The Downing Street Years

by Margaret Thatcher

  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 gene
ral 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.