Margaret Thatcher was warned against inviting Richard Nixon to Downing Street, documents reveal

Then Prime Minister was told hosting disgraced former US president would be 'unhelpful' for transatlantic relations

The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee opened impeachment hearings against president Richard Nixon, in 1974 (Getty)

Margaret Thatcher was warned against inviting Richard Nixon to Downing Street after he was forced to resign as US President over the Watergate scandal, newly released documents reveal.

UK diplomats told the then Prime Minister it would be “unhelpful” to US-UK relations if she hosted the disgraced former president.

The warning came in 1980 – a year after Thatcher entered Downing Street and six years after the Watergate scandal in which Nixon was found to have had involvement in a break-in at Democratic Party offices in Washington DC.

Downing Street had been approached by Jonathan Aitken, a Conservative MP who was later convicted of perjury, to ask whether the Prime Minister would be willing to meet with Nixon when he visited London.

Newly released documents from April 1980 reveal Foreign Office official Malcolm Adams told Number 10 there was “no overriding objection” to the meeting going ahead but advised the Prime Minister against it.

After consultation with the UK’s ambassador in Washington, he wrote: "The ambassador pointed out that Mr Nixon is as much out of touch in the US as he is controversial and he doubts whether the Prime Minister would learn much from him. In the US, more might be read into a call at No 10 than was intended.

"To judge from our experience when soundings were taken before Mr Nixon's last visit to Britain the US administration would not presume to advise us how to respond; but the ambassador considers that they, and senior Republicans, would be surprised, and unhelpfully so, if the Prime Minister received him."

The advice was included in a ream of documents released by the National Archives in Kew, west London.

Other files revealed how Thatcher clashed with the Irish Government over the extradition of IRA suspects, and once refused to take a panda on a trip to China.

She did eventually meet with Nixon in private two years later, after a further request by Aitken.

Afterwards, the former US president sent her a telegram congratulating her on a recent “victory” over striking rail workers.

He wrote: "Your gutsy leadership both domestically and internationally continues to inspire free peoples everywhere.”