New documents showcase UK's anti-Israel attitude...

New documents show that the Foreign Office was concerned that Margaret Thatcher was too friendly with Jews and with Israel.

However, newly released government archive documents, show that her closeness with British Jews was not seen by the foreign office to be totally positive after she became leader of the-then opposition Conservative party, a position which thrust her into world prominence.

Manuscripts released by the government to the National Archives in Kew, West London reveal details of conversations in 1975 between Lord Carrington, the shadow foreign secretary and the British ambassador to Jordan.

The files include comments on the meeting by Michael Tait, an official at the British embassy in Jordan.

In them it is illustrated how the British embassy saw it “in the national interest” for Thatcher to sever links with the Jewish community for fear of upsetting the Arabs.

Tait said that the ambassador believed that Thatcher’s Jewish communal connections “would inevitably do much harm in the Arab world” and “should if at all practicable be severed.”

In the stunning documents, Tait continued: "Carrington agreed that Mrs Thatcher might most painlessly and with some justification get herself off the hook by resigning from all constituency obligations of this sort on the grounds of the rather wider obligations she has now to assume.

The foreign office also, apparently, took issue with the group of “pro-Israeli MPs”.

Tait wrote: "Such a stratagem might resolve the problem in Finchley but if Mrs Thatcher is indeed a prime mover in a wider parliamentary grouping of pro-Israeli MPs, then the difficulty would be trickier to bypass."

He continued: "While we as government and not opposition officials may have no particular brief on Mrs Thatcher’s behalf, it is presumably in the national interest to do what we can to counter Arab fears and suspicions that the leader of HM opposition is already a prisoner of the Zionists."