Yet the very thing which made Mrs Thatcher so angry – the feebleness of the Irish Republic towards terrorists operating from within its borders – was the factor used to push forward the idea of a political initiative: without more political conciliation, it was argued, there could not be better security. In October, Atkins announced an initiative which involved talks with all the parties in Northern Ireland about possible ways of bringing devolution about. At the same time, senior ministers and officials, privately sceptical of Atkins and his rather half-baked plan, pushed for something more. Following the favourable publicity given to Pope John Paul II’s appeal, during his acclaimed visit to the Republic at the end of September 1979, for an end to violence and an effort to fill the political vacuum, they sought a bigger political initiative. John Hunt suggested to Mrs Thatcher that Atkins should be bypassed by a working group which would produce a consultation document.24 Within the British administrative machine, there were signs that matters would be settled – chiefly by a combination of the Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office – at a higher level. Less attention should be paid to what parties in Northern Ireland wanted, and more to a deal with the Republic.
Atkins’s initiative then confronted Mrs Thatcher with an awkward surprise. The Official Unionists, the more moderate of the Unionist parties, declined to take part in the Atkins discussions, because the Atkins plan was anti-integrationist. This was not, in itself, unexpected, but the precise trigger for their non-cooperation was. Following a meeting with the Unionists’ leader, Ian Gow, always the conduit between the government and the UUP, wrote to Mrs Thatcher:
Earlier this month, Jim Molyneaux told me that when he agreed to deliver the Official Unionist Members of Parliament on our side in the crucial vote at 10 p.m. on Wednesday 28th of March 1979, it was on the understanding that if our party was elected in the General Election which followed, we would set up one or more elected regional councils. If Airey had not given a clear indication that this would be our policy, there is some doubt (to put it at its lowest) whether Jim Molyneaux could have delivered the Ulster Unionist votes … Airey told me nothing of any undertaking which had been given to Molyneaux … and of course Airey was murdered two days later. Nevertheless, it is, of course, correct to say that the policy on which you and Airey had agreed for Ulster had been [given] the broad assent of the Official Unionists.25
Gow then improved the shining hour by enclosing a memo by T. E. Utley arguing that the Atkins strategy was ‘disastrously wrong’ and would fail, and that the retreat from Neave’s policy was a ‘serious mistake’. ‘A devolved Parliament in Ulster … is likely to be dominated by hardline Protestants far more nervous and bitter than Craigavon or Brookeborough [the first and third (Unionist) prime ministers of Northern Ireland], feeling no special link with any British party and determined to rule the Province itself.’26 Mrs Thatcher underlined this sentence approvingly.
Mrs Thatcher – who kept Gow and her civil servants carefully separate in all dealings about Northern Ireland – seems to have sat on this suggestion of a promise from Neave to the Unionists and done nothing about it. Months later, it came to the notice of officialdom. Kenneth Stowe, who had moved on from being the Prime Minister’s principal private secretary to become permanent under-secretary at the Northern Ireland Office, had fairly frequent, approved private conversations with Enoch Powell. At the end of March 1980, Powell raised the matter of the Neave promise with him. Stowe was ‘absolutely appalled by this’, since he and Atkins had explicitly denied in Northern Ireland that such a promise had been made.27 He made an official record of this talk, which was immediately taken by Atkins and him to Mrs Thatcher. In the note, marked ‘secret and personal’, Stowe said that Powell had asked to see the Prime Minister herself about the breaking of the alleged promise, which, he said, had been made to him personally: ‘I was struck by the stark clarity and precise terms in which Mr Powell referred to his agreement with Mr Neave. I was also struck by the fact that he seemed not to assume that the secretary of state was a party to, or even aware of this agreement, but plainly indicated that the PM was, hence his decision that he must go to see her.’28 Stowe and Atkins then went to see Mrs Thatcher and Gow, and she declared that she had known nothing about it at the time.29 Gow, too, had not known of it. Willie Whitelaw was also consulted. He likewise denied all knowledge of the ‘deal’ by anyone in his ministerial group, and warned that any attempt to act upon it would have terrible consequences ‘if the minority were totally disillusioned at apparent British duplicity’.30 Apparent British duplicity towards the majority seems to have been regarded less seriously.
In any event, Mrs Thatcher herself then met Enoch Powell, with Ian Gow, on 1 May. Powell advanced his criticisms of the Atkins proposals, because they were a step towards devolution, but, oddly, made no mention of the Neave promise. In the absence of Neave himself, and therefore of any proof, Mrs Thatcher and her colleagues decided that there was nothing to be done and that they should press on with the Atkins plan regardless. They were inclined to do so not only by the general institutional push for devolution, but by the belief in some official circles that Ian Paisley might, after all, prove to be a constructive force from their point of view, and more inclined to a deal than his granite rhetoric suggested. Much damage was done to the relationship between Official Unionism and Mrs Thatcher’s government. From then on, trust was undermined, and Unionists tended to conclude either that Mrs Thatcher herself was deceiving them or – more often, because many of them admired her personally for her robust attitude to terrorism – that she was not fully master in her own house. Traditional conspiracy theories about the Foreign Office sprang up again. As Utley had predicted, moderate Unionism was sidelined, and Paisleyism, which prospered whenever ‘sell-out’ and ‘betrayal’ were suspected, continued to grow. From the point of view of those who wanted an ‘Irish dimension’ to the problem of Northern Ireland, the fact that Mrs Thatcher seemed to have had no knowledge of the Neave ‘promise’ was crucial. If she had done so, they believed, she would never have authorized the conversations between British officials and the Taoiseach’s office which, in the long run, were to prove so important.31
In the first six months of 1980, as the Atkins initiative stuttered on, the British government – though not Mrs Thatcher herself – became still more interested in dealing directly with Dublin. The Prime Minister came under official pressure to take up the suggestion of Charles Haughey,* who had become Taoiseach in December 1979, for a meeting. She resisted requests from Haughey and from Carrington, Atkins and Stowe for a meeting to discuss Northern Ireland in the margins of the European Council in Brussels (‘It would be easier to meet him first in the company of others,’ she wrote, almost bashfully),32 but eventually succumbed to the idea that she should give Haughey lunch at No. 10. This took place on 21 May and, in human terms, went well. Haughey presented Mrs Thatcher with a Georgian silver teapot. It came with a silver tea-strainer on which were inscribed the words from the prayer attributed to St Francis of Assisi which she had declaimed on her first day in Downing Street: ‘Where there is disharmony, let there be peace.’33 It was intended to prick her conscience. ‘That will set her back a bit,’ Haughey had predicted.34 There is no known official record of the lunch, but Haughey was ‘cock-a-hoop’ after it35 and came away with a ‘great admiration’ for Mrs Thatcher, whom he considered to be ‘a woman of her word’.36 He told the British Ambassador in Dublin, Robin Haydon, that he had no religious prejudices, and, in a choice of phrase not best calculated to appeal to Mrs Thatcher’s serious temperament, did not mind if someone wanted ‘to worship Ali Baba and the Seven [sic] Thieves’.37† For her part, Mrs Thatcher had been quite charmed at the lunch, but this did not lead her to concede anything of importance. As one official put it later: ‘The PM liked being led up the garden path by Haughey, but didn’t like the garden when she got there.’38 She resisted Haughey’s flattery of her settlement in Rhodesia in order to make it a template for what might happen in
Northern Ireland (‘I said the circumstances were totally different’), but she was interested by his suggestion that, if Northern Ireland were ‘solved’, the Republic might re-examine its neutrality and be ready to join NATO.39* The idea of joining NATO was being floated more widely at the time, however. It helped fuel Enoch Powell’s paranoia about American motives in Ireland. There is little evidence that the United States, or anyone else, pushed it hard. Mrs Thatcher was content that the communiqué afterwards spoke of the ‘unique relationship’ between the ‘peoples’ of Ireland and the United Kingdom. She did not give thought to the danger that this idea of a unique relationship might be built on by those with more visionary ideas about political co-operation – and what were known as ‘parallel’ developments – than her own.
During the next month, drafts of Atkins’s proposals circulated. Sure enough, they included ideas arising from the Haughey encounter, including ‘parallel talks’. The draft reformulated the British ‘guarantee’ to Northern Ireland, which Haughey so much disliked, as ‘Northern Ireland will not cease to be part of the United Kingdom without the consent of the majority of the people.’ Mrs Thatcher noted: ‘Wholly written in the negative i.e. as if it is truly wanting Ulster to go.’40 She roped in Ian Gow to help her with the drafts. He fastened on a phrase about developing ‘the special relationship with the Republic of Ireland’, writing, ‘WE MUST NOT HAVE THIS,’ to which she added, by way of agreement, ‘Oath of allegiance.’ Gow went on, ‘… WE MUST NOT FRAME OUR PROPOSALS TO PLEASE THE REPUBLIC.’ When the draft stated that the extension of local government ‘would encounter much opposition’, she scrawled ‘So will this [plan].’ She was sensitive, too, to possible ramifications for other parts of the Kingdom. In response to the suggestion that there should be an advisory council of Northern Ireland, she wrote, ‘leading to a Council of Scotland?’, and protested that the secretary of state should be accountable to Parliament and nobody else. And she ridiculed some of the ideas by applying them to an English context: ‘Are we going to have power-sharing in permanently Socialist counties? Or in permanently Tory counties?’41 In short, she was not pleased. Finding some allies in the Cabinet, she insisted on substantial redrafting, reducing hostages to fortune in relation to Scotland and, as OD minutes put it, removing the draft’s ‘negative features [to] avoid the impression that the Government’s longer-term policy was to give Northern Ireland away’.42
Despite Mrs Thatcher’s unwillingness to make too many concessions to Irish opinion, her relationship with Haughey had already produced the unintended effect of undermining Atkins’s plans. The SDLP had taken heart from the fact of Thatcher and Haughey meeting and were less minded to support a purely British settlement. Atkins’s revised proposals were nevertheless published on 2 July 1980. Just before everyone went away on holiday, a worried Northern Ireland Office made contact with No. 10, with word of some Chinese, or rather Irish, whispers. John Hume* had reported that Haughey had told him that, at the European Council in Venice on 12–13 June, Mrs Thatcher had told him (Haughey) that ‘she did not expect the Government’s initiative to get anywhere.’ Beside this report, Mrs Thatcher wrote ‘!!!’ and ‘I’m sure I said no such thing.’ She protested, slightly guiltily, that she had meant only that it would not get anywhere before the recess. Her private secretary, Michael Alexander, noted that a record-taker should always be present whenever she met Haughey. ‘I agree,’ wrote the Prime Minister.43
Ever conscientious, Mrs Thatcher asked for a reading list about Ireland for her holiday, and went off, at the suggestion of the Northern Ireland Office, with several books, none from a Unionist perspective, including Ireland since the Famine by F. S. L. Lyons, A Place Apart by Dervla Murphy and Peace by Ordeal by Lord Longford.44 When politics resumed in the autumn, no agreement was reached between the parties which would have allowed the Atkins plan to go forward. Political initiatives were pushed aside by dramatic events.
It was part of the IRA’s belief in itself as an army that its men, if convicted and imprisoned, should be treated like prisoners of war. For this very reason, it was important for British governments to resist this demand. In 1976, the Labour government had righted a grave political error of the Heath government and removed ‘special-category status’ from all new terrorist prisoners, putting them, at least in principle, on a par with common criminals. This had provoked both the ‘blanket’ protest, in which prisoners had dressed only in their bedclothes and refused to wear prison uniform, and the ‘dirty’ protest, in which they had smeared their cells with excrement.† In the course of 1980, aware that these protests were not succeeding, and angry that restrictions on special-category status had been further tightened, the Republican inmates in the Maze prison decided to go further. On 10 October, they announced a hunger strike, which started on 27 October. If the strike held, Mrs Thatcher was warned, deaths could be expected by Christmas.
Pressure quickly came on her to make concessions. Rather surprisingly, she did so, before the strike began. On 23 October, a secret message from Charles Haughey warned her of ‘serious repercussions for the security situation in Ireland’ if the strikes went ahead.45 On the same day, the Cabinet decided that the prisoners should, after all, be allowed to wear ‘civilian-type clothes’, rather than the existing prison uniform.* Mrs Thatcher explained her thinking on this to Cabinet colleagues: ‘I am concerned to get us into the most reasonable position before the start, and stick to it.’46 She also stated that she did not want to lose Haughey’s security co-operation. As so often, her own preoccupation with security was used against her to weaken her political determination. Concerned to prevent Cardinal Tomas O’Fiaich, the Irish primate, claiming the credit for this concession, which he had advocated, and thereby enraging Protestants, she made sure it was rushed out. Even so, Unionists were angry, and so were Tory backbenchers, who also attacked Atkins for trying to push forward his initiative in these unpropitious circumstances.
The strikes went ahead all the same, with seven prisoners taking part. Once this had happened, Mrs Thatcher toughened up. When Robert Armstrong wrote to her to say that it was important ‘to find a way of getting the strikers and PIRA off the hook’,47† Michael Alexander, her foreign affairs private secretary, noted that it was not the government’s business to get the IRA off any hook: ‘Our aim should be to break the strike.’ Mrs Thatcher agreed. ‘We cannot make any concessions,’ she scribbled, but then, referring mentally to the concessions already made, added: ‘When will the new issue clothing be ready?’48‡
Pope John Paul II sent a private message to the Irish bishops urging them to persuade the hunger strikers to stop, and when Mrs Thatcher visited the Pope in Rome on 24 November 1980 she was informed that there was a good chance of the strike being called off.49 But compromise proposals put forward by two Catholic prison chaplains asked for concessions too big for the government to make. When Haughey met Mrs Thatcher in the margins of the European Council in Luxembourg at the beginning of December, he pressed her to take an initiative on the hunger strike before the summit which was due in Dublin the following week. Mrs Thatcher said she would not make any new concessions but would be prepared to ‘dress up’ what was already on offer.50 In early December, Atkins put out a statement to this effect. At the Dublin summit, Haughey told Mrs Thatcher privately that he thought Britain should talk ‘quietly and unobtrusively’ to the strikers through the prison chaplains. He believed that they were looking for a way out, and could decide for themselves rather than at the command of the PIRA leadership outside the prison.51
This was dangerous territory for Mrs Thatcher, who was fearful of linking the sort of political movement which the Republic wanted with any concessions to terrorists. But British officialdom was, in fact, moving even more ‘quietly and unobtrusively’ than Haughey was demanding. In the mid-1970s, an SIS officer, working for his service in Northern Ireland, had established contact with the IRA through a Londonderry businessman called Brendan Duddy. Duddy operated from a flat above his fish an
d chip shop in Londonderry. His close contact was the commander of the IRA Brigade in Londonderry, Martin McGuinness.* A link, unauthorized by MI6, was maintained, and, at the beginning of December 1980, Duddy reactivated it. He told the officer52 that Gerry Adams† and Martin McGuinness, who, by this time, had gained ascendancy in the Provisionals, wanted the hunger strike stopped. They needed a formula for this to happen, involving apparent concessions which would save Republican face. In the officer’s mind, it was not a deal, but a matter of Britain making reasonably visible gestures. He decided to take the idea to Frank Cooper at the Ministry of Defence (who was formerly the head of the Northern Ireland Office), and, on Cooper’s advice, to Ken Stowe at the Northern Ireland Office, who thought that it should be pursued. Stowe drew up a paper of what the necessary gestures might be.
It was considered necessary for the officer, whom Stowe regarded as ‘a very entrepreneurial spy’,53 to take this at once to Northern Ireland to hand the paper to his IRA contacts there. Because of the political danger and the risk of kidnapping, Stowe decided that this should not be done without Mrs Thatcher’s permission, so he arranged an urgent meeting with her in the House of Commons, also attended by Atkins. He told the Prime Minister what had occurred and what was proposed. While this was in progress, the officer sat in Stowe’s official car, waiting to be rushed to Heathrow. Mrs Thatcher agreed to the mission. According to Stowe, she specifically endorsed the plan, ‘fully aware that it involved dealing with Sinn Fein [the political arm of the IRA]’.54 In Mrs Thatcher’s view, this was a very different thing from direct talks between herself or other ministers and Sinn Fein–IRA. She was simply inheriting a contact, and allowing officials to make use of it. ‘I didn’t deal directly with the PIRA leadership,’ she recalled, ‘I’ve never, never in my life. I wouldn’t deal with these people – they kill left, right and centre.’ But, she added, ‘What Security did was approach people to try to get a message through.’55 She was being disingenuous.
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