PM looked at arming the police after outbreak of summer riots

PRIME minister Margaret Thatcher secretly discussed issuing firearms to the police amid fears riots could disrupt the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer.

Official papers made public for the first time today reveal the Metropolitan Police Commissioner was so concerned about the security situation he even raised it with the Queen.

In 1981, Mrs Thatcher’s government was rocked by the worst outbreak of civil unrest since Victorian times as rampaging youths battled the police in cities across England.

During the spring and summer, an explosive cocktail of inner city deprivation, rising unemployment, racial tensions and resentment at police tactics reached boiling point.

After riots erupted in Brixton, south London, in April, a fresh wave of disturbances broke out at the beginning of July – the month of the Royal Wedding – centred on Toxteth in Liverpool.

In nine days of rioting, one person died after being struck by a police vehicle, 468 police officers were injured, 500 people were arrested and 70 buildings were damaged so severely by fire they had to be demolished.

As police used CS gas for the first time on the British mainland to try to quell trouble, further riots broke out in other cities, prompting fears of widespread breakdown of law and order.

After visiting the scene of the disturbances in Toxteth and Moss Side in Manchester, Home Secretary William Whitelaw warned Mrs Thatcher that “emergency legislation could not be ruled out”.

The prime minister quickly agreed the police should have all the additional equipment they needed – including water cannon and rubber bullets or baton rounds – with army camps being set aside to hold offenders if the prisons could not cope. The only thing she would not contemplate was deploying troops on the streets of the mainland.

“If necessary, the police should be properly equipped, and even armed, before such a step was taken,” the official minute of their discussion noted.

Meanwhile, senior police officers, including Merseyside Chief Constable Kenneth Oxford, were pressing for a return of the 1715 Riot Act, giving them sweeping powers to clear the streets.

Mrs Thatcher acknowledged that quick legislation could be necessary, noting there was “a strong case for action before the Royal Wedding”.

She received a similar message when she visited the Met Police Commissioner Sir David McNee at Scotland Yard.

But as the troubles subsided, ministers began to recover their nerve.

On 16 July the Cabinet decided it would be a “mistake” to rush through a “modernised form of the riot act”, ahead of the Royal Wedding.

In the event the “fairytale” wedding of Charles and Diana passed off without trouble in a sea of pageantry and patriotism which, for many in the country, eclipsed the shocking events of the preceding weeks.

A jubilant Bernard Ingham, the prime minister’s press secretary informed her: “The triumph of the royal wedding has been a national tonic.”