This was Denis Thatcher’s business address and it is also her private office and the home of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation.
Now she no longer goes there and the foundation is at a crossroads, according to Mark Worthington, who runs it from the private office.
The foundation was formed in 1991 with five broad goals: “To promote the widest possible acceptance of democracy, market principles, the rule of law and strong defence; to encourage strong transatlantic links between Britain, Europe, and North America; to assist and encourage the peoples of the former communist countries and other oppressive regimes across the world as they adopt democracy; to foster greater contact between western nations and those of the Middle East in the region’s search for a lasting peace with security; and to further free trade throughout the world.” Worthington said last week: “We have been very busy setting up the Thatcher chair in entrepreneurial studies at Cambridge, which cost around £2m, and giving out Russian scholarships. Now we are looking at where we go from here. The money we have spent so far has gone to excellent causes and now we are going through a review, which should be published in the autumn.”
He declined to say how much money the foundation has at its disposal. The funds, which are raised through private donations, are administered in Britain by the Charities Aid Foundation and have been used to finance projects promoting western business, legal and technical education, particularly in former communist countries. The foundation has also collaborated with charities, schools, universities and cultural institutions such as the US Library of Congress.
Nick Morriss, who is the treasurer of the American arm of the foundation, says that it is also undergoing a review. “We gave substantial funding to Churchill College in Cambridge for the Thatcher Archive, which was dedicated last October, but now we need to rethink.” He said the charity had stopped giving to causes in central and eastern Europe, because they were “not very effective”.
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“Although we are not aggressively seeking donations, we still have around $4.5m to give away and we now need to decide on our priorities,” said Morriss. “We were very pleased with the Cambridge donations, but now we will be looking to spend this money in America. It could be used to set up Thatcher scholarships to endow a university department. It’s a pretty live topic at the moment and we hope to be able to make an announcement within the next few months.”
Thatcher’s legacy lives on in other ways, particularly on the internet, where there are three principal websites in her honour and a multitude of links reflecting her political career and fame.
The Thatcher Foundation has its own site (margaretthatcher.org) but even more wide-ranging is margaretthatcher.com, associated with Politico’s, the Westminster bookshop, which offers for £305.50 The Complete Public Statements of Margaret Thatcher 1945-2000, a CD-Rom offering the full text of every public statement she has ever made.