Aide suggested using Prince to take attention off protest

Papers show ministers feared the scale of the anti-nuclear protests was so large that it could prevent the stationing of the missiles at the Greenham Common airbase in Berkshire going ahead.

Sir Bernard Ingham feared a major propaganda coup for the peace movement. Only “a North Sea blow out, an assassination attempt on the Pope, etc - some awful tragedy” could knock the protest off the news schedules, he said, adding: “All tragedies are devoutly not to be wished”. He then suggested using the visit to Australia of Charles and Diana, the Prince and Princess of Wales, with their nine-month-old son William to try to draw the media attention away from the demonstrators. “What would take the trick would be press and TV pictures, for TV release on the evening of Good Friday and/or Saturday newspapers of Prince William in Australia”. Sir Bernard said yesterday that he did not regret making the suggestion. He said: “We were desperate to get Cruise missiles installed and we were casting around for something to minimise the impression of strength the protest might have.” He added: “On reflection I was being optimistic to think that this could have knocked Greenham Common off page one .”

The Defence secretary Michael Heseltine had ordered RAF Regiment troops to be positioned around the perimeter amid concerns US soldiers guarding the missiles could open fire if they were confronted by protesters sparking a major political incident.

The move to deploy US cruise missiles to Britain and other European countries in 1983 after Russia targeted its SS-20 missiles on the West came at one of the tensest moments of the Cold War - events which formed the backdrop to the TV series Deutschland 83.

It led to a massive expansion of the peace movement - with membership of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) rocketing from just 3,000 to 70,000 in the space of four years.

At the Foreign Office (FCO), officials expressed alarm at the “hamhandedness” of the US administration of president Ronald Reagan, who had denounced the Soviet Union as “the evil empire”.

“Stimulated by some maladroit rhetoric from Washington, governments in the West were thought to be now more interested in confrontation than dialogue,” a FCO paper warned.

As a women’s peace camp was established at Greenham Common, foreign secretary Francis Pym advised Mrs Thatcher there was a risk the demonstrations could become so widespread that “deployment would actually become difficult or even impossible”.

By Easter, the focus was on a planned 14 mile “human chain” with tens of thousands of demonstrators linking up in a line extending from Greenham Common to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston and the Royal Ordnance Factory at Burghfield.

Mr Heseltine was despatched to the Cold War front line in Berlin to deliver a stark warning of the need for the West to maintain nuclear weapons in the face of the Soviet threat, but in No 10 Mrs Thatcher’s press secretary Bernard Ingham feared a major propaganda coup for the peace movement.

While Mr Heseltine’s Berlin visit had more impact than Sir Bernard had predicted, his scheming could not prevent huge publicity for the protests.

By the autumn, with the first missiles set to arrive at Greenham Common, Mr Heseltine informed Mrs Thatcher there would be four infantry battalions on standby in case of any trouble from the demonstrators.

At the same time, he disclosed that RAF personnel would be “covertly” inserted into the base, with a small number of armed personnel “operating very close to the armed US personnel and with the same rules of engagement”.

“The political implications of a demonstrator being shot by an American guard would, at this stage of initial deployment, be very grave,” he wrote.

“Therefore any determined demonstrator who managed to penetrate the perimeter fence and its guard force, and was then able to penetrate the next screen of unarmed UK personnel, would finally confront an armed British serviceman rather than an armed American.”