The new leaders of Ireland and Britain, Charles Haughey and Margaret Thatcher, met twice in 1980. From the first their relationship was tense. They both came to the issue of the North of Ireland from staunch and opposed positions, nevertheless they attempted to sustain an ongoing dialogue. In May 1980, at their first summit in London, Haughey presented Thatcher with a silver teapot and they seemed to foster an entente. However, Thatcher noted privately that she felt Haughey expected much more than she was willing to concede in his concept of the ‘totality of relationships’. The British side endorsed the idea of a unique relationship between Ireland and Britain and agreed to undertake a study of the ‘totality of relationships’ between the two countries, promising a commitment on both sides to a new phase of cooperation. The Unionists were upset both by the opacity and potential open-endedness of the term; and alarmed that the possibility of the study of the totality of relationships might have also implied re-examination of the constitutional status, North and South. There was considerable mystery as to everything that the term ‘totality of relationships’ implied. There was speculation that it might have involved a military security dimension, with Haughey perhaps hinting at some form of closer military cooperation.
After December 1980, relations deteriorated between Haughey and Thatcher for three reasons: the hunger strikes, which Haughey reacted to in a somewhat sympathetic vein (in contrast to Thatcher’s insensitivity), partly because his party had to contest TD seats on the Irish border it ultimately lost; secondly, Brian Lenihan, Haughey’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, whether through his own over-enthusiasm or at Haughey’s prompting, oversold the notion of the ‘totality of relationships’ as relating to constitutional rather than institutional change and linked it directly to a United Ireland, which outraged Unionists and consequently Thatcher gave Haughey a withering reception; and lastly Haughey’s opposition to the British resolution to fight the Falklands war (April–June 1982).
The third issue was by far the most devastating. With Thatcher, the irritation factor was always high and when Haughey opposed her policy on the Falklands he comprehensively poisoned her against a renegotiation of Anglo-Irish modalities. It was a very dilettantish move, going in feet first and causing problems for the Irish in the United Nations (UN) that rippled to domestic issues. A little like a general who does not reconnoitre the battlefield, Haughey did not fully consult Noel Dorr, Ireland’s Ambassador at the UN, about the matter (Ireland at that moment was a member of the Security Council of the United Nations). The hunger strikes were next in significance to the Falklands war in determining Anglo-Irish relations in the early and mid-1980s. These setbacks froze Anglo-Irish relations for a period. Where subtle diplomacy was required Thatcher and Haughey inexorably brought out of each other an animal aggression and inflexibility. The souring of relationships between Thatcher and Haughey caused anxiety to the protectors of Irish interests in Washington, where Anglo-Irish developments were, by now, being keenly monitored. On top of all this, Haughey’s perceived reluctance to specifically condemn Republican violence in the North posed further difficulties to the Congressional Friends of Ireland.
Hume tried many times to persuade Haughey against that position. Peter Gallagher, a Derry school teacher, remembers meeting Hume at a function in Dublin. Hume asked Gallagher for a lift back to Derry. On their way, just into North Dublin, Hume informed Gallagher that they would be stopping to speak to Haughey at his estate at Abbeville. When they arrived at Haughey’s estate, Gallagher was sent into a library and remembers Hume being very straight with Haughey and very determined to express his views on the North. When Haughey came to Derry, Hume would drive Haughey around the city to survey the worthless wreckage that the IRA had caused the city: their ‘economic targets’. Hume made a habit of stepping in decisively with Haughey: he would arrive unannounced to Haughey’s office and he could be gruff and relentless. He retained a schoolmasterly severity which was necessary with Haughey.
As the hunger strikers began to die of starvation in Long Kesh prison, extraordinary levels of morbidity and tension prevailed not only in the North of Ireland but throughout the island of Ireland. The anti-British sentiment spilled into riot fervour, not only in the North, which was routinely the case, but also in Dublin. On 18 July 1981, 1,000 members of the Garda Síochána (the Irish police force) repelled protesters who attempted to assail the British Embassy in Dublin, chanting ‘burn the embassy!’ It was a moment redolent of the crowd that had assembled in Dublin on 2 February 1972, days after Bloody Sunday in Derry, who that time succeeded in burning the embassy.
(excerpted from chapter 5)
