Thatcher and the IRA: Dealing with Terror

-MARGARET THATCHER:

-Dr FitzGerald and I have today signed

a serious and solemn agreement

which signifies the way ahead

in relations between our two countries.

Well, I think the two things Margaret Thatcher possibly regretted,

looking back over her time, were the Anglo-Irish Agreement

and the need to surrender sovereignty over Hong Kong back to China.

The Irish Republic will be able to put forward views and proposals

in the conference on stated aspects of Northern Ireland affairs.

And if Mary, Queen of Scots went to her grave with Calais engraved on her heart,

maybe Margaret Thatcher went to hers

with the Anglo-Irish Agreement and Hong Kong on her heart.

Against all her political instincts,

on the morning of November 15th 1985,

Margaret Thatcher flew into Hillsborough Castle

to sign an agreement she had been told

would help to bring an end to the conflict in Northern Ireland.

Her closest friend at Westminster had just resigned in protest

and furious Unionists were already gathering at the gates.

It had gone so far by then there was no going back on it.

For two years, Robert Armstrong was Margaret Thatcher's lead negotiator

and the chief architect of the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

Despite several setbacks, including an IRA attempt to kill her,

he'd kept the process on track and ensured Unionists were excluded.

It was a deliberate, massive betrayal of the Unionists

by Margaret Thatcher.

We were dreadfully angry,

to the point that we almost lost faith in the democratic process.

Why did Margaret Thatcher deliberately keep Unionists in the dark on the Anglo-Irish Agreement?

Why did she betray them and behind their backs

talk to the very terrorists she had sworn to defeat?

It was very much sort of back-channel discussion,

but nothing disreputable about that.

During 11 years in power,

Margaret Thatcher polarised and inspired in equal measure,

not only in Britain but around the world.

She helped end the Cold War and won victory in the Falklands,

but she will forever be associated

with the violence of the miners' strike and the poll tax riots.

DAVID CAMERON: Margaret Thatcher didn't just lead our country,

she saved our country.

In Northern Ireland, it's her role in the conflict that defines her legacy.

Despite landslide election victories

and an historic agreement with Dublin,

she failed to bring an end to the violence.

She was, I think, far more interested in her world position,

dealing with Ronald Reagan

and the bigger issues of the day, as opposed to dealing

with Northern Ireland, which I suspect she considered to be a security problem

and if it was contained, then she wasn't going to lose sleep

over the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland

fighting with one another.

-THATCHER:

-We shall give the strongest possible support to the security forces in combating terrorism

and there will be no amnesty for convicted terrorists.

The long road to Hillsborough

began during Margaret Thatcher's rise to power a decade earlier,

when she defeated Ted Heath

for the leadership of the Conservative Party.

The MP who helped organise her campaign

was also her spokesman in Northern Ireland

and the prism through which she viewed the Troubles.

Heath had to go

and we had to have a new leader, and it was then Airey Neave

who came to me and said,

"Look, the one that could do it is Margaret."

So I joined Airey Neave's team to win the election

for her to become leader of the party.

In this car or that car?

She came over here, conducted by Airey Neave,

and I wasn't hugely impressed by her, oddly enough, at that time.

I thought she was rather mousy looking.

We do want to see the Government show determination to defeat terrorism.

We don't want any more dealings with terrorists

and we do want the security forces to have adequate powers,

especially legal powers, to get on top of the leaders of the terrorists.

Airey took the view that there had to be a military solution

to the problem before there could be a political solution.

In his own words to me,

"An army that's winning needs no recruiting sergeant."

Margaret Thatcher and Airey Neave came from a generation

of politicians shaped by the events of World War II and its aftermath.

Airey Neave had escaped from Colditz,

while as a teenager Margaret Thatcher had seen her home town

in the north-east of England bombed by the Germans.

The war and the events that led up to it would later shape

her political outlook and thinking on Northern Ireland.

One of the analogies that she quite frequently mentioned

was the Sudetenland.

When Czechoslovakia was carved out in the Treaty of Versailles,

a very large and industrially prosperous chunk of it

was the Sudetenland.

And she brought Garret up short on one occasion when he was trying to...

He was saying, well, the nationalist community are a permanent minority.

They have no access to power because of the first-past-the-post system

and so on and so forth,

and she said, "I see. It's like the Sudetenland,"

which certainly halted Garret and stopped him in his tracks.

She mentioned the Sudeten Germans,

where you've a group of people from a certain tribe,

who find themselves as a minority in a country

where another larger tribe is dominant,

and her attitude to that was,

"Well, tough luck. What do you expect me to do?"

Margaret Thatcher tended to think of the Republic's claim on Northern Ireland

rather as Hitler's claim on the Sudetenland

because it was the same situation, mutatis mutandis.

I think that's actually quite revealing.

I think that analogy was in her mind.

The conflict in Northern Ireland reached Margaret Thatcher personally

just weeks before she became Prime Minister,

when Airey Neave was murdered in a republican bomb attack at the House of Commons.

Not only had she lost a close friend and confidant,

but her chief adviser on Northern Ireland.

-..been killed in a bomb outside Parliament.

-Who?

-We don't know yet.

Terrible news, Mrs Thatcher.

She'd lost her right-hand man, as it were, before she started, to terrorism.

I don't think she had any doubts about how to carry on

and that was, "We will not allow terrorism to subvert democracy."

His murder helped to give Margaret

this almost antipathy to the Republic and to the Irish.

-THATCHER:

-Some devils got him

and they must never, never, never be allowed to triumph.

They must never prevail.

Airey Neave had viewed Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom

and believed that the conflict had to be won militarily.

After his death,

Airey Neave's opinions became Margaret Thatcher's policies.

I've come to see the troops here and I've come to see the people

and hear what they have to say to me.

I don't think she really had any affection for the place at all

or any particular interest in it.

It was, you know, an irritating security problem to be dealt with in that way.

She was happier talking to soldiers.

Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979.

Despite having been in Parliament for 20 years,

she'd failed to create a single relationship with the leaders of Unionism.

She was a Unionist in principle,

but she found discussing Irish matters with the Unionists

uphill work.

They didn't have the same mindset and we all knew that.

How did she view leaders like Ian Paisley and Jim Molyneaux at that time?

Well, I suppose they were sent to try us, weren't they?

She had great affection for some,

Ken Maginnis in particular, whom she had a great respect

and admiration for in his difficult position in Fermanagh.

She sat down at the communal table

on one evening and said, "Oh, yes, I've heard of you.

"You served with the UDR."

And from that, we were really quite good friends.

We got on very well.

And she would call me...

the only person besides my mother who would do so,

would call me Kenneth.

"Kenneth, could I see you about this?"

Unionists knew that Margaret Thatcher could patronise them,

but the IRA forced the conflict onto her agenda,

just weeks after she became Prime Minister,

killing Lord Mountbatten and 18 soldiers

in separate attacks in August 1979.

The death of Lord Mountbatten made her see the Northern Ireland problem

basically in security terms.

This was a problem of trying to bring security to the province

to try to deal with terrorism.

It was a problem for the military to be involved in dealing with

as well as the police. It conditioned her whole outlook.

The Mountbatten murder caused Margaret Thatcher

to review her military strategy in Northern Ireland.

It would be the first of many such reviews during her time in power.

Irish Premier Jack Lynch travelled to London

for Lord Mountbatten's funeral

and later to meet Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street

where she demanded greater security cooperation

from him and his government.

Downing Street minutes of the meeting highlight her priorities.

Maggie entered the room. I recall her fairly vividly there,

dressed in black, mourning black, from head to toe.

We had already received intimations from the British

that they were going to have a shopping list of

what they wished for new security cooperation measures,

most notably, I suppose, in respect of later events that came out,

the question of helicopter overflight a certain distance into the Republic.

Of course, we already had going on for a number of years

the arguments about extradition.

So, it was quite a contentious meeting, I think it's fair to say.

Somebody made the suggestion that, "You know, Prime Minister,

"there may be a certain amount of sympathy

"with what IRA are at with their aims,

"not necessarily with their methods, with their aims."

She became furious.

She jumped up from her chair.

She thumped the table and was almost about to leap over the table.

"Are you condoning murder?"

And you know, "If this is the way you're going to...

"If this is your attitude, we finish."

And...Jack Lynch kind of put his hand out

and said, "Look, Prime Minister, we both have the same objective.

"Don't continue with this sort of attitude."

She quietened down.

Jack Lynch was utterly and totally useless, as wet as a whistle,

would never do anything.

I mean, the man was a prisoner.

Well, he seemed to be.

She concluded there was nothing doing at a very early meeting with him. There never was.

Thatcher's instinctive reaction to the violence had been to demand

that Dublin introduce new security measures.

But it had failed

and only contributed to the political pressure on Jack Lynch

who resigned weeks later.

Now Thatcher had a new partner in Dublin, Charles J Haughey.

I would have to say there was a sort of glint in his eye

which she found actually quite attractive.

He set out to charm her and I suppose at the beginning,

she was slightly susceptible to the charm

and relations developed reasonably well.

She said to me that we had all been making a great mistake

about Charles Haughey,

that he was a romantic idealist...

and that wasn't entirely consistent

with the view which I had learnt to have of Charlie Haughey.

Charles Haughey flirted with Thatcher, but had no interest

in giving in to her demands for greater security cooperation.

He wanted an international conference convened

to bring all parties to the negotiating table.

But by the time they met in Dublin in December 1980,

the political romance was all but over.

IRA inmates at the Long Kesh Prison had begun a hunger strike

in protest at conditions.

And as the summit got under way, two hunger strikers were close to death.

Some of the older prisoners wanted to bring the issue to a head,

wanted to bring it to the point

where there could be talking

and where there could be a resolution

and that almost happened, but didn't.

-When do we want it?

-Now!

-What do we want?

-Political status.

I genuinely believe that the reason

Thatcher came with...

a very high-ranking delegation...

it was Carrington, Howe, so on,

to Dublin Castle in 1980

and during that summit the hunger strike was still on,

it was to try and defuse that situation.

So, I think that...

the first hunger strike contributed to

pushing her into the direction

of agreeing what was called at the time an Anglo-Irish framework.

We were all concerned about the hunger strikers

and about the possible consequences, not just...

I mean, in Northern Ireland itself and in Ireland,

but in the United States and internationally.

Still very deeply concerned and anxious about the H-Block situation

and I have made that clear to the British Prime Minister

and to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland

that if there's any possible way in which the Irish Government

can assist in bringing forward a solution, we stand ready to do so.

The first hunger strike broke down in confusion.

For a time, it was thought that Margaret Thatcher's Government

had given in to the prisoners' demands, but she hadn't.

I think the tragedy was...

it could all have been settled, I think,

after the first hunger strike.

-THATCHER:

-We will not compromise on this.

There will be no political status.

You know, these are just awful situations, you know,

in which there's sort of no right answer.

In March 1981, a second hunger strike began,

which led to the death of Bobby Sands

and nine other republican prisoners.

During the seven-month-long dispute, almost 70 people were murdered.

Men of violence have chosen, in recent months,

to play what may well be their last card.

They've turned their violence against themselves,

through the prison hunger strike to death.

It was the IRA high command which killed those men.

Not Margaret Thatcher.

They weren't starved to death by her.

They were starved to death by their high command.

I think that we got ourselves into...

the Government got itself into a position

where once the hunger strike had started,

it was very difficult for them to find a way out,

and so they just had to let it take its course.

I wouldn't like to comment on whether or not

there were ways in which the hunger strike could have been avoided,

but the way the policy was being pursued at that time,

the hunger strike was inevitable

and the difficulties of getting rid of the hunger strike

followed naturally from that.

Once she was set upon a course, she was not easily shaken off it.

In public, Margaret Thatcher was dogmatic,

yet secretly, she negotiated.

Her own handwriting can be seen

on a message that was sent directly to the prisoners.

Was she aware that it could be resolved? Yes, I would say yes.

Clearly she would have known - and if she didn't, she should have -

that the hunger strike could have been...

could have been ended without anyone dying,

and she decided that wasn't going to be the case.

The hunger strike was the first time

she'd negotiated with the republican leadership.

Later, she would use secret back channels

to communicate again with republicans -

communications that would ultimately lead to the IRA cease-fire.

She was vilified in republican folklore,

of her being this unfeeling person who let people die.

And... it's quite clear that she was...

there was more going on in the background,

that Mrs Thatcher, too, was prepared to deal.

There were offers and compromises being floated round.

Sands, Bobby. Anti H-Block/ Armagh Political Prisoner.

30,000...

-MAN:

-Yeah!

..492.

West, Henry W. Ulster Unionist.

29,046.

And I declare that Bobby Sands has been duly elected

to serve as a member for the said constituency.

After the ending of the hunger strike,

Margaret Thatcher conceded

to the republican prisoners' demands for better conditions.

But, much to the concern of both the British and Irish governments,

outside the prison, the IRA was now rejuvenated

and republicans were building a political base.

I think her impact in Ireland in that respect

was second only to that of General Sir John Maxwell in 1916,

in that it led to a huge surge of support...

for the republican movement.

But now, as it happens, that did translate into...

the growth of their political wing.

But, I mean, this is what one might call unintended consequences.

Thatcher was still sticking to Airey Neave's policy

and attempting to defeat the IRA militarily,

but it wasn't working.

She used Northern Ireland

as somewhere to banish her Cabinet enemies to.

As Secretary of State, Jim Prior was sidelined in Northern Ireland

and knew that Margaret Thatcher

was relying on trusted friends for advice.

The problem for Margaret was that she had two people

who had powerful intellects and were absolutely out-and-out unionist.

One was Ian Gow, who was a very, very decent man.

Very good man, Ian Gow, and very popular in the party.

But he was an out-and-out old-fashioned unionist.

And the other man was Enoch Powell.

They must recognise that this province is part and parcel

by as good a right as any other of the United Kingdom.

Enoch Powell, obviously,

had very similar views to Margaret on quite a lot of issues,

on the economy and so on,

and because Northern Ireland was the only place

where he could get a constituency,

he became more unionist than any other unionist I ever met,

I think, and they influenced...

they had a great influence on Margaret.

In the early '80s,

her government was staggering from crisis to crisis.

There were even Tories ready to challenge her leadership.

Then the Argentinians decided to invade the Falkland Islands.

The Government has now decided that a large task force

will sail as soon as all preparations are complete.

As she prepared for war,

in Dublin, Charles Haughey saw an opportunity to stand up to Thatcher.

In 1982, Ireland had a seat on the United Nations Security Council

and Haughey used it to try to bring international pressure on Britain.

I think she had begun to wonder before that, but that...

that really confirmed her in the feeling

that Haughey was not to be trusted and was not a friend of Britain.

The extraordinary, unnecessary

and mad initiative of Mr Haughey on the Falklands War

ended any possibility of any dialogue of any sort.

The battle of the Falklands was a remarkable military operation,

boldly planned, bravely executed and brilliantly accomplished.

Margaret Thatcher was now in an unassailable position

in British politics,

but Anglo-Irish relations had broken down.

Then, over a late-night drink at a Downing Street dinner

to toast her victory in the South Atlantic,

she suggested for the first time that she was interested

in seeking a political way forward for Northern Ireland.

I said to her, "It seems to me a scandal

"that the only place in the world now

"where British lives are being lost in anger

"is actually in the United Kingdom, in Northern Ireland,"

and that got us launched on a discussion of Ireland.

-Just listen to everyone. I must go down.

-Wave.

At the end of this conversation, she said reflectively,

"Mm, if we get back again,

"I think I'd like to do something about Ireland."

In June 1983, Margaret Thatcher was swept back into Downing Street.

She would use her second term in office

to take on the unions in Britain

and the challenge the unionists in Northern Ireland.

Mrs Thatcher won a three-figure majority in the House of Commons

in the wake of the Falklands victory,

and in Dublin, Garret FitzGerald had succeeded Charles Haughey

with a majority which suggested that he would be around

for quite a reasonable period of time.

She came out of that election with a feeling

that this was unfinished business which she needed to tackle.

NEWSREADER: One of the worst days of terrorism London has seen.

Mrs Thatcher called the bombers callous and cowardly.

The force of the explosion was so great

that parts of the car were flung across the park.

So, too, were nails four and six inches long

which had been packed around the bomb.

Democracy is the rejection of violence,

and we are never, never going to be defeated by bombs and bullets.

After his election in 1982,

Garret FitzGerald had written to Margaret Thatcher

seeking to open talks on Northern Ireland.

But still seething at the Irish behaviour

during the Falklands dispute,

Margaret Thatcher showed no interest in his invitation.

He was deeply worried about developments in Northern Ireland.

Particularly about... the term we used a lot of the time

was the alienation of the minority,

particularly following the hunger strikes,

a belief that there was no hope in politics

and that violence, apparently, was the only way forward.

She didn't like the word alienation, I don't know,

perhaps because she thought it was Marxist.

So...

And, of course, she never lived in Ireland or Northern Ireland,

so she didn't really...

I don't think she fully grasped

why the nationalists were as resentful as they were.

This morning, a British soldier was killed in Ballymurphy.

Responsibility for that soldier's death

lies with the British Government.

-MAN:

-The IRA.

-The tragedy...

The tragedy of Ireland rests with the London Government.

The 1983 election had also seen Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams

elected in West Belfast,

consolidating republicans' move into constitutional politics.

The buzz word was "alienation". That was the buzz word.

And, you know,

what that meant was the growth in support for Sinn Fein.

So, that's what that was.

It was nothing more or less than that. It was exclusive.

It wasn't inclusive.

CHEERING

The Sinn Fein today, I mean, effectively dates...

I mean, their year zero is the hunger strikes.

I mean, their political development, I mean, dates from that point.

I was certainly very conscious,

and I think the same would have been true of Margaret Thatcher, that...

..that Garret FitzGerald was as keen as we could be...

..to try to prevent a revival or resurgence of IRA...

of Sinn Fein...

..power in the Irish Government, in the Irish political system.

All right, now we're going to do it again inside.

The problem was that at that moment, there was no dialogue with London.

It wasn't there was no negotiation. There wasn't even chitchat.

With this new political threat from Sinn Fein,

coupled with a resurgent IRA,

Garret FitzGerald changed tactics with Margaret Thatcher,

and instead appealed to her only real interest in Northern Ireland -

security.

The Taoiseach decided that Michael Lillis

should approach his London counterpart

while he was in Dublin for a meeting.

Michael, whom I'd never met before, or indeed never heard of before,

said would I come for a walk with him along the canal?

What I suggested was that we should try working together

in the interest of security, right?

Not for an Irish political agenda, but in the interest

of improving the security and stability on the ground.

Initially,

the idea was to find some kind of agreement on matters of security.

Her concern about Northern Ireland

was about the loss of life and the injuries,

which she took very seriously,

both among the soldiers and the other security forces,

the RUC, and among ordinary people,

and she took very seriously

the cost of supporting the Northern Irish economy.

So, that's how... That's how the thing began.

Margaret Thatcher agreed to open talks,

but made a strategic decision not to involve the Northern Ireland Office.

Instead, she gave the job to David Goodall and his boss,

Robert Armstrong, who, as her chief security advisers,

had access to the intelligence coming from Northern Ireland,

including that from agents inside the IRA.

We were very conscious of the fact

that they both were at the absolute heart

of the whole British power system, including security and intelligence.

One of them, at one stage, told us that

the communications codes that we had at that time

were - I think the phrase was used - "easy to penetrate".

In other words, they were able to read our...

our messages.

-WOMAN IN CROWD:

-Stick to your guns, Maggie, you're a great girl.

Thank you.

Following her public handling of the hunger strikes,

Margaret Thatcher's own security was an issue.

She was now the IRA's number one target.

I remember her saying, "They'll probably get me

"in the end, but I don't like to hand myself to them on a plate."

During the Conservative Party Conference in October 1984,

the IRA's hatred for Margaret Thatcher exploded

under a bath at the Grand Hotel Brighton,

killing five people and injuring 31.

I was peaceably abed...

..when we heard the sound of the explosion.

And then the room began to collapse about us.

And, erm, then it was quite a long time waiting to be dug out.

The bomb went off somewhere between 2:45 and 3:00.

I know that because I looked up when I had finished something at 2:45,

and I just turned to do one final paper,

and then it went off.

My husband was in bed and all the windows went,

and the bathroom was extremely badly damaged.

-In your own room?

-Yes.

I think that's enough, Prime Minister.

We were very lucky...

In some ways, I think that almost hardened her resolve.

She said that publicly the day of the Brighton bomb,

when she spoke to the Conservative Party Conference,

and she followed through on it.

This Government will not weaken.

This nation will meet that challenge.

Democracy will prevail.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

The Brighton bomb...

I mean, I was amazed.

I thought, that's the end of these negotiations, frankly.

It's another example of her courage, I think.

We had this charming message from the IRA,

something about...

"You can only..."

"You may get away with it with it once or something." Anyway...

-INTERVIWER:

-"You need to be lucky every day..."

-Yes.

It's very regrettable that other people were killed

or seriously injured, you know.

But I felt then, and I said then, that I thought that was

an entirely legitimate action,

and that's still my position.

The bomb hadn't wrecked the negotiations,

but Margaret Thatcher almost brought them down herself.

Garret FitzGerald had set up the New Ireland Forum,

which had set out three options on all-Ireland relationships.

Just a month after Brighton,

she met with the Taoiseach at Chequers.

The meeting appeared to have gone well,

until Margaret Thatcher was later questioned at a press conference

about the New Ireland Forum's three proposals.

..and to pursue our shared aim of lasting peace

and stability in Northern Ireland.

It was embarrassing because, you know,

my role was to be a yes man, clearly,

and I was prepared to be a yes man, I wasn't wanting a quarrel with her.

So I wasn't looking for a fight with the Prime Minister at all,

and I...

But I gave the impression, I think, of being a helpless sort of yes man,

which I wasn't either.

That a unified Ireland was one solution - that is out.

A second solution was...

a confederation of two states - that is out.

A third solution was joint authority - that is out.

That is a derogation from sovereignty.

'It was an outrageous thing to have done. It was typical Thatcher.

'Public opinion here,'

in the south, was...

incensed.

And I was afraid at the time that the whole process

was going to break down.

In an attempt to get the talks back on track,

Garret FitzGerald looked to Irish America

and President Reagan for help.

Luckily, as it happened,

Margaret Thatcher had planned two visits to Washington -

one in December '84, and one in February '85.

And, obviously, we had briefed both Tip O'Neill's people

and President Reagan's people.

For over 10 years,

Dublin had tried to win support in America in the hope of putting

pressure on London to do something about Northern Ireland.

But with Irish-American Tip O'Neill a leading figure on Capitol Hill

and Ronald Reagan in the White House, they made a breakthrough.

Clearly the relationship between Reagan

and O'Neill was an excellent one.

And O'Neill used it, in my view, to the full,

to ensure that Reagan acted on Irish affairs

when we needed somebody to act.

And O'Neill's own background in Ireland

was very deep and was very well-informed.

'The United States Government was under pressure from its own

'Irish lobby in Washington, and I think Mrs Thatcher understood'

that the President and his colleagues

needed help in dealing with that.

Documents from the time show that Tip O'Neill

wrote to President Reagan pressing him to raise the breakdown

in the talks with Margaret Thatcher.

Reagan, under pressure from O'Neill,

several times asked Thatcher to go ahead with the agreement.

Margaret Thatcher had reached the conclusion that Airey Neave's

vision of military victory was simply unrealistic.

Because the general view of the Army was

that this was not a winnable war,

that it was possibly possible to hold the field,

roughly, to hold the field,

but it was not possible to drive the IRA to defeat,

as that...realising that that was their view

sunk into her mind, she became more inclined to negotiate.

For two years, Robert Armstrong met with his Dublin counterparts.

In the autumn of 1985, the drafting was complete.

Her officials were convinced she was ready

to sign an historic agreement, but just weeks out

from the target date for the Hillsborough Summit,

Thatcher removed Douglas Hurd

as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland,

replacing him with former infantry officer Tom King,

who was horrified by much of what was being proposed.

He thought it was unfair. I mean, he's a very decent guy,

and he just thought it was totally unfair to the unionists.

But he did it, like the soldier that he also was.

There are some advantages to having people who accept

the discipline of command.

Tom King was from a different strand in the Tory party, obviously,

from Douglas Hurd, and...

..I think was more conscious of the difficulties that could be created

for the relationship with the unionists by the agreement.

But it had gone so far by then there was no going back on it.

Robert Armstrong, along with Douglas Hurd and Geoffrey Howe,

helped Thatcher overcome concerns from Tom King

and the Northern Ireland Office.

And on the morning of November 15th,

Margaret Thatcher boarded an RAF helicopter for Hillsborough Castle.

But even as she arrived,

she was met with a worrying reaction to an agreement she had yet to sign.

The first thing that happened, Margaret Thatcher,

the moment she arrived, disappeared upstairs

to telephone Ian Gow, who was resigning as a minister.

The Conservative MP Ian Gow, who was later murdered by the IRA,

was a staunch unionist

and one of Margaret Thatcher's closest friends at Westminster.

That those who chose the bullet and the bomb

will gain no concessions from Her Majesty's Government.

He was particularly close to her, she trusted his judgment,

and she was very unhappy

that he resigned from the Government when she did sign it.

-THATCHER:

-Any change in the status of Northern Ireland

would only come about with the consent

of a majority of people of Northern Ireland.

It was very obvious that this was something she was doing,

perhaps on the advice of those around her.

But, certainly, I think, if it was of her own volition,

I think that it probably wouldn't have been done.

And yet, Mrs Thatcher tells us

that that Republic must have some say in our Province!

We say never!

Never! Never!

Never.

All 15 Unionist MPs reacted by resigning their seats

and calling people out onto the streets in protest,

culminating in a rally at Belfast City Hall

attended by more than 100,000 people.

Our initial reaction

was certainly betrayal.

Why didn't she discuss this with us?

Why didn't we get a hint?

It was an appalling betrayal of the, erm...

..assumptions, which were well-founded, of unionists,

that they could always trust, a) the Tory Party,

but even more than that, the talisman of the Tory Party

in terms of unionism, which was Margaret Thatcher.

And they were left in the dark.

So this was a deliberate policy...

Let me speak as an Irish nationalist here,

I'm not speaking as a British former official -

they would have it in more polite terms,

but I will tell you what the reality was -

it was a deliberate, massive betrayal

of the unionists by Margaret Thatcher.

I'd like to indict you, Mrs Thatcher,

as a traitor to the loyalist people of Northern Ireland

in denying them their right to vote on the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

'Well, it was deliberate,'

because it was felt that if the...

That we couldn't consult the unionists because there would

be no chance of any agreement to what we might consult.

So it was an object of the exercise to reach an agreement

which didn't depend upon their cooperation.

Almost from the moment of Ian Gow's resignation,

Margaret Thatcher regretted the agreement.

So why had she signed it in the first place?

I think she had an expectation...

that signing the agreement would be like waving a magic wand.

That the security situation would immediately improve.

That the Provisionals would be sidelined.

It went against the grain,

but she was persuaded that it was the right thing to do

and it was going to be helpful in...

putting an end to IRA terrorism.

To do something against the grain, you do tend to regret it afterwards.

Half regret it, I mean half regret it.

And of course she had the Americans to consider.

It helped with the Americans, as she said herself.

-My friend, Margaret Thatcher.

-Thank you.

Years later when she was dismissing the agreement

and expressing her support for even Enoch Powell's rejection of it,

she said to her friends, it was the Americans who made me do it.

Margaret thatcher had wanted an agreement that would give her

the security solution that Airey Neave had hoped for.

She blamed Garret FitzGerald for the failings in the agreement.

Do you think she would have felt let down by him?

No, I think she felt let down by me

and people like me that we didn't somehow...

thole the insult and that we took her head on.

I think she was more let down by us than by Garret.

If Margaret Thatcher thought the agreement would cut off support

from the terrorists and end the violence, she was soon proved wrong.

After 1985, the IRA continued to kill as in Enniskillen,

in November in 1987.

But Margaret Thatcher's government was also more ready to use lethal

force as at Loughgall when the SAS killed eight

members of the IRA as they attempted to attack a police station.

Once...

the British and Irish governments...

have concluded an agreement which obviously is

sort of sold in America as an initiative of major importance, and so on,

and that they're in tandem working together on the problem,

then that leaves Britain much less exposed to

criticism in terms of what it does and therefore

if you like...gives a somewhat freer hand to its security forces.

After eight soldiers died in an IRA attack on their bus

near Ballygawley in County Tyrone in August 1988,

Ken Maginnis was invited to meet Margaret thatcher who was

seeking information on those behind the attack.

She said, "Thank you very much for coming to see me,

"now tell me who did this?"

So I told her, because...I couldn't tell her 100%,

but I was able to name names.

Subsequently, believe it or not, there was an SAS operation

when, er, the same team tried to kill...a coal man

and they were ambushed and that was the end of that particular team.

It looked like the Anglo-Irish Agreement was having

no effect on the bigger problem.

It began to move again, I think, towards the late '80s,

when there were secret channels and people began to realise

we must do something here again and try and make progress.

The SAS operations such as Loughgall

had a marked impact on republican morale, which was only added to

by international reaction to the Enniskillen attack.

During the hunger strikes Margaret Thatcher had opened up

a secret channel to negotiate with the IRA leadership.

Up until now it was thought that she hadn't reopened

communications to the IRA until October 1990.

But Margaret Thatcher's Secretary of State from 1985 to 1990

has told this programme the British Government was exchanging

messages with the IRA leadership in the years immediately after

the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

Were you aware at that point that actually things were occurring

-in the undergrowth that could ultimately lead to progress?

-Yes.

-Yes, I was.

-You were aware?

-Yeah, yeah.

-Can you tell us how you were aware and what you were aware of?

I remember one particular phrase that lived on and got embroidered.

It was whether there was any strategic or economic interest that

could override the democratic wishes of the people of Northern Ireland.

-And how did you send that message through?

-That... I forget.

I mean, it came through, you know, somebody speaking quietly to me

and him speaking quietly to somebody else, but it was very much

sort of back-channel discussion, but nothing disreputable about that.

All the people involved in it,

at some considerable personal risk of even, you know,

getting involved in any of it, but undoubtedly it was the start of...

As I maintain,

the Anglo-Irish Agreement was the start of, actually,

the gradual evolution of what became the peace process.

Do you have any memory of that?

No, none at all. And, er...you know, I would say authoritatively

that there was no clarification sought by republicans.

Er...the...

the...the first engagement, face-to-face,

between, er...

us and the British was Martin McGuinness meeting

the British contact in October 1990,

so we certainly weren't about, er... seeking clarification.

The first face-to-face meetings may not have happened until 1990,

but a senior negotiator from the Irish government says

he became aware the British were communicating with the IRA

as early as 1986.

At this time, Nicholas Scott was security minister at Stormont,

working closely with the Secretary of State Tom King.

It was Scott who alerted the Irish

that London was in contact with the IRA.

He told me on two occasions

that there were communications with the Provisional IRA.

He wouldn't give me any details. He couldn't.

But what he said was unmistakably clear.

In his view, it was very important to persuade the Provisional IRA

to stop the campaign of violence,

a proposition that I would agree with.

It suited Mrs Thatcher,

because her public profile was to be extremely tough, but behind it,

she was prepared to at least look at the possibility of negotiation.

I think that was not to the benefit of the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

It happened, of course, explicitly at the time of the hunger strike,

but these contacts don't simply disappear when times get better.

They played absolutely no part, I can truthfully say,

in the negotiation of the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

At no point did I ever see a secret report

which had any bearing on what was going on at all.

But that's not to say that people weren't,

that there was absolutely no contact. I would be surprised if...

I mean, even in wartime, if you had, you know,

contacts with the enemy on a secret channel,

you'd expect to try to have such contacts.

The effect of that on the Provisionals was, of course,

to encourage them to be even more intensive

in their campaign of violence.

In other words, every time this happened,

going back to the earliest days of the Troubles,

the Provisional IRA took encouragement

from the fact that the British were reaching out to them.

Margaret Thatcher didn't survive as Prime Minister

to see the outcome of the process she'd begun.

By late 1990, her old friends were beginning to desert her.

When every step forward risked being subverted...

It was a combination of the economy going wrong,

11 and a half years of handbagging,

a very wearing way of governing...

..and then Europe, which finally sunk her.

In November 1990, Margaret Thatcher was in Paris

for a meeting of world leaders to mark the end of the Cold War,

but it also spelt the end of her time in power.

She was in a room at the British Embassy

when the results of the Conservative Party vote came in from London.

-I'm just going to tell the president.

-Yes, of course.

'I got the call first,'

and she could see my face in the dressing room mirror

and she knew what the outcome was.

'I thought at that moment it was the end.'

Mrs Thatcher, could I ask you to comment?

Good evening, good evening.

-Where's the microphone?

-It's here. This is the microphone.

'She was a few votes short, and I remember

'we were watching the television news near the embassy,'

Haughey turning to us and saying immediately, "She's gone."

We're leaving Downing Street for the last time,

and we're very happy that we leave the United Kingdom

in a very, very much better state than when we came here.

She had encouraged her image as an Iron Lady, yet in secret,

she had negotiated with the IRA.

She believed in the union,

yet she was accused of betraying the unionists.

During her 11 years in office,

more than 1,000 people died as a result of the conflict.

She had seen ten prisoners die on hunger strike,

and signed an agreement she came to resent.

But she'd opened up channels to the IRA

that just may have begun the process that eventually led to peace.

She never fully understood Ireland, north or south.

If anything, she was more puzzled by the unionists

than she was by the nationalists. She expected more of them,

but she never, in my view,

came to the understanding of Irish affairs.

She was one of these people, a lot of the time you think,

"Gosh, she's awful."

I was very put off by her in some ways,

but you can't, you can't not...

You can't not admire her.

She probably did what she thought was right,

and none of us are one-dimensional,

so I'm sure she wasn't one-dimensional.

But, you know, she was in the job,

and she could have done it differently.

She would have welcomed peace in Northern Ireland

because it was better, better than war,

but she was never quite comfortable with the price that was paid for it.

Do you think either of you actually understood the Irish

any more in 1990 than you did in 1979?

Oh, probably not.

No, I don't make any claims about that.

But they sure didn't understand us.

HE LAUGHS