Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [236]
I left the hospital overcome by such bravery and suffering. I was driven back to Chequers that afternoon faster than I have ever been driven before, with a full motorcycle escort. As I spent that night in what had become my home I could not stop thinking about those unable to return to theirs.
THE IRISH DILEMMA
What happened in Brighton shocked the world. But the people of Northern Ireland and the security forces face the ruthless reality of terrorism day after day. There is no excuse for the IRA’s reign of terror. If their violence were, as the misleading phrase often has it, ‘mindless’ it would be easier to grasp as the manifestation of a disordered psyche. But that is not what terrorism is, however many psychopaths may be attracted to it. Terrorism is the calculated use of violence…and the threat of it…to achieve political ends. In the case of the IRA those ends are the coercion of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland, who have demonstrated their wish to remain within the United Kingdom, into an all-Ireland state. Along with the political objective go crimes of other kinds…robbery, protection, fraud to name but a few.
There are terrorists in both the Catholic and Protestant communities, and all too many people prepared to give them support or at least to acquiesce in their activities. Indeed, for a person to stand out against the terrorists carries great personal risk. The result is that it is impossible to separate entirely the security policy, required to prevent terrorist outrages and bring the perpetrators to book, from the wider political approach to the long-standing ‘Northern Ireland problem’. For some people that connection implies that you should make concessions to the terrorist, in particular by weakening the Union between Ulster and Britain. But it never did so for me. My policy towards Northern Ireland was always one aimed above all at upholding democracy and the law: it was always therefore determined by whatever I considered at a particular time would help bring better security.
The IRA are the core of the terrorist problem; their counterparts on the Protestant side would probably disappear if the IRA could be beaten. But the best chance of beating them is if three conditions are met. First, the IRA have to be rejected by the nationalist minority on whom they depend for shelter and support.* This requires that the minority should be led to support or at least acquiesce in the constitutional framework of the state in which they live. Second, the IRA have to be deprived of international support, whether from well-meaning but naïve Irish Americans, or from Arab revolutionary regimes like that of Colonel Gaddafi. This requires constant attention to foreign policy aimed at explaining the facts to the misinformed and cutting off the weapons from the mischievous. Third, and linked to the other two, relations between Britain and the Republic of Ireland have to be carefully managed. Although the IRA have plenty of support in areas like West Belfast within Northern Ireland, very often it is to the South that they go to be trained, to receive money and arms and to escape capture after crimes committed within the United Kingdom. The border, long and difficult to patrol, is of crucial significance to the security problem. Much depends on the willingness and ability of the political leaders of the Republic to co-operate effectively with our intelligence,