Mrs Thatcher compared the Iraqi dictator to Hitler and warned that the UK needed to counter what she called his 'psychological warfare'
Credit: PA
Margaret Thatcher was warned against embarking on a propaganda campaign against Saddam Hussein for fear it would raise questions over Britain’s sale of arms to the Iraqi dictator, newly released documents have shown.
The Prime Minister compared Saddam to Adolf Hitler, describing him in confidential meetings as "a selfish, despotic dictator" who had inflicted years of misery on his own people.
But her Foreign Office minister, William Waldegrave, urged her not to launch a smear campaign against Saddam when Iraqi forces invaded neighbouring Kuwait, warning that such a tactic would call into question why British firms had repeatedly sold munitions to Iraq.
In a previously classified letter to Mrs Thatcher written in August 1990, Mr Waldegrave said "propaganda" against Saddam was "not difficult to come by", but that there was "some problem" with the then Prime Minster’s planned public relations drive against the dictator.
The minister wrote: "The more the Government trumpets Saddam’s atrocities, the more the question comes up: Why did you go on doing business with him for so long?"
Mr Waldegrave also expressed his fear that an anti-Saddam propaganda campaign might put at risk the lives of Britons captured by Iraqi forces.
He wrote: "My own view is that there is really no need for the Government to feed the flames of anti-Saddam feeling because they are blazing merrily away in any case.
Foreign Office minister William Waldegrave pictured 1996, who said 'propaganda' against Saddam Hussein, requested by the prime minister Margaret Thatcher, was 'not difficult to come by', but he warned such a tactic would be likely to call into question why British companies had sold munitions to Iraq, despite the atrocities committed during Saddam's reign
Credit: David Cheskin/PA Wire
"I do not think that propaganda in this country is really the issue: it is winning the battle in the Arab states, which is important and that is a much more complex issue. They do not doubt Saddam’s ruthlessness; that is probably partly why the radicals respect him."
Nevertheless, Mr Waldegrave went on to give Mrs Thatcher examples of the sort of brutality Saddam’s regime had been responsible for during his three decades long rule, and which Western media had begun to publicise more widely following the invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990.
This included the use of torture against children and the horrendous death toll from the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, during which Iraq used chemical weapons to devastating effect.
Mr Waldegrave – who was later criticised in the arms-for-Iraq inquiry over the decision at the end of 1988 to relax guidelines on defence sales to Iran and Iraq – wrote: "The (Iraqi) government, with Saddam Hussein at its head, consists of ruthless men who do not hesitate to use violence to suppress any suspicion of opposition.
"The government has subjected its citizens to forced relocation and deportations, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, disappearance and summary and political executions almost as a matter of course."
The launch of Saddam’s seven-month occupation of Kuwait over an oil dispute, which was eventually settled when Allied troops forced Iraq to retreat during Operation Desert Storm in February 1991, had prompted Mrs Thatcher to compare the dictator to Hitler and warn that the UK needed to counter what she called his “psychological warfare”.
A memo from Downing Street private secretary Caroline Slocock on Aug 19, 1990, noted that the Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher and her Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, discussed the developing situation in the Gulf during a private conversation the previous evening.
Ms Slocock’s memo read: "Both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary agreed that it now seemed highly likely that foreign nationals would be detained at key installations.
"Saddam Hussein was behaving like Hitler and using psychological warfare. His aim might well be to provoke hostile action.”
She added: “The Prime Minister stressed the importance of the UK studying his psychological warfare tactics carefully and responding in a suitable way."
In separate correspondence later that year, Mrs Thatcher’s successor John Major wrote to her to say the UK "should not shrink from" conflict with Saddam.
In a letter written on Boxing Day 1990, a month into Mr Major’s premiership, the new Prime Minister wrote that he was "in no doubt" that Hussein’s actions were "unforgivable"and that the dangers of failing to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait were "enormous", including “a greater danger from Saddam at a later date; and a huge loss of prestige for US and ourselves."
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