The highlights in the newspapers bring to life the inner workings of government from 30 years ago. The content is fascinating. We discover details about nuclear release procedures in light of the increased presence of US nuclear weapons on UK soil, and the degree to which, to her fury, Mrs Thatcher was kept out of the loop over the US sudden assault on Grenada. Domestically, we learn more about ramping up of policies towards current or future trade union strikes, and details of briefings prepared for a potential transition in the 1983 election. This latest batch of files is particularly notable for two reasons. Firstly that here we have as a normal release even the more secretive files from the period. It is only over the last 20 years that we have become accustomed to expect a near-entire release of what is in the archive. No doubt there are still many redactions in the file batches, there always are, but the level of release now is a contrast with what was still difficult to obtain even 10 years ago. Both the level of openness of those doing the weeding in the departments and the pressure on them was revealed recently in […]

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