The Third World War: The Untold Story

To be quite blunt about it, if these facilities were not used by consent they would be seized. Otherwise they would be destroyed, if not by one side then by the other, to deny their use to the enemy. Sir John Junor, one of the most honest and outspoken commentators in the journalism of these offshore islands, made no bones about it. ‘In an East-West war,’ he wrote in London’s Sunday Express in June 1983, ‘a declaration of Irish neutrality would afford about as much protection as a fig leaf in Antarctica.’

On the second subject, the future association of component parts of the British Isles, the Times-Guardian reported:

The two prime ministers agreed that the ideal eventual solution would be a confederation or federation of Ireland, maybe indeed eventually leading to some confederation of all territories in the British Isles.

The Taoiseach said he had taken great political risks to make this more readily attainable. Ireland’s constitution had been changed so that it was now a secular instead of a Catholic state. Divorce, contraception, abortion, secular education and dual citizenship in provinces that became in any way integrated into an Irish confederation or federation were all now accepted.

Could not the British Prime Minister for her part now take some political risks also? He recognised that she could not formally break her promise that there would be no change in Northern Ireland’s status until a majority in the north agreed. But could she not take the line that those who stirred up hatred against the Catholics in the north were breaking the law under British race-discrimination legislation? And could not British political parties start indicating their support for moderate candidates in Ulster parliamentary elections?

If there could be one breakthrough whereby any constituency in the north elected a reasonable person ready to consider confederation, instead of always electing either Protestant bigots or rabid Republicans, people who longed for peace could start to hope.

The British Prime Minister agreed with the Taoiseach’s views on general lines, but said direct intervention by herself would only be counterproductive. If she indicated support for a moderate candidate in any election, both sects of the Northern Irish would swing all the more violently to their usual support of the most extreme candidate available.

Someday special circumstances might arise in some election, and she would seize the chance to try to get other politicians in other British parties to act responsibly with her on the moderates’ side. She had already turned her back on any coalition with the extreme Ulster Unionists in the British parliament, although Callaghan when in office, and Foot in opposition, had behaved badly about this. She would look for an opportunity to do more.

The opportunity arose because of the Christmas shopping bombs in 1983, and because of the emergence of that most unexpected of all Irish folk heroes, the 24-year-old Patrick McBride.

In early December of 1983, a bomb exploded amid shopping crowds in London’s Oxford Street, killing eighty-three people, including a store Santa Claus and seventeen handicapped children who were queuing to get free presents from him. The so-called Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), claiming ‘responsibility’ for these hideous crimes, declared that this was a justified attack upon a double military objective. The stores group had as a non-executive part-time member of its board a former General Officer Commanding in Northern Ireland and the INLA had^; understood (wrongly, as had to be admitted later) that the Santa Claus was a retired regimental sergeant major from the Irish Guards. Two days later bombs exploded in a shopping centre in Dublin, killing thirty-two. A Protestant para-military group called the ‘Battlers of the Boyne’ said that loyalist Ulster was striking back in the heartland of popery. Several more bombs went off in both Protestant and Catholic pubs in Northern Ireland, and, with appalling results, five in separate sectarian schools.

The British Special Branch took a keen interest in certain unusual features of the Oxford Street and Dublin bombs, although the Belfast ones were of the usual home-grown sort made in local factories, against which London and Dublin had by now rather sophisticated detection devices. The usual leakiness of Irish terrorist sources in London enabled the Special Branch to catch those who planted the Oxford Street bomb fairly early, and some interesting developments followed. Police in Eire and the Province carried out dawn raids on the headquarters of several extreme Catholic and Unionist groups. Communiques that evening explained why.