Thatcher ‘deeply affected’ by killing of British corporals at funeral

British prime minister Margaret Thatcher was “deeply affected” by the IRA killing of two British corporals at a republican funeral in West Belfast in March 1988, while “Ireland was constantly in her thoughts”.

The British also rejected Irish “suspicions of a conspiracy” regarding recent events.

This was revealed to Irish officials by British cabinet secretary Sir Robin Butler during a visit to Dublin in April 1988. His visit was prompted by a spate of violent and political events in the early months of the year which strained Anglo-Irish relations.

On April 18th, 1988, Sir Robin and the British ambassador to Ireland, Nicholas Fenn, lunched with senior Irish officials including Dermot Nally (secretary to the government), Noel Dorr (secretary to the department of foreign affairs), Dermot Gallagher, (head of the Anglo-Irish divisions at the department of foreign affairs) and Des Mathews (secretary at the department of justice).

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A full report of their discussions was sent to British foreign secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe by the Cabinet Office on April 25th, 1988.

“Airing their grievances” over recent events, Nally told Sir Robin and Fenn that Irish officials “recognised that it was cock-up rather than conspiracy”. However, the British government had “betrayed an insensitivity to Irish concerns, and the cumulative effect on Irish opinion had been disastrous”.

Suspicions

Unlike Dr Garret FitzGerald who, as taoiseach, would have sought to repair the damage, “Mr Haughey was different. He came from a nationalist and populous constituency. He had come a long way in accepting the [Anglo-Irish] Agreement and working it. Now all his old suspicions had been rearoused. He suspected that someone in London deliberately intended to undermine him.”

Security co-operation, Sir Robin stressed, was seen as a “touch-stone” by the British.

“The prime minister had been deeply affected by the deaths of the two corporals. Ireland was constantly in her thoughts, and she was anxious about the arsenal in the hands of the IRA.”

Nally and Dorr stressed that the taoiseach shared this view, but “the Irish often felt that the British were interested in security co-operation and not in the wider agenda which alone could remove the causes of terrorism”.