Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography (81 page)

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.

At 2 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 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. 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 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 cooperative 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.

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 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 non-political 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. 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. 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 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 statesmanlike 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 and he was backtracking on his commitment to get the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism though the Dáil. 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. 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. 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. But 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. 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.

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.

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.

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 and 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,
*
the Court of Appeal’s rejection of the appeal of the so-called ‘Birmingham Six’
†
(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.

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 from 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. 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.