HE WAS BRIEFLY a Conservative activist, who switched allegiance to become a Labour peer and government Minister. She was Britain’s first female – and Tory – Prime Minster. So, unsurprisingly, there was tension when Lord Longford and Margaret Thatcher met in 1982.Details of the occasion, revealed in newly released government papers, show how Longford explained that the then Prime Minister “ticked me off in a friendly, intimate kind of way – in the manner of my family governess” for implying that she was guilty of a lack of compassion for the poor. He charitably added that he had been dedicated to the governess, “who taught me far more than anyone else did subsequently”.Longford met Thatcher for an off-the-record interview for an article he pl