Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [254]
Later that month I held several meetings to go through in detail what further action we should take. On the evening of Tuesday 6 September I chaired a meeting of the ministers and officials concerned. I noted that the expected IRA offensive had materialized. We had a number of possible proposals for action. But we would not be announcing a package of measures. Some would become public knowledge as they were implemented or introduced in Parliament. But in other areas I wanted to keep the terrorists guessing. Consequently it would not be possible to brief the Irish Government on our intentions, although we would inform them of individual measures shortly before their introduction.
Then we went through the possibilities one by one. Some measures…like the proscription of Sinn Fein or the removal of British citizenship from undesirables with British/Irish dual citizenship,* or the introduction of minimum sentences for terrorist offences…looked less promising the more they were discussed. But others…cutting back on the 50 per cent remission for all prisoners in Northern Ireland, ensuring that those convicted of certain terrorist offences would serve consecutively with a new sentence the unexpired portion of an earlier remitted sentence, measures to deal with terrorist finance, improvement of intelligence co-ordination…all these required further work.
I continued to go through the possibilities with ministers at a second meeting on the afternoon of Thursday 29 September. At this meeting I particularly concentrated on the army’s role. It was important to reduce the number of unnecessary commitments of army manpower in Northern Ireland in order to allow them to concentrate their efforts where they were most required.
One measure which we announced publicly in October was the prohibition of broadcast statements by Sinn Fein and other Northern Irish supporters of terrorism. This immediately provoked cries of censorship: but I have no doubt that not only was it justified but that it has worked, and there is some reason to believe that the terrorists think so too. Measures to cut Northern Ireland remission and to change the ‘right to silence’ in Northern Irish courts were also introduced, as was action against terrorist finance.
More and more in the struggle to bring peace and order to Northern Ireland, we were being forced back on our own resources. Because of the professionalism and experience of our security forces, those resources were adequate to contain, but not as yet to defeat the IRA. Terrible tragedies continued to occur. Yet the terrorists did not manage to make even parts of the province ungovernable, nor were they successful in undermining the self-confidence of Ulster’s majority community or the will of the Government to maintain the Union.
The fact remained that the contribution which the Anglo-Irish Agreement was making to all this was very limited. The Unionists continued to oppose it…though with less bitterness as it became clear that their worst fears had proved unfounded. It never seemed worth pulling out of the agreement altogether because this would have created problems not only with the Republic but, more importantly, with broader international opinion as well.
Still, I was disappointed by the results. The Patrick Ryan case demonstrated just how little we could seriously hope for from the Irish. Ryan, a nonpractising Catholic priest, was well known in security service circles as a terrorist; for some time he had played a significant role in the Provisional IRA’s links with Libya. The charges against Ryan were of the utmost seriousness, including conspiracy to murder and explosives offences. In June 1988 we had asked the Belgians to place him under surveillance.