The 1985 Anglo Irish Agreement must have stuck in the gullet of the most Unionist Prime Minister since Margaret Thatcher had to concede the involvement of a "foreign government - Dubin - in order to counter the rise of Sinn Fein. The resolute approach was soon to wobble. Looking back, the Agreement's only suocess was as presentational cover for a Government embarrassed Cy wond-woe consure of ts poicy e Ireland, particularly during the 1980-81 Hunger Strikes.
Thatcher had personal as well as political reasons for her hatred of Irish Republicans. Her political mentor Airey Neave was killed by an INLA bomb in 1979. Five years later her whole cabinet was almost wiped out in the IRA attack on the Grand Hotel in laws, finances, and foreign policy, is going in a totally different political cirection would have an enormous im pact on the to has tune.
the tide has turned against Major, as he well knows. Whether through a Scottish Assembly or indesentation for Scotland is inescapable. And a token assembly with a 'cultural brief wont be enough.
Until Scotland has at least an assembly with the teeth to reverse the ravages of the Thatcher years, Britain's constutional crisis wil not go away. attractions for the British ruling class when Thatcher became Tory loader in 1975. The with Heath's defeat by the miners the year before led some sections of the ruling class, according to Peter Wright of Spycatcher fame, to consider a Cout the dity tricks were not sclery directed against the Wilson Govern ment, but also Hoath. Colin Wallace and Fred Hotroyd have both told how the Northern Ireland situation was used for destablisation purposes. Airey Neave was himself closely linked with the 'security services.
Tory policy on Northern Ireland after 1979 was at first ittle dilferent from that were no concessions on political status during the Hunger Strikes, though the demands were later granted in all but name.
Throughout the 1980s Thatcher's refusal to talk to the men of violence' ran parall to a stopina up of the covert war. An Amnesty Intemational Report in June 1966 detaled 49 killing: by the security forces in Northern eland during the previous six years Most were Catholics - Nationalists -and the victims were generaly unAlongside this was the retur to a strategy employed by Brigadier Frank Kitson in the early 1970s of setting Loyalists and Nationalists against each other in a series of tit-for-tat kilings.
The new model involves using Loyalist deal squads to target Republicans using information from and tha RUC. AS WA 3S keeping British hands clean, it has the No. 19 Paisley and the Loyalists: calling the shots? added benefit of showing them in the Overall the strategy has failed. opitomised by the Brooke talks. Atter 20 years of benign' direct rule from Westminster, a British settlement is as far away as ever. Which is a surprise only to those who believed that the that Britain is actually the peacemaker.
The Labour Party nowfavours'unty by consent but supports the Brooke talks excluding Republicans. The question for those who see the Anglo rish Agreement as the vehicle for har unity, is this:
What happens when the Unionists refuse consent, not only to unity but to any steps towards harmonisation? ine last es years succesis tal another internal 6-county settlement will be triad. campined of course with vigorous prosecution of the was against the Nationalist ApA, 192