Thatcher caused ‘great suffering’

Reuters/Belfast

Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher caused “great suffering” in Ireland and her policies there ultimately failed, Irish republican leader Gerry Adams said yesterday.

Thatcher has long been a figure of hate for nationalists in Northern Ireland for her uncompromising policies during her 11 years in office between 1979 and 1990, which saw the death of 10 prisoners in a hunger strike.

Supporters say her hard line was inevitable after Irish Republican militants killed close Thatcher ally Airey Neave in a 1979 car bomb attack and the IRA came close to killing her in a bomb at the Conservative party conference in Brighton in 1984.

Adams, who acted as the public face of the IRA (Irish Republican Army) for much of its three-decade guerrilla war against British rule in Northern Ireland, said Thatcher’s Irish policy failed miserably and delayed the achievement of peace in 1998.

“Her espousal of old draconian militaristic policies prolonged the war and caused great suffering,” Adams said in a statement.

“She embraced censorship, collusion and the killing of citizens by covert operations...and refused to recognise the rights of citizens to vote for parties of their choice.”

Thatcher is best remembered in Northern Ireland for her hard line during a hunger strike in 1981 in which 10 prisoners died.

The Republican prisoners won widespread sympathy among the province’s Roman Catholic minority by fasting to support demands to be treated as political prisoners, and refused to wear prison clothing or do prison work.

But Thatcher insisted the jailed men were common criminals, not prisoners of war, saying “Crime is crime is crime”.