The Downing Street Years

by Margaret Thatcher

  More and more in the struggle to bring peace and order to Northern Ireland, we were being forced back on our own resources. Because of the professionalism and experience of our security forces, those resources were adequate to contain, but not as yet to defeat the IRA. Terrible tragedies continued to occur. Yet the terrorists did not manage to make even parts of the province ungovernable, nor were they successful in undermining the self-confidence of Ulster’s majority community or the will of the Government to maintain the Union.

  The fact remained that the contribution which the Anglo-Irish Agreement was making to all this was very limited. The Unionists continued to oppose it…though with less bitterness as it became clear that their worst fears had proved unfounded. It never seemed worth pulling out of the agreement altogether because this would have created problems not only with the Republic but, more importantly, with broader international opinion as well.

  Still, I was disappointed by the results. The Patrick Ryan case demonstrated just how little we could seriously hope for from the Irish. Ryan, a nonpractising Catholic priest, was well known in security service circles as a terrorist; for some time he had played a significant role in the Provisional IRA’s links with Libya. The charges against Ryan were of the utmost seriousness, including conspiracy to murder and explosives offences. In June 1988 we had asked the Belgians to place him under surveillance. They, in turn, pressed us strongly to apply for extradition. So the application was made in close cooperation with the Belgian authorities. The Belgian court which considered the extradition request gave an advisory opinion, which we knew to have been favourable…something which the Belgian Government never denied…to the Minister of Justice. The latter then took the decision to the Belgian Cabinet. The Cabinet decided to ignore the court’s opinion and to fly Ryan to Ireland, only telling us afterwards. Presumably this political decision was prompted by fear of terrorist retaliation if the Belgians co-operated with us.

  We now sought the extradition of Ryan from the Republic; but this was refused, initially on what seemed a technicality, though the Irish Attorney-General later suggested that Ryan would not receive a fair trial before a British jury. I wrote a vigorous protest to Mr Haughey. I had already taken up the matter personally with him and with the Belgian Prime Minister, M. Martens, at the European Council in Rhodes on Friday 2 and Saturday 3 December 1988. I told both of them how appalled I was. I was particularly angry with M. Martens. I reminded him how his Government’s attitude contrasted with all the co-operation we had given Belgium over those British people charged in relation to the Heysel Football Stadium riot.* I was unconvinced and unmoved by M. Martens’s explanations. His Government had clearly taken its decision in contradiction to and in defiance of legal advice. As I warned him I would, I then told the press of my views in very similar terms. But as a Belgian government under the same M. Martens later showed at the time of the Gulf War, it would take more than this to provide them with a spine. And Patrick Ryan is still at large.

  I had moved Peter Brooke to become Northern Ireland Secretary in the reshuffle of July 1989. Peter’s family connections with the province and his deep interest in Ulster affairs made him seem an ideal choice. His unflappable good humour also meant that no one would be better suited for trying to bring the parties of Northern Ireland together for talks. Soon after his appointment I authorized him to do so: these talks were still continuing at the time I left office.

  Meanwhile, the struggle to maintain security continued. So did the IRA’s murderous campaign. On Friday 22 September ten bandsmen were killed in a blast at the Royal Marines School of Music at Deal. The following summer the IRA’s mainland campaign resumed. June 1990 saw bombs explode outside Alistair McAlpine’s former home and then at the Conservative Party’s Carlton Club. But it was the following month that I experienced again something of that deep personal grief I had felt when Airey was killed and when I learned, early on that Friday morning at Brighton in 1984, of the losses in the Grand Hotel bomb attack.

  Ian Gow was singled out to be murdered by the IRA because they knew that he was their unflinching enemy. Even though he held no government office, Ian was a danger to them because of his total commitment to the Union. No amount of terror can succeed in its aim if even a few outspoken men and women of integrity and courage dare to call terrorism murder and any compromise with it treachery. Nor, tragically, was Ian someone who took his own security precautions seriously. And so the IRA’s bomb killed him that Monday morning, 30 July, as he started up his car in the drive of his house. I could not help thinking, when I heard what had happened, that my daughter Carol had travelled with Ian in his car the previous weekend to take the Gows’ dog out for a walk: it might have been her too. I went down to Eastbourne to see Jane Gow in the early afternoon and we spoke for an hour or so. That evening I went to a service in the Anglo-Catholic church where Ian and Jane always worshipped and I was moved to see it full of people who had come in from work at the end of the day to mourn Ian’s loss. Whenever Jane came to Chequers to see me she used to play the piano there…she is a fine pianist. She once remarked to me, speaking of the loss of Ian, ‘people say it gets better, but it doesn’t.’ That must always be true of someone you love, whatever the manner of their death. But for some reason the loss of a friend or family member by violence leaves an even deeper scar.

  The IRA will not give up their campaign unless they are convinced that there is no possibility of forcing the majority of the people of Northern Ireland against their will into the Republic. That is why our policy must never give the impression that we are trying to lead the Unionists into a united Ireland either against their will or without their knowledge. Moreover, it is not enough to decry individual acts of terrorism but then refuse to endorse the measures required to defeat it. That applies to American Irish who supply Noraid with money to kill British citizens; to Irish politicians who withhold co-operation in clamping down on border security; and to the Labour Party that for years has withheld its support from the Prevention of Terrorism Act which has saved countless lives.

  Ian Gow and I had our disagreements, above all about the Anglo-Irish Agreement: but for the right of those whose loyalties are to the United Kingdom to remain its citizens and enjoy its protection I believe, as did Ian, that no price is too high to pay.

  In dealing with Northern Ireland, successive governments have studiously refrained from security policies that might alienate the Irish Government and Irish nationalist opinion in Ulster, in the hope of winning their support against the IRA. The Anglo-Irish Agreement was squarely in this tradition. But I discovered the results of this approach to be disappointing. Our concessions alienated the Unionists without gaining the level of security co-operation we had a right to expect. In the light of this experience it is surely time to consider an alternative approach.

  * The National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations…the voluntary wing of the Party.

  * In this chapter and elsewhere nationalist is generally used as an alternative to ‘Catholic’ and Unionist to ‘Protestant’. While it is true that the political and ethnic division in Northern Ireland is largely (though not always) consistent with and sometimes worsened by religious division, it is misleading to describe it in essentially religious terms. The IRA gunmen who murder and the hunger strikers who committed suicide are not in any proper sense ‘Catholic’ nor are ‘loyalist’ sectarian killers ‘Protestant’. They are not even in any meaningful sense Christians.

  * A system of majority rule had existed in the province from the creation of Northern Ireland in the partition of 1920 until 1972, known as ‘Stormont’ (from the location of government buildings on the edge of Belfast).

  * See pp. 56–9.

  * Convicted criminals sentenced to more than nine months’ imprisonment who claimed political motivation and were acceptable to the paramilitary leaders in the gaols were accorded special category status…allowed to wear their own clothes, exempted from work, and segregated in compounds.
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  * See pp. 191, 216, 223, 225.

  * Prisoners on the mainland received 33 per cent remission: we acted to remove this extraordinary anomaly by reducing remission in Northern Ireland to the same level the following year.

  ** Internment…detention without trial…had been introduced at the height of the troubles in 1971, and phased out by 1975.

  * The Stalker-Sampson Report was the outcome of a police enquiry into a series of fatal incidents in 1982 in which the RUC was alleged to have operated a ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy in dealing with terrorist suspects.

  ** The ‘Birmingham Six’ were six Irishmen convicted of multiple murders resulting from the IRA bombing of two pubs in Birmingham in 1974. A long campaign was undertaken to prove the convictions unsafe, eventually resulting in their release. At this time, however, their latest appeal had just been rejected by the Court of Appeal.

  * In Irish law every person born in Ireland is an Irish citizen from birth, but those born in Northern Ireland do not become Irish citizens unless they declare themselves so to be.

  * British football fans had attacked Italian fans at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels in 1985, crushing thirty-eight of them to death when a wall collapsed. Twenty-six were later extradited from Britain to face charges in Belgium.

  CHAPTER XV

  Keeps Raining all the Time

  The mid-term political difficulties of 1985–1986

  A POLITICAL MALAISE

  Whatever long-term political gains might accrue from the successful outcome of the miners’ strike, from the spring of 1985 onwards we faced accumulating political difficulties. Matters of no great importance in themselves, and often of limited interest to the general public, were invested within the hyperactive and incestuous world of Westminster with huge significance. The phenomenon is by no means uniquely British: my American friends tell me frequently of the gulf which separates the priorities of the ‘beltway’ from those outside it. So any democratic politician must be able to distinguish between the two — and recognize the pre-eminence of the second.

  That spring the Labour Party started to move ahead of us in the opinion polls. In the local elections in May we lost control of a number of shire counties, mainly to the benefit of the SDP/Liberal Alliance. Francis Pym took the opportunity to launch a new grouping of Conservative MPs critical of my policies. The group was officially known as ‘Centre Forward’. Its failure to come up with any coherent alternative, however, caused it to be dubbed in a Times editorial as ‘Centre Backward’. A number of Francis’s supporters hurried to disclaim any connection with the group and after the initial flurry of publicity it sank into oblivion. But that did not alter the fact that, as the columns of the press showed daily, there were rumblings of dissent within the Parliamentary Party. I could not ignore them.

  Opinions frayed further in July — always a bad-tempered time in British politics as MPs become restless to return to their constituencies, or in some cases to their villas in Chianti-shire. On Thursday 4 July we had a spectacularly bad by-election result at Brecon and Radnor, which was won by the Alliance on a swing of almost 16 per cent from the Conservatives: our candidate came in third. It was described — not quite accurately — as the worst Tory defeat since 1962. By-election results always have to be taken seriously, even though they are a poor indication of what would happen at a general election when people know they are voting for a government rather than registering a protest. But the press was full of unattributable criticism of the Government and of me personally which, having about it an unmistakeable whiff of panic, confirmed that the Parliamentary Party had a bad case of the wobbles.

  Then a fortnight later the publication of our acceptance of the Top Salary Review Board (TSRB) recommendations provided the occasion for a large back-bench revolt in the House of Commons. What caused the outrage was the large increases for top civil servants. There was no doubt in my mind that we could not retain the right people in vitally important posts in government administration unless their salaries bore at least some comparison with their counterparts in the private sector. The cost of doing this to the public purse was, of course, only a tiny fraction of even a modest increase to large groups of public sector workers. I came to the conclusion that it was best to put the anomaly right at one go. When the Labour Party erupted I reminded them that Jim Callaghan had done the same thing in 1978. That said, we did not handle the issue well. Fear of leaks meant that those entrusted with explaining the rationale of our policy simply did not know about it in time. Even Bernard Ingham had been kept in the dark which, when he raised the matter with me afterwards, I conceded was absurd. In future we handled the TSRB announcements much more carefully. But for this occasion the damage had been done.

  Generally, a political malaise spreads because underlying economic conditions are bad or worsening. But this was not the case on this occasion. True, inflation had moved upwards from the low point it had reached after the election and unemployment, always a lagging indicator, remained stubbornly high; but the economy was growing quite fast. It became clear to me that the root of our problems was presentation and therefore personnel. Of course, there is a tendency for all governments — particularly Conservative governments — to blame presentation and not policy for their woes: but in 1985 it really was the case that some ministers were not in the right jobs and could not explain our policies to the people. So there was only one way of changing the image of the Government and that was by changing its members. A reshuffle was required.

  THE 1985 RESHUFFLE

  My first discussion about the 1985 reshuffle was with Willie Whitelaw and John Wakeham, now Chief Whip, over supper in the flat at No. 10 in late May. Willie and John were both shrewd and party to the gossip which constitutes parliamentary opinion. Each had his own personal likes and dislikes, which I would privately try to discount, but I listened to their advice very carefully. They urged on me a July reshuffle. I could not agree with them. I hated sacking ministers and I could not prevent myself thinking what it meant to them and their families, suddenly losing salary, car and prestige.* I used to like to feel that they would have the long summer recess in office before coming back in September to learn the bad news. The trouble was that the press would then spend the whole of that period speculating on who was to stay and who would go. So I eventually agreed to reshuffles at the end of July; but not yet.

  Planning a reshuffle is immensely complex. There is never a perfect outcome. It is necessary to get the main decisions about the big offices of state right and then work outward and downward from these. Nor is it possible always to give the best positions to one’s closest supporters. Not only must the Cabinet to some extent reflect the varying views in the Parliamentary Party at a particular time: there are some people that it is better to bring in because they would cause more trouble outside. Peter Walker and, to a lesser extent, Kenneth Clarke are examples, precisely because they fought their corner hard. There is another problem: I generally found that the Left seemed to be best at presentation, the Right at getting the job done — although Norman Tebbit and Cecil Parkinson managed to do both.

  I wanted to ensure that the Government’s policies were presented properly between now and the general election. This meant some movement in the most senior three posts — Chancellor, Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary. Nigel Lawson was turning out to be an effective tax-reforming Chancellor. Geoffrey Howe seemed a competent Foreign Secretary; I had not yet taken the full measure of our disagreements. Leon Brittan was the obvious candidate to be moved: however unfairly, he just did not carry conviction with the public. I knew that he would be devastated, but it had to be done.

  I asked Leon to come to Chequers on Sunday afternoon 1 September where Willie, John and I were putting the final touches to the decisions. Willie is a good judge of character. He told me that the first thing Leon would ask when I broke the news to him was whether he would keep his order of precedence in the Cabinet list. To my surprise, this was indeed what he asked. Forewarned, I
was able to reassure him. I was also able to say — and mean it — that with complex Financial Services legislation coming up to provide a framework of regulation for the City Leon’s talents would be well employed at the Department of Trade and Industry to which I was moving him.

  I replaced Leon at the Home Office with Douglas Hurd, who looked more the part, was immensely reassuring to the police, and, though no one could call him a natural media performer, inspired a good deal of confidence in the Parliamentary Party. He had become a harder and wiser man through serving as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. He also knew the department, having earlier been Leon’s number two there. By and large, it was a successful appointment.

  I had to move Leon; but was I right to move him to the DTI? Although the main fault in what lay ahead certainly resided elsewhere, Leon’s attitude on going to his new department carried its own dangers. He was obviously shaken — friends later described him as somewhat demoralized — and determined to make his political mark. As a result he proved oversensitive about his position when the Westland affair blew up. All this made for errors of judgement when facing a ruthless opponent like Michael Heseltine. It turned out that the DTI had even more pitfalls for this civilized but not very streetwise politician than did the Home Office. At the time, however, it seemed that this was a job which would put Leon less in the limelight, while making the most of his formidable intellect and phenomenal industry, which was what I wanted. But even had Leon weathered Westland he would have found himself in difficulties over the question of privatizing BL.

  Leon’s position turned out therefore to be the key to the plan for the reshuffle. It might have worked out differently. For I thought long and hard about bringing Cecil Parkinson back to the Cabinet. I missed his dry views and great presentational skills. But my advisers were divided on the merits of doing so and in the end I reluctantly concluded that it was too soon.