Oct 17, 1999 Comments Off on Thatcher’s dealings with IRA go back to hunger strikes (1999)
Thatcher’s dealings with IRA go back to hunger strikes (1999)
Thatcher’s dealings with IRA go back to hunger strikes
(by Henry McDonald, The Observer)
See also: Thatcher’s ‘offer to hunger strikers’ (2006)
MARGARET Thatcher – who vowed in public never to negotiate with terrorists – used the secret “back channel” between the IRA and MI5 as far back as the 1981 hunger strike to offer republicans a deal to end the prison fast.
The link between MI5 and the IRA, the former Derry priest Denis Bradley, confirmed yesterday that Lady Thatcher also approved of the clandestine talks which led to the Northern Ireland peace process in early 1990.
Bradley said Lady Thatcher knew that a senior MI5 officer, Robert McLarnon, had been holding talks with him and the IRA leadership during the hunger strike. According to Bradley these contacts were resumed with the former Prime Minister’s full knowledge before she was deposed as Tory party leader in November 1990.
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It has withstood the blows of a million years, and will do so to the end.