LONDON — The sporadic release of documents from Britain’s National Archives gives a glimpse into the country’s inner workings. For instance, there was the revelation that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher debated using the military to quell a miners’ strike in 1984.
The archives are a repository of both the historical and the mundane, storing everything from Shakespeare’s will to countless government tweets.
And then there are the more offbeat offerings: Britons learned last Friday, in the government’s latest release, about Thatcher’s refusal to travel with a panda.
Previous releases included disclosures about leftover moon dust (found in a cupboard), a report concerning UFOs (there were none), and Princess Margaret’s hoped-for marriage (no government opposition).
“I’m not taking a panda with me,’’ Thatcher scribbled on a memo about the financial struggles of the London Zoo. “Pandas and politicians are not happy omens!’’
The note came after the zoo president, Lord Zuckerman, contacted Thatcher through a Cabinet minister with a plea for financial help. Zuckerman proposed that Thatcher take a panda “in the back of her Concorde’’ on her first visit with President Ronald Reagan.
The trip would have been a chance for the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington to borrow London’s male panda to mate with its female panda. But Thatcher was having none of it.
When America’s Apollo 11 astronauts returned to Earth, they brought with them 48 pounds of rocks from the moon’s surface. President Richard Nixon presented Harold Wilson, the prime minister, with a sampling during a meeting in Washington in 1970.
The four tiny pebbles mounted on a commemorative wooden plaque first went on loan to the Science Museum in London, but as successive prime ministers struggled to find an appropriate spot to display it, the gift languished in a cupboard for years.
Files from other departments, like the Ministry of Defense, provide interesting details about Britain’s security concerns through the past century, including those involving unidentified flying objects.
The ministry received drawings, reports of sightings, and questions from concerned citizens, papers released in several batches through the National Archives showed.
“No UFO/flying saucer has landed in the vicinity of Menwith Hill and the base had no connection with UFO research,’’ the ministry once replied to local farmers who reported sighting a disc-shaped object.
The UFO files are available for browsing on the National Archives website.
Anthony Eden, who served as prime minister in the 1950s, did not seem poised to stand in the way of a potential marriage between Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II’s sister, and Group Captain Peter Townsend.
Even as the royal family was navigating what it would mean for Margaret, then third in line for the throne, to wed Townsend, who was divorced, the government was coming up with plans to support the marriage. Eden’s government would have allowed Margaret to keep her royal title.
“The government was looking for ways of enabling her to marry,’’ a National Archives official told the BBC, according to government papers released after the death of the princess.
