Martin Kettle: Margaret Thatcher Unmasked ... The Lady Was For Turning

Martin Kettle is an associate editor of the Guardian and writes on British, European and American politics, as well as the media, law and music.

My new year's resolution for 2012 is easily stated. Avoid lazy labels and simplistic stereotypes in political commentary, even when it is about Margaret Thatcher. As with all such resolves, this one is easier to say than to do, since few reputations have become so set in stereotypical aspic as Thatcher's. She remains worshipped on the right and excoriated on the left, with almost no middle ground. What more is there to say?

Quite a large amount, in fact, if the state papers from 1981 – released by the National Archives at midnight last night under the 30-year rule – are a guide. Documents from one of the most embattled early years of Thatcher's 11-year premiership depict a rather more nuanced and pragmatic politician than the officially sanctioned labels of visionary or villain would allow.

Nowhere is this more striking than in the papers on the IRA hunger strike. Thatcher's later reputation in this supercharged episode is of absolute implacability. The IRA prisoners' campaign for political status triggered instincts that make her a warrior queen to her admirers and a figure of undiminished hate to her detractors. Yet now it is confirmed that in July 1981, under international pressure because of her perceived intransigence, Thatcher twice authorised a back-channel exchange with the IRA, setting out the concessions she would make if the hunger strikes were ended. Even more astonishingly, she allowed the cabinet to discuss the hitherto unthinkable option of British withdrawal from Northern Ireland...