Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography (82 page)

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 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.

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.

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 contribution which the Anglo-Irish Agreement was making to all this was very limited. But 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.

The Patrick Ryan case demonstrated just how little we could seriously hope for from the Irish. Ryan, a non-practising 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 and the Belgian court which considered the extradition request gave an advisory opinion, which we knew to have been favourable, 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. 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.
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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. 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 the 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.

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.

The mid-term political difficulties of 1985–1986

W
HATEVER LONG-TERM POLITICAL GAINS
might accrue from the successful outcome of the miners’ strike, from the spring of 1985 onwards we faced accumulating political difficulties. Matters of no great importance in themselves were invested within the hyperactive and incestuous world of Westminster with huge significance.

Generally, a political malaise spreads because underlying economic conditions are bad or worsening. But this was not the case on this occasion. It became clear to me that the root of our problems was presentation and therefore personnel. A reshuffle was required.

My first discussion about the 1985 reshuffle was with Willie Whitelaw and John Wakeham, now Chief Whip, over supper in the flat at No. 10 in late May.

Planning a reshuffle is immensely complex. There is never a perfect outcome. It is necessary to get the main decisions about the big offices of state right and then work outward and downward from these.

Nigel Lawson was turning out to be an effective tax-reforming Chancellor. Geoffrey Howe seemed a competent Foreign Secretary; I had not yet taken the full measure of our disagreements. Leon Brittan was the obvious candidate to be moved: however unfairly, he just did not carry conviction with the public.

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

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

I had to move Leon; but was I right to move him to the DTI? He was obviously shaken – friends later described him as somewhat demoralized – and determined to make his political mark. As a result he proved oversensitive about his position when the Westland affair blew up.

I had brought David Young into the Cabinet as minister without portfolio the previous year and I now had him succeed Tom King, who went to be Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. I had started off with a wrong view of Tom King, inherited from Opposition. I had thought that he was a man with a taste for detail who, when I made Michael Heseltine Secretary of State for the Environment in 1979, would complement Michael’s very broad-brush approach. I then made the uncomfortable discovery that detail was not at all Tom’s forte. At Employment he had not shown himself to best effect. At Northern Ireland, Tom subsequently demonstrated the other side of his character, which was a robust, manly good sense that won even hardened opponents to his point of view, at least as far as is possible in Northern Ireland.

David Young did not claim to understand politics: but he understood how to make things happen. He had revolutionized the working of the Manpower Services Commission (MSC) and at the Department of Employment his schemes for getting the unemployed back into work made a major contribution to our winning the 1987 general election. He shared Keith Joseph’s and my view about how the economy worked and how jobs were created – not by government but by enterprise. And he had that sureness of touch in devising practical projects which make sense in the marketplace that few but successful businessmen ever acquire. The ‘Action for Jobs’ programme was the single most effective economic programme we launched in my term in office. As a general rule I did not
bring outsiders directly into Cabinet. David Young was an exception and proved eminently worthy of being so.

If the Government’s presentation was to be improved something had to be done about Conservative Central Office. John Gummer just did not have the political clout or credibility to rally the troops. It was time for a figure of weight and authority to succeed him and provide the required leadership. In many ways, the ideal man seemed to be Norman Tebbit. Norman is one of the bravest men I have ever met. He will never deviate on a point of principle – and those principles are ones which even the least articulate Tory knows he shares.

So I appointed him Chairman of the Party; he remained a member of the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. At least for the moment, Party morale soared.

Norman needed a Deputy Chairman who would be able to make those visits to the Party around the country which Norman’s health precluded him from doing. Only someone with a high profile already could do this successfully and I decided that Jeffrey Archer was the right choice. He was the extrovert’s extrovert. He had prodigious energy; he was and remains the most popular speaker the Party has ever had. Unfortunately, as it turned out, Jeffrey’s political judgement did not always match his enormous energy and fund-raising ability.