WESTMINSTER MPs responded to the killing of two undercover army corporals at an IRA funeral by demanding a withdrawal from Ireland to let “the Irish get on with butchering each other”, according to confidential files.
Newly declassified records, released under the 30-year rule, show the murders of David Wood and Derek Howes of the Signals Regiment in west Belfast provoked outrage among MPs.
They were surrounded by a crowd when they drove into the funeral cortege of an IRA man who had been killed by loyalist Michael Stone days earlier.
Irish Embassy official Richard Ryan wrote the confidential note, entitled “mood at Westminster”, after speaking to 20 MPs of “all shades” days after the murders in March 1988.
The diplomat said many members who did not take an active interest in Irish affairs became “puffed with outrage and conviction” about doing something in response to the killings.
He said suggestions ranged from demands for a tougher policy of policing funerals to a demand for internment throughout Ireland and, in “more cases than previously”, a demand to set a date for withdrawal from Ireland “in order to let the Irish get on with butchering each other”.
The two plain-clothed soldiers inadvertently drove into the path of the funeral before mourners pulled them from the car.
They were beaten before being shot dead by members of the IRA.
The murders happened days after the funerals of the three IRA members who were shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar.
Ryan said, after meeting backbenchers at Westminster, he was struck by their exasperation and anger “without any proper sense of how to ventilate it” while there was a resurgence of “frustrated patience” with Ireland.
“The complexity of the issues elude their instinctual approach to policy questions, that of self-interested pragmatism and this further fuels their primary response to events such as last Saturday’s,” he said.
The documents also show that Margaret Thatcher often did not have a secure communication link to Downing Street when she was away from London, which led to concerns about how the then-PM would be consulted on “nuclear matters when she is either out of the country or on regional tours”.
She was unable to get “highly-classified” information from Number 10 to Balmoral in September 1983, meaning a staff member had to travel overnight to hand-deliver it. In another case, she received important news about Russia five hours after President Bush had been informed, while they were on a trip to Bermuda.
In a file titled Secure Communications between No. 10 and the Prime Minister, a Mr S P Geary said: “We were unable to get highly-classified information from No. 10 to the Prime Minister’s party in Scotland.
“We had to arrange for Mrs Harris to escort this information to Balmoral on Saturday.”
In another file from April 1990, it was said Thatcher felt “we had been left looking flat-footed and behind the game” after she was not made aware of important developments regarding Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev while in Bermuda.
Bush was informed at 2.30pm but it was not until 8pm that Thatcher received Foreign Office reports, according to a letter from her private secretary Charles Powell.
He wrote: “We may need to improve our system for keeping the Prime Minister informed of international developments while she is on visits abroad, especially over holiday periods.”
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