After a break, I've once again picked up Charles Moore's authorised and scrupulously researched biography of Margaret Thatcher.
In the chapter on Northern Ireland in the 1979-1982 period, he describes that Mrs Thatcher and all of her senior Cabinet colleagues felt a great deal of frustration towards the Irish situation, but no real ideas for how to progress things: Thatcher herself was resistant to Northern Irish devolution because she feared it could be the first step towards the dissolution of the Anglo-Scottish Union. The one man who was a real expert on NI was Thatcher's early mentor Airey Neave, who was of course killed in an IRA bombing shortly before the 1979 election.
What exactly Neave envisaged for the province is open to doubt, but Moore states that all of the evidence points towards attempts to fully integrate NI into British politics, a course of action that had the support of moderate Unionists but pretty much nobody else, least of all the extremists on both sides. That said, this is the Thatcher government, and I suspect Mrs Thatcher would pretty tenaciously support the ideas of such a key ally.
So, what if Neave survives and the early 1980s witness a concerted effort on the part of Margaret Thatcher's Government to properly integrate Northern Ireland into "mainstream" Britain?
In the chapter on Northern Ireland in the 1979-1982 period, he describes that Mrs Thatcher and all of her senior Cabinet colleagues felt a great deal of frustration towards the Irish situation, but no real ideas for how to progress things: Thatcher herself was resistant to Northern Irish devolution because she feared it could be the first step towards the dissolution of the Anglo-Scottish Union. The one man who was a real expert on NI was Thatcher's early mentor Airey Neave, who was of course killed in an IRA bombing shortly before the 1979 election.
What exactly Neave envisaged for the province is open to doubt, but Moore states that all of the evidence points towards attempts to fully integrate NI into British politics, a course of action that had the support of moderate Unionists but pretty much nobody else, least of all the extremists on both sides. That said, this is the Thatcher government, and I suspect Mrs Thatcher would pretty tenaciously support the ideas of such a key ally.
So, what if Neave survives and the early 1980s witness a concerted effort on the part of Margaret Thatcher's Government to properly integrate Northern Ireland into "mainstream" Britain?