In the Public Interest rewrites the Thatcher years, revealing a political management structure in Britain today which makes a mockery of the democratic process.

In her two volumes of bestselling memoirs, Margaret Thatcher gives scant coverage to an event which Gerald James describes as the linchpin of her economic strategy. The event - the war between Iran and Iraq - ran for 80 per cent of her term, during which time James was chairman of Britain's fastest rising arms company, Astra Holdings plc.

The war offered a market worth billions, and represented the most efficient means to turn round Britain's ailing economy: Saddam Hussein held at least 10 per cent of the world's oil reserves; the market simply could not be ignored.

Thatcher's strategy was not handled in Parliament, which had outlawed trade with Iraq, but in a political backroom by a cabal, an amalgam of secret state and City interests, made up of businessmen (including major manufacturers), powerful civil servants and intelligence officers from M15 and M16. Margaret Thatcher was the first Prime Minister to harness the might of this group to her purpose, and, as the Scott Inquiry discovered, she got her ministers to rubber-stamp the group's every move.

Gerald James reveals the LISI contract with Iran as but one instance of Government collaboration in a trade not only in conventional weapons, but in chemical and nuclear ones too, which was conducted on almost a daily basis until a few years ago. In the Public Interest reveals, possibly for the first time, how the defence industry was used to serve the interests of a few at the expense of the interests of the nation.