Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [251]
Nonetheless, I kept up the pressure on the Irish for effective extradition arrangements of terrorists suspected of offences committed within the United Kingdom. Predictably, the Haughey Government was unwilling to confirm the Extradition Act that Dr FitzGerald had passed at the end of his administration without trying to exact a price. We heard the familiar plea for three-judge courts, followed by a new demand for our Attorney-General to provide his Irish counterpart with a note confirming his intention to prosecute founded on a sufficiency of evidence…a note that could be scrutinized by the Irish courts. This was an impossible scheme and we rejected it. The upshot was new Irish legislation that for a time brought extradition to a halt altogether.
In the meantime our own review of security had come to a number of conclusions, principally the redeployment of the army to strengthen anti-terrorist operations and to patrol in areas close to the border. As a matter of courtesy I wrote to Mr Haughey in January 1988 informing him of what we were doing. But it soon appeared that a more far-reaching review of security was required…and that we could rely only on a thoroughly unhelpful attitude from the Irish in the course of it.
On Sunday 6 March three Irish terrorists were shot dead by our security forces in Gibraltar. There was not the slightest doubt about the terrorists’ identity or intentions. Contrary to later reports, the Spanish authorities had been extremely co-operative. The funeral of the terrorists was held in Milltown Cemetery, Belfast. From the thousands attending you would imagine that these people were martyrs not would-be murderers. The spiral of violence now accelerated. A gunman attacked the mourners, three of whom were killed and 68 injured. It was at the funeral of two of these mourners that what was to remain in my mind as the single most horrifying event in Northern Ireland during my term of office occurred.
No one who saw the film of the lynching of the two young soldiers trapped by that frenzied Republican mob, pulled from their car, stripped and murdered, will believe that reason or goodwill can ever be a substitute for force when dealing with Irish Republican terrorism. I went to be with the relatives of our murdered soldiers when the bodies were brought back to Northolt; I shall not forget the remark of Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader, that I would have many more bodies to meet in that way. I could hardly believe it when the BBC initially refused to supply to the RUC film which might have been useful in bringing to justice the perpetrators of this crime, though they later complied. But I knew that the most important task was for us to use every means available to beat the IRA. On the same day as the news came in of what had happened I told Tom King that there must be a paper brought forward setting out all the options. I was determined that nothing should be ruled out.
On the afternoon of Tuesday 22 March I held an initial meeting. The policing of funerals was already under review. I said that the security forces must take all necessary steps, including extensive searches in nationalist areas, to apprehend those responsible for the murder of the British Army corporals. Measures to improve the chances of securing convictions in Northern Ireland courts…such as the use of DNA finger-printing, and the ending of the ‘right to silence’ and measures to seize the finances of groups which practised or supported violence…should be investigated. Cross-border security cooperation must be strengthened and security on the border itself must be improved. We must examine whether the instructions about the circumstances in which the security forces could use their weapons (the ‘yellow card’) should be reviewed in case they were too restrictive. In addition, I said that more far-reaching measures must now be considered. Perhaps Sinn Fein should be banned. We should consider the introduction of selective internment, which would