[ad_1]
Gerry Adams privately warned John Hume that he was “concerned” the IRA was close to assassinating Margaret Thatcher weeks after she murdered one of her close personal friends, recently declassified files reveal.
In a memorandum stamped “secret”, diplomat Dermot Gallagher, who became secretary general of the Department of Foreign Affairs, later reported taoiseach Charlie Haughey about a telephone conversation with Hume in September 1990.
Gallagher, who was involved in the early peace efforts in the department’s Anglo-Irish division, said then-SDLP leader Hume had met with Adams the week before at the request of then-Sinn Féin president.
Adams told Hume that he was “pleased” by the comments he made during a recent summer school speech in which Hume did not “dismiss” the IRA “as foolish, as criminals, as gangsters,” but, although he strongly disagreed With his methods, he accepted that “they really believe in what they are doing.”
Hume told Adams that his speech prompted a letter from the then British Ambassador to Dublin Nicholas Fenn in which the British diplomat “agreed that it was foolish to assume that the British presence in Northern Ireland is due to the defense of economic interests. or strategic “. .
The SDLP leader suggested to Adams that the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Brooke, was preparing to make similar comments about the fact that Britain has no economic or strategic interest in the North as part of the measures. building confidence towards peace talks.
But, he said, the IRA assassination weeks earlier on July 30 of Ian Gow, a Conservative MP, had made it difficult.
Gow, a strident trade unionist, was blown up by an IRA bomb planted under his car at his home in East Sussex due to his personal closeness to British Prime Minister Thatcher and his influence on British policy in Ireland.
“In relation to Gow’s death, Adams said quite strangely that he was concerned that they would ‘kill Thatcher,'” Hume told Gallagher, according to the memo, just released to the National Archives under the 30-year rule.
The couple had a lengthy discussion during which Hume advocated that the IRA “lay down its arms” in exchange for an island-wide conference of all political parties, including Sinn Féin, but which unionists presumably would not attend.
The forum would allow all nationalist parties to “come up with a common plan / strategy” to try to convince trade unionists of the value of a united Ireland.
According to the memo, Adams “seemed interested” and requested a private document on the proposal that he would “later present to the IRA.”
But Hume said Adams left him with the “strong impression that he was genuinely concerned” that if the peace efforts were successful and “backed by joint North-South referendums, as Hume has suggested, this could undermine the legitimacy and credibility of Provo “.
“However, Adams generally felt that the talks were unlikely to lead anywhere,” the note added.
‘Deep British anxiety’
In a separate government file on Anglo-Irish contacts and a briefing in Dublin by then-Permanent Under Secretary of the Northern Ireland Office, John Chilcott, Irish diplomat Brendan McMahon warned of “deep British anxiety” over the IRA’s ability to escalate his campaign of violence at the time.
“The British clearly have the view that the Provisionals can continue their campaign of violence indefinitely in the present, or even at higher levels,” he wrote in the memo to the taoiseach.
“This has dire implications for its security forces and also for the protection of public persons in Britain.”
McMahon said Conservative MP and then House of Commons Leader John MacGregor had “privately emphasized” during a meeting in London how “shaken the Conservative Party had been – and still is – by Ian’s assassination. Gow ”.
The chief of police of the Royal Ulster Police at the time, Hugh Annesley, had told a meeting of the Anglo-Irish secretariat that “5,000 soldiers could be swallowed in any area of the border.”
McMahon said from his contacts that he suspected that the British also realized that the IRA could “topple any new political structure in the North that excludes them.”
In another note about a contact with Hume, the SDLP leader told the Irish government that Brooke had promised to consider his suggestion that Chilcott visit him at his vacation home in Co Donegal, and that Hume would arrange for Adams and Martin McGuinness they would call him while he was there. (Registers 2020/17/17 and 2020/17/10.)
[ad_2]