Secret document reveals Margaret Thatcher considered rearming UK with chemical weapons

Top confidential documents have revealed that former Prime Minister of Britain Margaret Thatcher considered reequipping the country with chemical weapons at a cost of 200 million pounds after she heard reports saying that the Soviet Union was developing a poison that could overpower Nato forces.

According to the Independent, the Thatcher government considered acquiring a substantial arsenal of the weapons of mass destruction following its abandoning of chemical agents and its stocks amid renewed tension with Moscow in 1984.

Thatcher's foreign policy adviser Charles Powell said that the government feared being considered "negligent" if they failed to reequip the UK with chemical weapons.

However, the records do not reveal how far the proposal went.

The proposal was a part of the bigger debate of what tools would be required to defend Britain while also pushing Moscow to sign an international treaty banning the production and use of chemical weapons.