The Downing Street Years, 1979-1990

THE BRIGHTON BOMB

As usual, by the end of the week of our 1984 Party Conference in Brighton I was becoming frantic about my speech. A good conference speech cannot just be written in advance: you need to get the feel of the conference in order to achieve the right tone. I spent as much time as I could working on the text with my speech writers on Thursday afternoon and evening, rushed away to look in at the Conservative Agents’ Ball and returned to my suite at the Grand Hotel just after 11 o’clock.

By about 2.40 a.m. the speech… at least from my point of view… was finished. So while the speech writers themselves, who had been joined for a time by Norman Tebbit, went to bed, my long-suffering staff typed in what I was (fairly) confident would be the final changes to the text and prepared the Autocue tape. Meanwhile, I got on with some government business.

At 2.50 a.m. Robin Butler asked me to look at one last official paper… it was about the Liverpool Garden Festival. I gave Robin my view and he began to put away the papers. At 2.54 a.m. a loud thud shook the room. There was a few seconds’ silence and then there was a second slightly different noise, in fact created by falling masonry. I knew immediately that it was a bomb… perhaps two bombs, a large followed by a smaller device… but at this stage I did not know that the explosion had taken place inside the hotel. Glass from the windows of my sitting-room was strewn across the carpet. But I thought that it might be a car bomb outside. (I only realized that the bomb had exploded above us when Penny, John Gummer’s wife, appeared a little later from upstairs, still in her night clothes.) The adjoining bathroom was more severely damaged, though the worst I would have suffered had I been in there were minor cuts. Those who had sought to kill me had placed the bomb in the wrong place.

Apart from the broken glass and a ringing fire alarm, set off by the explosion, there was a strange and, as it turned out, deceptive normality. The lights, thankfully, remained on: the importance of this played on my mind for some time and for months afterwards I always kept a torch by my bed when I was staying the night in a strange house. Denis put his head round the bedroom door, saw that I was all right and went back inside to dress. For some reason neither of us quite understands he took a spare pair of shoes with him, subsequently worn by Charles Price, the American Ambassador, who had lost his in the confusion of leaving the hotel. While Crawfie gathered together my vanity case, blouses and two suits…one for the next day…Robin Butler came in to take charge of the government papers. I went across the landing to the secretaries’ room to see if my staff were all right. One of the girls had received a nasty electric shock from the photocopier. But otherwise all was well. They were as concerned about my still only partly typed-up speech as they were for themselves. ‘It’s all right,’ they assured me, ‘we’ve got the speech.’ A copy went straight into my briefcase.

By now more and more people were appearing in the secretaries’ room with me…the Gummers, the Howes, David Wolfson, Michael Alison and others, unkempt, anxious but quite calm. At this stage none of us had any clear idea about the extent of the damage, let alone injuries. While we talked, my detectives had been checking out as best they could our immediate security. There is always a fear of a second device, carefully timed to catch and kill those fleeing from the first explosion. It was also necessary for them to find a way out of the hotel which was both unblocked and safe.

At 3.10 a.m., in groups, we began to leave. It turned out that the first route suggested was impassable and we were turned back by a fireman. So we went back and waited in the office. Later we were told that it was safe to leave and we went down by the main staircase. It was now that I first saw from the rubble in the entrance and foyer something of the seriousness of the blast. I hoped that the porter had not been injured. The air was full of thick cement dust: it was in my mouth and covered my clothes as I clambered over discarded belongings and broken furniture towards the back entrance of the hotel. It still never occurred to me that anyone would have died.

Ten minutes later Denis, Crawfie and I arrived in a police car at Brighton Police Station. We were given tea in the Chief Constable’s room. Soon friends and colleagues started to arrive to see me. Willie Whitelaw came in. So did the Howes, accompanied by their little dog ‘Budget’. But it was Leon Brittan, as Home Secretary, and John Gummer, as Party Chairman, with whom I had most to discuss. At this stage none of us knew whether the conference could continue: had the conference hall itself been attacked? But I was already determined that if it was physically possible to do so I would deliver my speech. There was discussion about whether I should return to No. 10; but I said, ‘No: I am staying.’ It was eventually decided that I would spend the rest of the night at Lewes Police College. I changed out of evening dress into a navy suit and, as I left the Police Station with Denis and Crawfie, I made a brief statement to the press. Then we were driven at great speed to Lewes.

Nobody spoke during the journey. Our thoughts were back at the Grand Hotel. Whether by chance or arrangement, there was no one staying at the College. I was given a small sitting-room with a television and a twin-bedded room with its own bathroom. Denis and the detectives shared rooms further down the corridor. Crawfie and I shared too. We sat on our beds and speculated about what had happened. By now I was convinced that there must have been casualties. But we could get no news.

I could only think of one thing to do. Crawfie and I knelt by the side of our beds and prayed for some time in silence.

I had brought no night clothes with me and so I lay down fully clothed and slept fitfully for perhaps an hour and a half. I awoke to the sound of the breakfast television news at 6.30 a.m. The news was bad, much worse than I had feared. I saw pictures of Norman Tebbit being pulled out of the rubble. Then came the news that Roberta Wakeham and Anthony Berry MP were dead. I knew that I could not afford to let my emotions get control of me. I had to be mentally and physically fit for the day ahead. I tried not to watch the harrowing pictures. But it did not seem to do much good. I had to know each detail of what had happened…and every detail seemed worse than the last.

I bathed quickly, changed and had a light breakfast with plenty of black coffee. It was soon clear that the conference could go ahead. I said to the police officer in charge that I must get back to Brighton to open the conference on time.

It was a perfect autumn day and as we drove back into Brighton the sky was clear and the sea completely calm. I now had my first sight of the front of the Grand Hotel, a whole vertical section of which had collapsed.

Then we went on to the Conference Centre itself, where at 9.20 a.m. the conference opened; and at 9.30 a.m. precisely I and the officers of the National Union[49] walked on to the platform. (Many of them had had to leave clothes in the hotel, but Alistair McAlpine had persuaded the local Marks & Spencer to open early and by now they were smartly dressed.) The body of the hall was only about half full, because the rigorous security checks held up the crowds trying to get in. But the ovation was colossal. All of us were relieved to be alive, saddened by the tragedy and determined to show the terrorists that they could not break our spirit.

By chance, but how appropriately, the first debate was on Northern Ireland. I stayed to listen to this but then left to work on my speech which had to be completely revised. Michael Alison (my Parliamentary Private Secretary) and I retired to an office in the Centre where we removed most of the partisan sections of the speech: this was not a time for Labour-bashing but for unity in defence of democracy. Whole new pages had to be written, though there were tough sections on law and order which could be used as they stood. Ronnie Millar then polished the text as he and I went through it. All the while, and in spite of attempts by my staff to minimize the interruptions, I was receiving messages and fleeting visits from colleagues and friends. I knew that John Wakeham had not yet been freed from the rubble and several people were still missing. A steady stream of flowers arrived which later were sent on to the hospital where the injured had been taken.

As in earlier days, I delivered the speech from a text rather than Autocue and ad libbed a good deal as well. But I knew that far more important than what I said was the fact that I, as Prime Minister, was still able to say it. I did not dwell long in the speech on what had happened. But I tried to sum up the feelings of all of us.

I did not linger after my speech but went immediately to the Royal Sussex County Hospital to visit the injured. Four people had already died. Muriel McLean was on a drip feed: she would die later. John Wakeham was still unconscious and remained so for several days. He had to be operated on daily for some time to save his legs which had been terribly crushed. By chance we all knew the consultant in charge, Tony Trafford, who had been a Conservative MP. I spent hours on the telephone trying to get the best advice possible from experts in dealing with crush injuries. In the end it turned out that there was a doctor in the hospital from El Salvador who had the expertise required. Between them they managed to save John’s legs. Norman Tebbit regained consciousness while I was at the hospital and we managed a few words. His face was bloated as a result of being trapped for so long under the rubble: I scarcely recognized him. I also talked to Margaret Tebbit who was in the intensive care unit. She told me she had no feeling below the neck. As a former nurse, she knew well enough what that meant.

I left the hospital overcome by such bravery and suffering. I was driven back to Chequers that afternoon faster than I have ever been driven before, with a full motorcycle escort. As I spent that night in what had become my home I could not stop thinking about those unable to return to theirs.

THE IRISH DILEMMA

What happened in Brighton shocked the world. But the people of Northern Ireland and the security forces face the ruthless reality of terrorism day after day. There is no excuse for the IRA’s reign of terror. If their violence were, as the misleading phrase often has it, ‘mindless’ it would be easier to grasp as the manifestation of a disordered psyche. But that is not what terrorism is, however many psychopaths may be attracted to it. Terrorism is the calculated use of violence…and the threat of it…to achieve political ends. In the case of the IRA those ends are the coercion of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland, who have demonstrated their wish to remain within the United Kingdom, into an all-Ireland state. Along with the political objective go crimes of other kinds… robbery, protection, fraud to name but a few.

There are terrorists in both the Catholic and Protestant communities, and all too many people prepared to give them support or at least to acquiesce in their activities. Indeed, for a person to stand out against the terrorists carries great personal risk. The result is that it is impossible to separate entirely the security policy, required to prevent terrorist outrages and bring the perpetrators to book, from the wider political approach to the long-standing ‘Northern Ireland problem’. For some people that connection implies that you should make concessions to the terrorist, in particular by weakening the Union between Ulster and Britain. But it never did so for me. My policy towards Northern Ireland was always one aimed above all at upholding democracy and the law: it was always therefore determined by whatever I considered at a particular time would help bring better security.

The IRA are the core of the terrorist problem; their counterparts on the Protestant side would probably disappear if the IRA could be beaten. But the best chance of beating them is if three conditions are met. First, the IRA have to be rejected by the nationalist minority on whom they depend for shelter and support.[50] This requires that the minority should be led to support or at least acquiesce in the constitutional framework of the state in which they live. Second, the IRA have to be deprived of international support, whether from well-meaning but naïve Irish Americans, or from Arab revolutionary regimes like that of Colonel Gaddafi. This requires constant attention to foreign policy aimed at explaining the facts to the misinformed and cutting off the weapons from the mischievous. Third, and linked to the other two, relations between Britain and the Republic of Ireland have to be carefully managed. Although the IRA have plenty of support in areas like West Belfast within Northern Ireland, very often it is to the South that they go to be trained, to receive money and arms and to escape capture after crimes committed within the United Kingdom. The border, long and difficult to patrol, is of crucial significance to the security problem. Much depends on the willingness and ability of the political leaders of the Republic to co-operate effectively with our intelligence, security forces and courts. So it was that throughout my time in office security issues and political initiatives were intertwined.

My own instincts are profoundly Unionist. There is therefore something of a paradox in that my relations with the Unionist politicians were so uncomfortable most of the time. Airey Neave and I felt the greatest sympathy with the Unionists while we were in Opposition. I knew that these people shared many of my own attitudes, derived from my staunchly Methodist background. Their warmth was as genuine as it was usually undemonstrative. Their patriotism was real and fervent, even if too narrow. They had often been taken too much for granted. From my visits to Northern Ireland, often after terrible tragedies, I came to have the greatest admiration in particular for the way in which the little rural Protestant communities would come together, looking after one another, after some terrible loss. But, then, any Conservative should in his bones be a Unionist too. Our Party has always, throughout its history, been committed to the defence of the Union: indeed on the eve of the First World War the Conservatives were not far short of provoking civil disorder to support it. That is why I could never understand why leading Unionists… apparently sincerely… suggested that in my dealings with the South and above all in the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which I shall discuss shortly, I was contemplating selling them out to the Republic.

But what British politician will ever fully understand Northern Ireland? I suspect that even the most passionate English supporters of Ulster do so less than they imagine. Certainly, time and again I found that apparently innocuous words and phrases had a special significance in the overheated political world of Ulster… indeed the mere use of that term to describe the province is an example, allegedly denoting a ‘Protestant’ bias. In the history of Ireland… both North and South… which I tried to read up when I could, especially in my early years of office, reality and myth from the seventeenth century to the 1920s take on an almost Balkan immediacy. Distrust mounting to hatred and revenge is never far beneath the political surface. And those who step onto it must do so gingerly.

I started from the need for greater security, which was imperative. If this meant making limited political concessions to the South, much as I disliked this kind of bargaining I had to contemplate it. But the results in terms of security must come through. In Northern Ireland itself my first choice would have been a system of majority rule…devolved government on the same lines as Westminster, and subject to its supremacy… with strong guarantees for the human rights of the minority, and indeed everyone else. That is broadly the approach which Airey and I had in mind when the 1979 manifesto was drafted. But it was not long before it became clear to me that this model was not going to work, at least for the present. The nationalist minority were not prepared to believe that majority rule would secure their rights…whether it took the form of an assembly in Belfast, or more powerful local government. They insisted on some kind of ‘power sharing’… that in some way both sides should participate in the executive function…as well as demanding a role for the Republic in Northern Ireland, both of which proposals were anathema to the Unionists.

I had always had a good deal of respect for the old Stormont system.[51] When I was Education Secretary I was impressed by the efficiency of the Northern Ireland education service. The province has kept its grammar schools and so has consistently achieved some of the best academic results in the United Kingdom. But majority rule meant permanent power for the Protestants, and there was no getting away from the fact that, with some justice, the long years of Unionist rule were associated with discrimination against the Catholics. I believe the defects were exaggerated, but Catholic resentment gave rise to the civil rights movement at the end of the 1960s, which the IRA was able to exploit. By early 1972 civil disorder existed on such a scale that Stormont was suspended and replaced by direct rule from London. At the same time the British Government gave a guarantee that Northern Ireland would remain a part of the United Kingdom so long as the majority of its people wished, and this has remained the cornerstone of policy under governments of both parties.

The political realities of Northern Ireland prevented a return to majority rule. This was something that many Unionists refused to accept, but since 1974 they had been joined in the House of Commons by Enoch Powell, who helped to convert some of them to an altogether different approach. His aim was that of ‘integration’. Essentially, this would have meant eliminating any difference between the government of Northern Ireland and that of the rest of the UK, ruling out a return to devolution (whether majority rule or power sharing) and any special role for the Republic. Enoch’s view was that the terrorists thrived on uncertainty about Ulster’s constitutional position: that uncertainty would, he argued, be ended by full integration combined with a tough security policy. I disagreed with this for two reasons. First, as I have said, I did not believe that security could be disentangled from other wider political isssues. Second, I never saw devolved government and an assembly for Northern Ireland as weakening, but rather strengthening the Union. Like Stormont before it, it would provide a clear alternative focus to Dublin… without undermining the sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament.

FIRST ATTEMPTS AT DEVOLUTION

Such were my views about Northern Ireland’s future on entering office. My conviction that further efforts must be made on both the political and security fronts had been strengthened by the events of the second half of 1979.[52] In the course of that October we discussed in government the need for an initiative designed to achieve devolution in Northern Ireland. I was not very optimistic about the prospects but I agreed to the issue of a discussion document setting out the options. A conference would be called of the main political parties in Northern Ireland to see what agreement could be reached.

On Monday 7 January 1980 the conference opened in Belfast. Since the traumas of the late 1960s and early 1970s the forces of Unionism in Northern Ireland have been divided, adding factional rivalry to all the other problems faced by Ulster. On this occasion the largest Unionist group, the Official Unionist Party (OUP), refused to attend. Dr Paisley’s more militant Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the mainly Catholic nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and the moderate middle-class Alliance Party did attend but, not altogether surprisingly, there was no real common ground.

We adjourned the conference later in March and began to consider putting forward more specific proposals ourselves in the form of a white paper. Ministers discussed a draft paper from Northern Ireland Secretary Humphrey Atkins in June. I had various changes made in the text in order to take account of Unionist sensitivities. I was no more optimistic than earlier that the initiative would succeed, but I felt that it was worth the effort and agreed that the white paper should be published in early July. It described areas…not including security…in which powers might be transferred to an executive chosen by an assembly in the province. It also spelt out two ways of choosing that executive, one inclining towards majority rule and the other towards power sharing. Discussions with the Northern Irish parties went on during the summer and autumn. But by November it was clear that there would not be sufficient agreement among them to go ahead with the assembly.

In any case, by now Republican prisoners inside the Maze Prison had begun the first of their two hunger strikes. I decided that no major political initiative should be made while the hunger strike was continuing: we must not appear to be bowing to terrorist demands. I was also cautious about any high-profile contacts with the Irish Government at such a time for the same reason.

Charles Haughey had been elected leader of his Fianna Fail Party and Taoiseach in mid-December 1979. Mr Haughey had throughout his career been associated with the most Republican strand in respectable Irish politics. How ‘respectable’ was a subject of some controversy: in a famous case in 1970 he had been acquitted of involvement while an Irish minister in the importing of arms for the IRA. That very fact, however, might inhibit his Republicanism. I found him easy to get on with, less talkative and more realistic than Garret FitzGerald, the leader of Fine Gael. Charles Haughey was tough, able and politically astute with few illusions and, I am sure, not much affection for the British. He had come to see me in May at No. 10 and we had had a general and friendly discussion of the scene in Northern Ireland. He kept on drawing the parallel, which seemed to me an unconvincing one, between the solution I had found to the Rhodesian problem and the approach to be pursued in Northern Ireland. Whether this was Irish blarney or calculated flattery I was not sure. He left me a gift of a beautiful Georgian silver teapot, which was kind of him. (It was worth more than the limit allowed for official gifts and I had to leave it behind at No. 10 when I left office.) By the time that I had my next talk with Mr Haughey when we were attending the European Council in Luxemburg on Monday 1 December 1980 it was the hunger strike which was the Irish main concern.

THE HUNGER STRIKES

To understand the background to the hunger strikes it is necessary to refer back to the ‘special category’ status for convicted terrorist prisoners in Northern Ireland which had been introduced, as a concession to the IRA, in 1972.[53] This was, and quickly appeared, a bad mistake. It was ended in 1976. Prisoners convicted of such offences after that date were treated as ordinary prisoners… with no greater privileges as regards clothing and association than anyone else. But the policy was not retrospective. So some ‘special category’ prisoners continued, being held apart and under a different regime from other terrorists. Within the so-called ‘H blocks’ of the Maze Prison where the terrorist prisoners were housed, protests had been more or less constant, including the revolting ‘dirty protest’, consisting of fouling cells and smashing up furniture. On 10 October a number of prisoners announced their intention of beginning a hunger strike on Monday 27 October unless certain demands were met. Of these, the most significant were that they should be able to wear their own clothes, associate freely with other ‘political’ prisoners and refrain from prison work.

There were several discussions among ministers in the interim to see what concessions might be made to avert the strike. All my instincts were against bending to such pressure, and certainly there could be no changes in the prison regime once the strike had begun. There was never any question of conceding political status. But the RUC Chief Constable believed that some concessions before the strike would be helpful in dealing with the threatened public disorder which such a strike might lead to and though we did not believe that they could prevent the hunger strike, we were anxious to win the battle for public opinion. Accordingly, we agreed that all prisoners… not just those who had committed terrorist crimes… might be permitted to wear ‘civilian type’ clothing… but not their own clothes… as long as they obeyed the prison rules. As I had foreseen, these concessions did not in fact prevent the hunger strike.

To the outside world the issue at stake must have seemed trivial. But both the IRA and the Government understood that it was not. The IRA and the prisoners were determined to gain control of the prison and had a well-thought-out strategy of doing this by whittling away at the prison regime. The purpose of the privileges they claimed was not to improve prisoners’ conditions but to take power away from the prison authorities. They were also keen to establish once again, as they felt they had in 1972, that their crimes were ‘political’, thus giving the perpetrators a kind of respectability, even nobility. This we could not allow. Above all, I would hold fast to the principle that we would not make concessions of any kind while the hunger strike was continuing. The IRA were pursuing with calculated ruthlessness a psychological war alongside their campaign of violence: they had to be resisted at both levels.

As the hunger strike continued and the prospect approached of one or more of the prisoners dying we came under a good deal of pressure. When I met Mr Haughey in the margins of the Luxemburg European Council on Monday 1 December 1980 he urged me to find some face-saving device which would allow the strikers to end their fast, though he said that he fully accepted that political status was out of the question. I replied that the Government could not go on making offers. There was nothing left to give. Nor was I convinced, then or later, that the hunger strikers were able to abandon the strike, even if they had wanted to, against the wishes of the IRA leadership. I had no objection to restating what we had already said, but there would be no more concessions under duress.

We met again exactly a week later for our second Anglo-Irish summit in Dublin. This meeting did more harm than good because, unusually, I did not involve myself closely enough in the drafting of the communiqué and, as a result, allowed through the statement that Mr Haughey and I would devote our next meeting in London ‘to special consideration of the totality of relationships within these islands’. Mr Haughey then gave a press briefing which led journalists to write of a breakthrough on the constitutional question. There had of course been no such thing. But the damage had been done and it was a red rag to the Unionist bull.

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 issues 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.[54]

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 business 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.

In January and February 1984 I held meetings to run through the options. The Irish were keen to pursue possibilities of joint policing and even mixed courts (with British and Irish judges sitting on the same bench), about both of which I had the gravest reservations…reservations which grew stronger still as time went on. The idea, favoured by Dr FitzGerald, of the Garda policing nationalist areas like West Belfast seemed quite impractical: not only would the Unionists have been outraged, the Garda officers would probably have been shot on sight by the IRA. As for joint Anglo-Irish courts, this would have cast doubt on the whole administration of justice which had taken place in the province. Majority decisions in terrorist cases by a mixed court would have been disastrous. The same arguments, with slightly less though sufficient force, applied to the proposal for three-judge courts in Ulster, which was another option favoured by the Irish.

We decided to put forward our own proposals at the beginning of March. Robert Armstrong travelled to Dublin and presented our ideas orally…no papers were exchanged until much later in the talks. Our main idea was to establish a Joint Security Commission, to work up proposals that might include a measure of joint policing along a zone on both sides of the border…the element of reciprocity was crucial to us. We were prepared also to consider other measures with respect to the criminal law and local government in Northern Ireland.

The Irish responded immediately by ruling out the idea of a security zone, though encouraging further talks. They made a counter-approach in May, still based on the idea of ‘joint sovereignty’, though they sought to get around our fundamental objections by using the term ‘joint authority’. I was not at any point prepared to concede this, but at the end of May I authorized Robert Armstrong to develop the idea of a consultative role for the Republic in Northern Ireland. I also requested a study of a quite different approach to the problem: redrawing the existing border with the Republic, which followed the old Irish county lines. My instinct was that there might be political and security gains from getting rid of the anomalies, in the event that our talks with the Irish came to nothing.

There was an important development over the summer: the Irish for the first time explicitly put forward the idea of amending Articles 2 and 3 of their Constitution to make Irish unity an aspiration rather than a legal claim. This was attractive to me, in that I thought it should reassure the Unionists. But it was clear that the Irish would expect a good deal in return, and I still doubted their capacity to deliver the referendum vote. So the net effect of their proposal was actually to make me more pessimistic and suspicious. Also they were trying to go too far too fast. The Irish still hankered after joint authority (indeed this lay behind the subsequent contrary interpretations we and they placed on the provisions of the Anglo-Irish Agreement). I made these points forcefully to Dr FitzGerald when he came to see me at No. 10 on Monday 3 September.

Jim Prior resigned as Northern Ireland Secretary in September 1984 to become chairman of GEC. I brought Douglas Hurd, a former Foreign Office mandarin and a talented political novelist, who had been Ted Heath’s political secretary at No. 10 but who had shown a willingness to work in the new ideological climate, into the Cabinet as his replacement. Shortly afterwards I widened the circle of those involved on our side of the talks to include senior officials in the Northern Ireland Office (NIO). We held a meeting of ministers and officials in early October which brought out the likely extent of Unionist objections, and in particular the fact that amendment of Articles 2 and 3 might cut little ice with them; indeed, I was told that ‘an aspiration to unity’ was scarcely less offensive to the Unionists than an outright claim.

It was at this point that the IRA bombed the Grand Hotel in Brighton. I was not going to appear to be bombed to the negotiating table; the incident confirmed my feeling that we should go slowly, and I feared too that it might be the first of a series which might poison the atmosphere so much that an agreement would prove impossible.

In what remained of October and in early November we toughened our negotiating position. On a visit to Dublin Douglas Hurd and Robert Andrew (the Permanent Secretary of the NIO) made it clear to the Irish that we did not believe that an ambitious package involving amendment of Articles 2 and 3 was possible. It seemed to me that a breakdown might not be far off.

On Wednesday 14 November 1984 I held a meeting of ministers and officials to review the position. I was to meet Garret FitzGerald at our regular Anglo-Irish summit the following week and I was alarmed by the lack of realism which still seemed evident in the Irish proposals. I decided that while I would go to the summit willing to make progress on co-operation I would disabuse him in no uncertain terms of the possibility of joint authority.

When Dr FitzGerald and I met at Chequers on Sunday 18 and Monday 19 November I tried to do just this. I was prepared to offer a Joint Security Commission (though operational security matters in Northern Ireland would remain in our hands) but Dr FitzGerald was still talking of the minority needing to be ‘policed by people from their own community’. He was still arguing for power sharing in the Northern Ireland Assembly as a precondition for the SDLP taking part in it, which was almost equally unrealistic given Unionist attitudes. As foreseen, we disagreed sharply over the Irish desire for joint authority. But I agreed that talks at an official level should continue.

At my press conference afterwards I was asked about the conclusions of the New Ireland Forum which had issued a report earlier in the year setting out three ‘options’ for the future government of Ireland: unification, confederation and joint authority. I listed them and said that each of them was ‘out’. There seemed no point in pretending that these were acceptable approaches when they were not. Almost immediately a wave of Irish indignation broke against the defences of Downing Street. Dr FitzGerald attacked me in a ‘private’ address to his own Parliamentary Party, and was reported to have described my remarks as ‘gratuitously offensive’. The Irish Minister of Justice warned our Ambassador that the current crisis in relations was such that the Irish public’s tolerance of the IRA would grow and that the Irish Government’s ability to deal with terrorism had been weakened.

I was therefore somewhat surprised to hear that the Taoiseach wanted a private meeting with me when I was at Dublin Castle for the European Council in early December. I agreed and we had a short discussion in which he pleaded that extra sensitivity was needed in what was said after eight hundred years of misunderstandings. I felt at the end that I had gained an insight into every one of those eight hundred years.

Nevertheless, discussions with the Irish continued through the first half of 1985. In January they agreed to begin detailed consideration of an agreement on the basis of a British draft, based on the idea of consultation rather than joint authority. But more and more leaks appeared about proposals on joint courts and joint policing from the Irish side. This worsened Unionist distrust still further.

In our discussions with the Irish of a joint Anglo-Irish body as a framework for consultation there was a succession of misunderstandings and disagreements. Although the idea of amending Articles 2 and 3 was clearly now off the agenda, we pressed the Irish for some kind of firm declaration committing them to the principle that unification could only come about with the consent of the majority in Northern Ireland. We hoped that such a declaration would reassure the Unionists, to the extent that such a thing was possible. The Irish wanted the proposed joint body to have a much bigger say over economic and social matters in the North than we were prepared to concede. Nor did the gains we could hope for on security become any clearer. I found myself constantly toning down the commitments which were put before me in our own draft proposals, let alone being prepared to accept those emanating from Dublin. If the arrangements worked badly we must leave ourselves a retreat. In early June I insisted that there should be a review mechanism built into the Anglo-Irish Agreement. I also continued to resist Irish pressure for joint courts and SDLP demands for radical changes in the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) and the RUC.

When I met Dr FitzGerald at the Milan European Council on the morning of Saturday 29 June 1985 he said that he was prepared to have the Irish Government state publicly that there could be no change in the status of Northern Ireland without the consent of the majority of the people and acknowledge the fact that this consent did not exist. He was prepared to have a special Irish task force sent to the south side of the border to strengthen security. He was also prepared to have Ireland ratify the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism (ECST). But he was still pressing for joint courts, changes in the RUC and the UDR…to be announced as ‘confidence-building measures’, rather than as part of the agreement itself… and now added the proposal for a major review of sentences for terrorist prisoners if the violence was brought to an end. It remained to be seen whether he could deliver on his promises. But in any case the demands were still unrealistic, as I told him. I could go no further than considering the possibility of joint courts: I was certainly not going to give an assurance in advance that they would be established. I considered a review of sentences quite out of the question and he did not press the point. I warned him that announcing measures on policing at the same time as the Anglo-Irish Agreement would cause a sharp Unionist reaction and jeopardize the whole position.

At this point Dr FitzGerald became very agitated. He declared that unless the minority in Northern Ireland could be turned against the IRA, Sinn Fein would gain the upper hand in the North and provoke a civil war which would drag the Republic down as well, with Colonel Gaddafi providing millions to help this happen. A sensible point was being exaggerated to the level of absurdity. I said that of course I shared his aim of preventing Ireland falling under hostile and tyrannical forces. But that was not an argument for taking measures which would simply provoke the Unionists and cause unnecessary trouble.

By the time our meeting ended, however, I felt that we were some way towards an agreement, though there were still points to resolve. I also knew that a lot of progress had been made in the official talks, so I had good reason to believe that a successful conclusion was possible. Dr FitzGerald and I even discussed the timing and place of the signing ceremony.

THE ANGLO-IRISH AGREEMENT—AND REACTIONS: 1985–1987

At two o’clock on the afternoon of Friday 15 November Garret FitzGerald and I signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland. It was not perfect from either side’s point of view. Article 1 of the agreement affirmed that any change in the status of Northern Ireland would only come about with the consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland and recognized that the present wish of that majority was for no change in the status of the province. I believed that this major concession by the Irish would reassure the Unionists that the Union itself was not in doubt. I thought that given my own well-known attitude towards Irish terrorism they would have confidence in my intentions. I was wrong about that. But the Unionists miscalculated too. The tactics which they used to oppose the agreement…a general strike, intimidation, flirting with civil disobedience…worsened the security situation and weakened their standing in the eyes of the rest of the United Kingdom.

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 received 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 security 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.

Mr Haughey defended the Irish Government’s and security forces’ record. But I was not convinced. I said that I wondered whether Mr Haughey realized that the biggest concentration of terrorists anywhere in the world save Lebanon was to be found in Ireland. The border was virtually open so far as terrorists were concerned. I accepted that the Republic’s resources were limited, but I was not satisfied that they were using them to best effect. I said that the results of the Anglo-Irish Agreement so far had been disappointing. Nor was I any less disappointed by the attitude of the SDLP. As for the suggestion that all would be peace and light if there were a united Ireland, as Mr Haughey’s recent message had suggested, the reality was that there would be the worst civil war ever. In any case, most nationalists in the North would prefer to continue to live there because they were much better provided for than in the Republic. Indeed, there continued to be a substantial flow of Irish immigrants to the UK, who were a significant burden on the welfare system.

Surprisingly, perhaps, though we were both pretty outspoken, neither of us, I believe, left our meeting with any ill will or rancour. Mr Haughey knew where I stood. He had, as it turned out, taken seriously at least some of what I had said about the shortcomings of Irish security co-operation. I, for my part, felt that I understood him better than I had before…and better perhaps than I ever did Garret FitzGerald.

There was a surge in IRA violence from early August. It began with an IRA bomb at an Army Communications Centre in Mill Hill in North London. One soldier was killed. This was the first mainland bomb since 1984. I was at Alice Springs on a visit to Australia when I learnt the news. Irish Republican sympathizers…on the streets and in the media…did their best to disrupt my tour. There were some particularly awkward moments in Melbourne where crowds of both opponents and well-wishers were funnelled into an overcrowded shopping precinct by Australian police, inexperienced in dealing with such situations. But I took every opportunity to express my contempt for the IRA. In a television interview I said that ‘they should be wiped off the civilized world.’

The bombing campaign continued. I was on holiday in Cornwall when I was woken very early on Saturday 20 August to be told of an attack at Ballygawley in County Tyrone on a bus carrying British soldiers travelling from Belfast back from a fortnight’s leave. Seven were dead and twenty-eight injured. I immediately decided to return to London and helicoptered into the Wellington Barracks at 9.20 a.m. Archie Hamilton (my former PPS, who was now Armed Forces minister) came straight in to No. 10 to brief me. He told me that the bus had not been on its designated route at the time of the explosion but on a parallel road some three miles away. A very large bomb, wire-controlled, had been laid in wait for the bus and then detonated. I questioned whether this could be a safe way of moving our troops around the province. But I accepted that perhaps there was no such thing as a ‘safe way’.

Ken Maginnis MP, whose constituency was yet again the scene of this tragedy, came in to see me over lunch, accompanied by a local farmer who had been first on the scene and a surgeon at the local hospital who had operated on some of the wounded. Then that evening I held a long meeting with Tom King, Archie and the security forces chiefs for the province.

Although the bus had been travelling on a forbidden route this did not seem to be material to what had happened. The IRA had from 1986 acquired access to Semtex explosive material, produced in Czechoslovakia and probably supplied through Libya. This substance was extremely powerful, light and relatively safe to use and as a result had given the terrorists a new technical advantage. The device could, therefore, have been planted very quickly and so the attack could have occurred on either route. It was also clear that the IRA had been planning their campaign for some time. The RUC reported that the terrorists were well prepared and had been successful in bringing large quantities of arms and explosives from the South. We then went on to discuss the co-ordination of intelligence, security co-operation with the Republic, the need to control the availability of fertilizers (which could be used as a basis for making bombs), the position on sentencing and remission and other matters. I called for more papers on all these subjects and for a vigorous follow-through on all the issues of security which I had raised after the murder of our soldiers in West Belfast earlier in the year.

Later that month I held several meetings to go through in detail what further action we should take. On the evening of Tuesday 6 September I chaired a meeting of the ministers and officials concerned. I noted that the expected IRA offensive had materialized. We had a number of possible proposals for action. But we would not be announcing a package of measures. Some would become public knowledge as they were implemented or introduced in Parliament. But in other areas I wanted to keep the terrorists guessing. Consequently it would not be possible to brief the Irish Government on our intentions, although we would inform them of individual measures shortly before their introduction.

Then we went through the possibilities one by one. Some measures…like the proscription of Sinn Fein or the removal of British citizenship from undesirables with British/Irish dual citizenship,[59] or the introduction of minimum sentences for terrorist offences…looked less promising the more they were discussed. But others…cutting back on the 50 per cent remission for all prisoners in Northern Ireland, ensuring that those convicted of certain terrorist offences would serve consecutively with a new sentence the unexpired portion of an earlier remitted sentence, measures to deal with terrorist finance, improvement of intelligence co-ordination…all these required further work.

I continued to go through the possibilities with ministers at a second meeting on the afternoon of Thursday 29 September. At this meeting I particularly concentrated on the army’s role. It was important to reduce the number of unnecessary commitments of army manpower in Northern Ireland in order to allow them to concentrate their efforts where they were most required.

One measure which we announced publicly in October was the prohibition of broadcast statements by Sinn Fein and other Northern Irish supporters of terrorism. This immediately provoked cries of censorship: but I have no doubt that not only was it justified but that it has worked, and there is some reason to believe that the terrorists think so too. Measures to cut Northern Ireland remission and to change the ‘right to silence’ in Northern Irish courts were also introduced, as was action against terrorist finance.

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.[60] 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.