Margaret Thatcher’s San Diego Legacy: Gift in Basement of City Hall

Updated at 2:10 p.m. April 9, 2013

Margaret Thatcher, the history-making prime minister of Great Britain who died Monday, visited San Diego County* at least twice in her 87-year life, and the “Iron Lady” had many fans here.

About 900 attended a Thatcher book-signing at Warwick’s in La Jolla in 1993, according to U-T San Diego.   She also spoke to the San Diego Rotary Club.

In March 1991, the U-T said, she visited Camp Pendleton, “where she spoke to students, sipped tea with military wives and ate with Marines in the mess hall.”

And only weeks after she left No. 10 Downing Street in November 1990, the British president of ADT Security Services paid a visit to San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor. 

His gift to the mayor: a hardcover book titled Speeches to the Conservative Party Conference 1975-1988 by Thatcher.

The gift from Michael Ashcroft, the ADT chairman and president, was one of 407 listed in the online archive for O’Connor, a Democrat who presumably didn’t spend much time with the book.

But according to Rasean Johnson, a 10-year city employee and imaging supervisor for the San Diego City Clerk’s Office, the Thatcher book and 2,500 other gifts to city leaders dating to the 1950s are still kept—“wrapped up and properly housed”—in the basement of the City Administration Building downtown.

They’re available for inspection by the public, and can even be loaned out, the city says.

Why did Ashcroft give O’Connor a book of Thatcher speeches?

Johnson, 33, didn’t know. In an interview Monday morning, he said: “I get calls like this a lot” about the gifts listed on the city website. All he knows is the citation listed on the item.

But according to biographical references, and deputy chairman of the Conservative Party until 2010, when he was felled by scandal—revealing that he paid no taxes on his overseas earnings in the United Kingdom.

In this case, the book was presented to O’Connor on Dec. 11, 1990—about two weeks after Thatcher left office.

Thatcher also had at least one fan in Coronado.

In a November 2010 blog post headlined Former Prime Minister of the UK living in Coronado? Michelle Nickerson wrote:

“I had the pleasure of meeting two very ‘regal’ pugs this morning—Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill. :-)  When I'm out and about meeting new clients, I love seeing some of the memorable and funny names they come up with for their pets.”

*Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly suggested Thatcher didn’t visit San Diego.