.

She feared "expensive and unjustified duplication of the work which is already being done through the Department of Industry".

One exasperated senior bureaucrat penned a rebellious note warning: "Her decision seems to show a failure to understand the consequence of the present incoherence in the government's machinery... She risks spoiling the ship for the salaries of two civil servants."

The wily Sir Robert avoided a confrontation, proposing that the Department of Industry appoint a Deputy Secretary to take on the co-ordinating role he wanted for the Cabinet Office, arguing this was better than nothing.

Out-manoeuvred, Thatcher agreed. The infighting delayed progress by about six months. The papers also reveal Sir Robert wanted his own Prestel set in the Cabinet Office to keep abreast of affairs. His request itself generated a pile of paperwork over the cost: £25 plus a connection charge and a telephone line!