The Catholic Church was also a factor in dealing with the hunger strike. I explained the circumstances personally to the Pope on a visit to Rome on 24 November. He had as little sympathy for terrorists as I did, as he had made very clear on his visit to the Republic the previous year. After the Vatican brought pressure on the Irish Catholic hierarchy, they issued a statement calling on the prisoners to end their fast, though urging the Government to show ‘flexibility’.
Talk of concessions and compromises continued and intensified as we approached the point where one or more of the prisoners was likely to die. It was impossible to predict exactly when this would happen. But then on Thursday 18 December one of the prisoners began to lose consciousness and the strike was abruptly called off. The IRA claimed later that they had done this because we had made concessions, but this was wholly false. By making the claim they sought to excuse their defeat, to discredit us, and to prepare the ground for further protests when the nonexistent concessions failed to materialize.
I had hoped that this would see the end of the hunger strike tactic, and indeed of all the prison protests. But it was not to be so. In January 1981 we tried to bring an end to the ‘dirty protest’, but within days prisoners who had been moved to clean cells had begun to foul them. Then we received information in February that there might be another hunger strike. It was begun on 1 March 1981 by the IRA leader in the Maze, Bobby Sands, and he was joined at intervals by others. Simultaneously the ‘dirty protest’ was finally ended, ostensibly to concentrate attention on the hunger strike.
This was the beginning of a time of troubles. The IRA were on the advance politically: Sands himself in absentia won the parliamentary seat of Fermanagh and South Tyrone, at a by-election caused by the death of an Independent Republican MP. More generally, the SDLP was losing ground to the Republicans. This was a reflection not just of the increasing polarization of opinion in both communities, which it was the IRA’s objective to achieve, but also of the general ineffectiveness of the SDLP MPs. There was some suggestion, to which even some of my advisers gave credence, that the IRA were contemplating ending their terrorist campaign and seeking power through the ballot box. I never believed this. But it indicated how successful their propaganda could be.
Michael Foot, then Leader of the Opposition, came to see me, asking for concessions to the strikers. I was amazed that this thoroughly decent man could take this line and told him so. I reminded him that the conditions in the Maze Prison were among the best in any prison anywhere, well above the general standards prevailing in Britain’s overcrowded gaols. We had since gone even further in making improvements than the European Commission on Human Rights had recommended the previous year. I told Michael Foot that he had shown himself to be a ‘push-over’. What the terrorist prisoners wanted was political status, and they were not going to get it.
Bobby Sands died on Tuesday 5 May. The date was of some significance for me personally, though I did not know it at the time. From this time forward I became the IRA’s top target for assassination.
Sands’s death provoked rioting and violence, mainly in Londonderry and Belfast, and the security forces came under increasing strain. It was possible to admire the courage of Sands and the other hunger strikers who died, but not to sympathize with their murderous cause. We had done everything in our power to persuade them to give up their fast.
So had the Catholic Church. I realized that the Church might be able to bring pressure to bear on the hunger strikers, which I could not. So I went as far as I could to involve an organization connected with the Catholic hierarchy (the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace (ICJP)), hoping that the strikers would listen to them…though our reward was to be denounced by the ICJP for going back on undertakings we had allegedly made in the talks we had had with them. This false allegation was supported by Garret FitzGerald who became Taoiseach in place of Mr Haughey at the beginning of July 1981. I wrote to the new Taoiseach to say that he should not be misled into thinking that the problem of the hunger strike was susceptible to an easy solution, wanting only a little flexibility on our part. The protesters were trying to secure a prison regime in which the prisoners…and not the prison officers…determined what went on.
I also saw the Catholic Primate of All-Ireland, Cardinal O’Fiaich, in No. 10 on the evening of Thursday 2 July in the forlorn hope that he might use his influence wisely. Cardinal O’Fiaich was not a bad man; but he was a romantic Republican, whose nationalism seemed to prevail over his Christian duty of offering unqualifed resistance to terrorism and murder. He believed that the hunger strikers were not acting under IRA orders: I was not convinced. He made light of the demands of the prisoners for special category status, and it soon became clear why. He told me that the whole of Northern Ireland was a lie from start to finish. At the root of what the hunger strikers believed they were striking for was a united Ireland. He asked when the time would come that the British Government would admit that its presence was divisive. The only solution was to bring together all the Irish people under a government of Irishmen, whether in a federal or a unitary state. I replied that the course he advocated could not become the policy of the British Government because it was not acceptable to the majority of the population of Northern Ireland. The border was a fact. Those who sought a united Ireland must learn that what could not be won by persuasion would not be won by violence. We spoke bluntly, but it was an instructive meeting.
In striving to end the crisis, I had stopped short of force-feeding, a degrading and itself dangerous practice which I could not support. At all times hunger strikers were offered three meals a day, had constant medical attention and, of course, took water. When the hunger strikers fell into unconsciousness it became possible for their next of kin to instruct the doctors to feed them through a drip. My hope was that the families would use this power to bring an end to the strike. Eventually, after ten prisoners had died, a group of families announced that they would intervene to prevent the deaths of their relatives and the IRA called off the strike on Saturday 3 October. With the strike now over, I authorized some further concessions on clothing, association and loss of remission. But the outcome was a significant defeat for the IRA.
However, the IRA had regrouped during the strikes, making headway in the nationalist community. They now turned to violence on a larger scale, especially on the mainland. The worst incident was caused by an IRA bomb outside Chelsea Barracks on Monday 10 October. A coach carrying Irish Guardsmen was blown up, killing one bystander and injuring many soldiers. The bomb was filled with six-inch nails, intended to inflict as much pain and suffering as possible. I went quickly to the scene and with horrified fascination pulled a nail out of the side of the coach. To say that the people capable of this were animals would be wrong: no animal would do such a thing. I went on to visit the casualties at the three London hospitals to which they had been taken. I came away more determined than ever that the terrorists should be isolated, deprived of their support and defeated.
DEALINGS WITH THE IRISH REPUBLIC
After Garret FitzGerald had overcome his initial inclination to play up to Irish opinion at the British Government’s expense I had quite friendly dealings with him…all too friendly, to judge by Unionist reaction to our agreement after a summit in November 1981 to set up the rather grand sounding ‘Anglo-Irish Inter-Governmental Council’, which really continued the existing ministerial and official contacts under a new name. Garret FitzGerald prided himself on being a cosmopolitan intellectual. He had little time for the myths of Irish Republicanism and would have liked to secularize the Irish Constitution and state, not least…but not just…as a way of drawing the North into a united Ireland. Unfortunately, like many modern liberals, he overestimated his own powers of persuasion over his colleagues and countrymen. He was a man of as many words as Charles Haughey was few. He was also, beneath the skin of sophistication, even more sensitive to imagined snubs and more inclined to exaggerate the importance of essentially trivial issue
s than Mr Haughey.
How Garret FitzGerald would have reacted to the new proposals we made in the spring of 1982 for ‘rolling devolution’ of powers to a Northern Ireland Assembly it is difficult to know. But in fact by now the whirligig of Irish politics had brought Charles Haughey back as Taoiseach and Anglo-Irish relations cooled to freezing. The new Taoiseach denounced our proposals for devolution as an ‘unworkable mistake’ in which he was also joined by the SDLP. But what angered me most was the thoroughly unhelpful stance taken by the Irish Government during the Falklands War, which I have mentioned earlier.*
Jim Prior, who succeeded Humphrey Atkins as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland shortly before the end of the second hunger strike, was a good deal more enthusiastic and optimistic about the proposals in our white paper than I was. Ian Gow, my PPS, was against the whole idea and I shared a number of his reservations. Before publication, I had the text of the white paper substantially changed in order to cut out a chapter dealing with relations with the Irish Republic and, I hoped, minimize Unionist objections: although Ian Paisley’s DUP went along with the proposals, many integrationists in the Official Unionist Party were critical. Twenty Conservative MPs voted against the bill when it came forward in May and three junior members of the Government resigned.
If the aim of the white paper initiative was to strengthen the moderates in the nationalist community it certainly did not have this effect. In the elections that October to the Northern Ireland Assembly Sinn Fein won 10 per cent of the total, over half of the vote won by the SDLP. For this, of course, the SDLP’s own tactics and negative attitudes were heavily to blame: but they continued them by refusing to take their seats in the assembly when it opened the following month. The campaign itself had been marked by a sharp increase in sectarian murders.
The IRA were still at work on the mainland too. I was chairing a meeting of ‘E’ Committee in the Cabinet Room on the morning of Tuesday 20 July 1982 when I heard (and felt) the unmistakeable sound of a bomb exploding in the middle distance. I immediately asked that enquiries be made, but continued the meeting. As the morning wore on I noticed, looking out of the window, that the soldiers had not arrived on Horse Guards for their parade. When the news finally came through it was even worse than I feared. Two bombs had exploded, one two hours after the other, in Hyde Park and Regent’s Park, the intended victims being in the first case the Household Cavalry and in the second the band of the Royal Green Jackets. Eight people were killed and 53 injured. The carnage was truly terrible. I heard about it first hand from some of the victims when I went to the hospital the next day.
The return of Garret FitzGerald as Taoiseach in December 1982 provided us with an opportunity to improve the climate of Anglo-Irish relations with a view to pressing the South for more action on security. But I was wary about allowing the Irish to set the pace: Dr Fitz-Gerald’s understanding of Unionist sensibilities was no greater than Mr Haughey’s and I had plenty of experience already of the exaggerated construction which both nationalists and Unionists placed on even bland pledges of Anglo-Irish co-operation.
I had a meeting with Dr FitzGerald at the European Council at Stuttgart in June 1983. I shared the worry he expressed about the erosion of SDLP support by Sinn Fein. However uninspiring SDLP politicians might be…at least since the departure of the courageous Gerry Fitt…they were the minority’s main representatives and an alternative to the IRA. They had to be wooed. But Dr FitzGerald had no suggestions to make about how to get the SDLP to take part in the Northern Ireland Assembly, which was pointless without their participation. He pressed me to agree talks between officials on future co-operation.
I did not think there was much to talk about, but I accepted the proposal. Robert Armstrong, head of the civil service and Cabinet Secretary, and his opposite number in the Republic, Dermot Nally, became the main channels of communication. Over the summer and autumn of 1983 we received a number of informal approaches from the Irish, by no means consistent or clear in content. It became apparent that Dr FitzGerald’s Government did not speak with a single voice. At various times and with various degrees of specificity they seemed to be offering to amend Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution, by which the Republic claims sovereignty over Northern Ireland. We became increasingly sceptical of their ability to deliver this, since it would involve a referendum and divide the Irish Government. We also had well-justified doubts about talk of a more helpful line from the SDLP. On the security side the Irish were offering better cooperation, but proposing also a direct role for the Irish police (the Garda), and possibly the Irish Army, in Northern Ireland itself, as well as a Southern involvement in the Northern courts. They urged another attempt at devolution and, surprisingly, appeared ready to contemplate a return to majority rule.
Most of these ideas were impossible, implying some kind of joint sovereignty over Northern Ireland. Moreover, I disliked intensely this kind of bargaining about security. It seemed to me that to withhold full co-operation to catch criminals and save lives because one wanted some political gain was fundamentally wrong. But the Irish side did not see it like that.
I allowed the talks between the two sides to continue. I also had in mind the political danger of seeming to adopt a negative reaction to new proposals. This in turn meant that I had, within limits, to treat seriously the Republic’s so-called ‘New Ireland Forum’. This had originally been set up mainly as a way of helping the SDLP at the 1983 general election but Garret FitzGerald was now using it as a sounding board for ‘ideas’ about the future of Northern Ireland. Since the Unionist parties would take no part in it the outcome was bound to be skewed towards a united Ireland. For my part I was anxious that this collection of nationalists, North and South, might attract international respectability for moves to weaken the Union, so I was intensely wary of them.
BACKGROUND TO THE ANGLO-IRISH
AGREEMENT, 1983–1985
I saw Garret FitzGerald at Chequers on the morning of Monday 7 November 1983 for our second bilateral summit. It was a modestly useful discussion, but the Irish always had difficulty understanding that joint sovereignty was a nonstarter. Immediately after the Irish team left I held a further meeting with ministers and officials. I felt that we must now come up with our own proposals and I asked Robert Armstrong to draw up an initial paper setting out the options. I laid special stress on the need for secrecy; a leak would destroy the prospects for a new initiative. This meeting, from our side, was the origin of the later Anglo-Irish Agreement.
The need for Irish help on security was again evident after the appalling murder by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) of worshippers at the Pentecostal Gospel Hall at Darkley in County Armagh on Sunday 20 November. In spite of all the fine words about the need to defeat terrorism which I had been hearing from the Taoiseach, the Irish Justice minister refused to meet Jim Prior to review security co-operation and the Garda Commissioner similarly refused to meet the Chief Constable of the RUC.
Then the IRA struck again on the mainland. After lunch on Saturday 17 December I left Chequers to attend a carol concert in the Royal Festival Hall. While I was there I received news that a car bomb had exploded just outside Harrods. I left at the first opportunity and went to the scene. By the time I arrived most of the dead and injured had been removed but I shall never forget the sight of the charred body of a teenage girl lying where she had been blown against the store window. Even by the IRA’s own standards this was a particularly callous attack. Five people including two police officers died. The fact that one of the dead was an American should have brought home to US sympathizers with the IRA the real nature of Irish terrorism.
The Harrods bomb was designed to intimidate not just the Government but the British people as a whole. The IRA had chosen the country’s most prestigious store at a time when the streets of London were full of shoppers in festive mood looking forward to Christmas. There was an instinctive feeling…in reaction to the outrage…that everyone must go about their busin
ess normally. Denis was among those who went to shop in Harrods the following Monday to do just that.
Two days after the bomb we received word that the Irish Cabinet was to meet the following day to consider proscribing Sinn Fein south of the border. I summoned a meeting of ministers straight away to consider our response. Clearly if the Irish proscribed, we would take similar action. But our tentative conclusion was that proscription would not directly affect the fight against Irish terrorism in Great Britain, and would probably lead to disorder and violence in Northern Ireland. In the event the Irish Cabinet decided not to go ahead.
On Christmas Eve I visited the province myself, meeting members of the security forces and the general public. I was all but mobbed by cheering well-wishers in the main street of Bangor, a seaside town in County Down, and added to my rapidly growing collection of Tyrone crystal, purchased on Ulster visits, while Denis acquired another tie.
By the end of the year the prospects for some kind of negotiation seemed reasonable, but the acid test for me would be the question of security. Not that the picture on security was wholly bad. The Irish Government devoted significant resources to security…more on a per capita basis than the United Kingdom. Also co-operation between Dublin and London was good. The real area of difficulty lay in cross-border co-operation between the Garda and the RUC. In spite of our efforts to help, Garda training and use of information were unsatisfactory. These shortcomings were worsened by personal mistrust between Garda and RUC personnel. We wanted to find solutions to these problems, some of which required the Irish to deploy more resources to the border, others of which were really a matter of political will. The best hope on both accounts seemed to lie with an Anglo-Irish Agreement which would acknowledge in a public way the Republic’s interest in the affairs of the North, while keeping decision-making out of its hands and firmly in ours. This was what I now set out to achieve.
The Downing Street Years Page 52