UK pushed India to buy Westland choppers in '85
The 1985 UK cabinet documents that were declassified last week show how keen the Margaret Thatcher government was to sell Westland W30 helicopters to India and save the aerospace company from certain ruin. It was apparently a case of UK government indirectly funding a private company. The money that India was eventually pressurized into spending on the helicopters was part of the unspent aid fund given by the UK to its former colony.
Discussions in the UK cabinet meetings on April 18 and 25, 1985, show that the Thatcher government was not above diplomatic arm-wrestling on the issue. Right from Thatcher to her ministers, several UK authorities were in touch with their counterparts in India, constantly pushing and even threatening to make the deal happen.
The most interesting document is the minutes of the cabinet meeting on April 25, 1985. It reads: "When the Minister for Overseas Development Mr Raison, had met Mr Gandhi on 24 April...he had also drawn Mr Gandhi's attention to the implications for the United Kingdom's aid programme to India of failure to finalise the contract for the purchase of the Westland helicopters."
The documents show that the United Kingdom's aid budget for India had been "underspent in successive years." The UK cabinet noted that the "unsatisfactory situation would have to be brought to a head, while bearing in mind that the value of United Kingdom exports to India amounted to £800 million annually and that the collapse of the helicopter contract would have grave consequences for Westlands".
Finally, Westland sold 21 helicopters to India in 1987 for £60 million, used mainly to transport personnel and supplies to offshore ONGC rigs. In 2000, The Guardian reported that India had sold the fleet back to Britain for just £900,000 a few years later as the choppers had been grounded for being technically faulty.
I/C