The Downing Street Years, 1979-1990

by Margaret Thatcher

  The agreement allowed the Irish Government to put forward views and proposals on matters relating to Northern Ireland in a wide range of areas, including security. But it was made clear that there was no derogation from the sovereignty of the United Kingdom. It was for us, not the Irish, to make the decisions. There was no commitment to do anything more than consider the possibility of mixed courts. If there was devolution in Northern Ireland, which the agreement committed us to work for, those areas of policy devolved would be taken out of the hands of the Anglo-Irish Inter-Governmental Conference. (Garret FitzGerald, showing some courage, publicly accepted this implication of the agreement at the press conference which followed the signing.) The agreement itself would be subject to review at the end of three years or earlier if either Government requested. The Taoiseach also said that it was the intention of his Government to accede as soon as possible to the ECST.

  The real question now was whether the agreement would result in better security. The strong opposition of the Unionists would be a major obstacle. By contrast, international… most importantly American… reaction was very favourable. Above all, however, we hoped for a more co-operative attitude from the Irish Government, security forces and courts. If we got this the agreement would be successful. We would have to wait and see.

  One person who was not going to wait was Ian Gow. I spent some time trying to persuade him not to go but he insisted on resigning as a Treasury minister. This was a personal blow to me, though I am glad to say that the friendship between the two of us and our families was barely affected. Ian was one of the very few who resigned from my Government on a point of principle. I respected him as much as I disagreed with him.

  By the end of the year, however, I had become very worried about the Unionist reaction. It was worse than anyone had predicted to me. Of the legitimate political leaders, Ian Paisley was in the forefront of the mass campaign against the agreement. But far more worrying was the fact that behind him and other leaders stood harder and more sinister figures who might all too easily cross the line from civil disobedience to violence. As I told Dr FitzGerald when I saw him on the morning of Tuesday 3 December in Luxemburg, it was now vital to show immediate practical results from the agreement, particularly as regards security co-operation, Irish accession to the ECST and a co-operative attitude by the SDLP to devolution. But now, as later, it seemed to me that he could not grasp how important it was to achieve the support or at least the acquiescence of the Unionist majority.

  Shortly before the agreement, Tom King had taken over as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Tom was initially highly sceptical about the value of the agreement…indeed within weeks of taking office he had sent me a minute arguing that the balance of the agreement as drafted was heavily in favour of the Irish…though he later became more enthusiastic. Both of us agreed that the political priority was to win over the support of at least some Unionist leaders and that wider Unionist opinion which I felt was probably more understanding of what we were trying to achieve. I was convinced that the people who met me on my visits to Northern Ireland could harbour no doubts about my commitment to their safety and freedom. Indeed, this was confirmed for me when I invited nonpolitical representatives of the majority community from business and the professions to lunch at No. 10 on Wednesday 5 February 1986. Their view was that for many people the real concerns in Northern Ireland were with jobs, housing, education…in short the sort of issues which are at the centre of politics on the mainland. I was also confirmed in my impression that one of the problems of Northern Irish politics was that it no longer attracted enough people of high calibre.

  I invited Jim Molyneaux and Ian Paisley to Downing Street on the morning of Tuesday 25 February. I told them that I believed that they underestimated the advantages which the agreement offered, both in the reaffirmation of Northern Ireland’s status within the United Kingdom and in terms of cross-border security co-operation. I recognized that they were bitter at not having been consulted during the negotiation of the agreement. I offered to devise a system which would allow full consultation with them in future and which would not just be confined to matters discussed in the Anglo-Irish Inter-Governmental Conference. Security, for example, could be included. I also said that we were prepared in principle to sit down at a round-table conference with the parties in Northern Ireland to consider, without any preconditions, the scope for devolution. Third, we were ready for consultations with the Unionist parties on the future of the existing Northern Ireland Assembly and on the handling of Northern Ireland business at Westminster. I made it plain that I would not agree to even temporary suspension of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, but the agreement would be operated ‘sensitively’. At the time this seemed to go down well. I went on to warn of the damage which would be done if the proposed general strike in Northern Ireland on 3 March took place. Ian Paisley said that he and Jim Molyneaux knew nothing of the plans. They would reach their decisions when they had considered the outcome of the present meeting. It was a reasonably successful meeting. But the following day after they had consulted their supporters in Northern Ireland they came out in support of the strike.

  Nor did I find the SDLP any more co-operative. I saw John Hume in my room in the House of Commons on the afternoon of Thursday 27 February. I urged that the SDLP should give more open support to the security forces, but to no avail. He seemed more interested to score points at the expense of the Unionists. A few days later I wrote to Garret FitzGerald urging him to get the SDLP to adopt a more sensible and statesman-like approach.

  But by now Dr FitzGerald and his colleagues in Dublin were adding their own fuel to the flames, publicly exaggerating the powers which the Irish had obtained through the agreement, a tactic which was of course entirely self-defeating. Nor, in spite of detailed criticisms and suggestions, could we get the Irish to make the required improvements in their own security. The Irish judicial authorities were proving no more co-operative either, having sent back warrants for the arrest and extradition of Evelyn Glenholmes from the Irish Republic on suspicion of involvement in terrorism because, among other things, they claimed that a full stop was missing.

  In any case, Garret FitzGerald’s Government’s own position was weakening. In spite of our representations, he was back-tracking on his commitment to get the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism though the Dâil. His Government was now in a minority and he told us that he was under pressure to accept the requirement that we should make a prima facie case before extradition to the United Kingdom was granted. This would actually have worsened the situation on extradition, reviving past difficulties which recent Irish judge-made law had overcome. Dr FitzGerald told us that he was resisting the pressure, but it soon became clear that he was seeking a quid pro quo. He wanted us to introduce three-judge courts for terrorist trials in Northern Ireland. Following a meeting with the Taoiseach in Dublin, Tom King brought forward a paper supporting the idea, which Geoffrey Howe and Douglas Hurd also backed. But the lawyers were outraged and my sympathies lay with them. I did not believe that there was a case for three-judge courts, nor did I see why we should make concessions to get the Irish Government to carry out its commitments. The proposal was turned down at a ministerial meeting at the beginning of October 1986.

  In the end Dr FitzGerald managed to pass his legislation, but with the proviso that it would not come into effect unless the Dáil passed a further resolution a year later, which stored up trouble for the future. Shortly afterwards, in January 1987, his Coalition Government collapsed and the subsequent election brought Charles Haughey back to the office of Taoiseach. This heralded more difficulties. Mr Haughey and his Party had opposed the agreement, though his formal position was now that he would be prepared to make it work. I knew, though, that he felt much less commitment to it and I suspected that he would be prepared to play up to Republican opinion in the South more than had his predecessor.

  The security position in the province had also worsened. I receiv
ed a report from George Younger on the strength of the IRA north and south of the border which convinced me that a new drive against them was necessary. There was a rising trend of violence, particularly against personnel in the security forces, and cross-border co-operation was still not effective. The scale of the supplies of arms being received by the IRA, on which we already had a good deal of intelligence, was confirmed by the interception of the Eksund… with its hoard of Libyan arms… by French customs in October.

  IRA ATTACKS AND EXTRA SECURITY MEASURES, 1987–1990

  I was at the reception which follows the Remembrance Day Service at the Cenotaph when I received news that a bomb had exploded at Enniskillen in County Fermanagh. It had been planted yards away from the town War Memorial in an old school building, part of which collapsed on the crowd which had assembled for the service. Eleven people were killed, and more than sixty injured. No warning was given.

  The next day (Monday 9 November) I met a delegation of Jim Molyneaux, Ken Maginnis, the local MP, and people from Enniskillen. They wanted me to go much further in tightening security, by ending the present 50 per cent remission available to sentenced terrorist prisoners,[55] by proscribing Sinn Fein, by tightening control of the border, by ending the so-called ‘right to silence’ (the provision whereby the refusal to answer questions cannot be adduced as evidence of guilt in court) and by bringing back internment.[56] I too believed that there must be a new review of security: indeed, I had already initiated one. I would see which if any of these was practicable.

  At least I felt that I could make one personal gesture which would be appreciated. On Sunday 22 November I flew to Northern Ireland to attend a Remembrance Service at St Martin’s Cathedral, Enniskillen. It was a cold, wet day. After the service I talked briefly to the bereaved, including Mr Gordon Wilson whose daughter Marie had died beside him in the explosion and who had publicly forgiven the murderers in terms which inspired… perhaps shamed… those who heard him.

  From now on the requirements for practical improvements in security, reviewed after each new tragedy, increasingly dominated my policy towards both Northern Ireland and the Republic. It slowly became clear that the wider gains for which I had hoped from greater support by the nationalist minority in Northern Ireland or the Irish Government and people for the fight against terrorism were not going to be forthcoming. Only the international dimension became noticeably easier to deal with as a result of the agreement. My reluctant conclusion was that terrorism would have to be met with more and more effective counter-terrorist activity; and that in fighting terror we would have to stand almost alone, while the Irish indulged in gesture politics.

  Nonetheless, I kept up the pressure on the Irish for effective extradition arrangements of terrorists suspected of offences committed within the United Kingdom. Predictably, the Haughey Government was unwilling to confirm the Extradition Act that Dr FitzGerald had passed at the end of his administration without trying to exact a price. We heard the familiar plea for three-judge courts, followed by a new demand for our Attorney-General to provide his Irish counterpart with a note confirming his intention to prosecute founded on a sufficiency of evidence… a note that could be scrutinized by the Irish courts. This was an impossible scheme and we rejected it. The upshot was new Irish legislation that for a time brought extradition to a halt altogether.

  In the meantime our own review of security had come to a number of conclusions, principally the redeployment of the army to strengthen anti-terrorist operations and to patrol in areas close to the border. As a matter of courtesy I wrote to Mr Haughey in January 1988 informing him of what we were doing. But it soon appeared that a more far-reaching review of security was required… and that we could rely only on a thoroughly unhelpful attitude from the Irish in the course of it.

  On Sunday 6 March three Irish terrorists were shot dead by our security forces in Gibraltar. There was not the slightest doubt about the terrorists’ identity or intentions. Contrary to later reports, the Spanish authorities had been extremely co-operative. The funeral of the terrorists was held in Milltown Cemetery, Belfast. From the thousands attending you would imagine that these people were martyrs not would-be murderers. The spiral of violence now accelerated. A gunman attacked the mourners, three of whom were killed and 68 injured. It was at the funeral of two of these mourners that what was to remain in my mind as the single most horrifying event in Northern Ireland during my term of office occurred.

  No one who saw the film of the lynching of the two young soldiers trapped by that frenzied Republican mob, pulled from their car, stripped and murdered, will believe that reason or goodwill can ever be a substitute for force when dealing with Irish Republican terrorism. I went to be with the relatives of our murdered soldiers when the bodies were brought back to Northolt; I shall not forget the remark of Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader, that I would have many more bodies to meet in that way. I could hardly believe it when the BBC initially refused to supply to the RUC film which might have been useful in bringing to justice the perpetrators of this crime, though they later complied. But I knew that the most important task was for us to use every means available to beat the IRA. On the same day as the news came in of what had happened I told Tom King that there must be a paper brought forward setting out all the options. I was determined that nothing should be ruled out.

  On the afternoon of Tuesday 22 March I held an initial meeting. The policing of funerals was already under review. I said that the security forces must take all necessary steps, including extensive searches in nationalist areas, to apprehend those responsible for the murder of the British Army corporals. Measures to improve the chances of securing convictions in Northern Ireland courts… such as the use of DNA finger-printing, and the ending of the ‘right to silence’ and measures to seize the finances of groups which practised or supported violence… should be investigated. Cross-border security cooperation must be strengthened and security on the border itself must be improved. We must examine whether the instructions about the circumstances in which the security forces could use their weapons (the ‘yellow card’) should be reviewed in case they were too restrictive. In addition, I said that more far-reaching measures must now be considered. Perhaps Sinn Fein should be banned. We should consider the introduction of selective internment, which would be much more effective if it were introduced simultaneously in the Republic. I wondered whether the introduction of identity cards in Northern Ireland might enable us to control more easily the movements of suspects. Should the numbers of soldiers in Northern Ireland be increased? Should the present doctrine of so-called ‘police primacy’ be reversed to give the army control in security matters? Could we do more to deprive the terrorists of the ‘oxygen of publicity’ (a phrase I borrowed with permission but without attribution from the Chief Rabbi)? In fact, many of these possibilities would have to be jettisoned on one ground or another. But I felt that I owed it to those two soldiers and their families to ensure that nothing which could save other young lives was overlooked.

  This far-reaching security review continued during the spring. Mr Haughey added to the problem of restoring confidence and stability in Northern Ireland by an astonishing speech which he made in the United States in April. This listed all of his objections to British policy, lumping together the Attorney-General’s decision not to initiate prosecutions following the Stalker-Sampson Report into the RUC,[57] the Court of Appeal’s rejection of the appeal of the so-called ‘Birmingham Six’[58] (as if it was for the British Government to tell British courts how to administer justice), the killing of the terrorists in Gibraltar and other matters. There was no mention in his speech of IRA violence, no acknowledgement of the need for cross-border co-operation and no commitment to the Anglo-Irish Agreement. It was a shabby case of playing to the American Irish gallery.

  I wrote to Mr Haughey on Wednesday 27 April to protest in the most vigorous terms. I took him to task not only for what he had said but for what he had failed to deliver on cross-border se
curity co-operation. In spite of an ill-judged speech by Geoffrey Howe in which he said that he did not ‘underestimate the hurt felt by the Irish in recent months’, I let it be known that there was no possibility of ordinary relations with Dublin resuming until I received a reply to my letter… a reply which was not forthcoming until Wednesday 15 June. The reply, when it came, was short and noncommittal. But I felt that my sharp letter had done some good when I received a long message from Mr Haughey prior to my meeting with him at the end of the European Council in Hanover on Tuesday 28 June. In this he reaffirmed in the strongest terms his opposition to terrorism, repeated his commitment to the Anglo-Irish Agreement and conveyed his personal support for security co-operation. But the statement also showed what we were up against; for he made clear that his whole approach was based on the objective of a united Ireland and that he saw the Anglo-Irish Agreement as a staging post to that. That was utterly unacceptable to us.

  At the next European Council in Hanover I took up the question of security co-operation, which was of far more importance to me than any personal differences. I said that though Mr Haughey had affirmed that he had difficulties with Irish public opinion about this, I had difficulty myself about bombs, guns, explosions, people being beaten to death and naked hatred. I had had to see ever more young men in the security forces killed. We knew that the terrorists went over the border to the Republic to plan their operations and to store their weapons. We got no satisfactory intelligence of their movements. Once they crossed the border they were lost. Indeed, we received far better intelligence co-operation from virtually all other European countries than with the Republic. If it was a question of resources, then we were ready to offer equipment and training. Or if this were politically difficult, there were other countries who could offer such help. There was no room for amateurism.