The British government as far back as 1981 believed there were elements in the leadership of the provisional republican movement who were prepared to countenance an end to the IRA campaign of violence.
Papers released this week by the Thatcher Foundation relating to the hunger strikes in which 10 republicans died disclose a "secret" official minute in July 1981 that the then northern secretary, Humphrey Atkins, sent to the British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.
It referred to “Provisionals” who were prepared to “consider an end of the current terrorist campaign”.
The papers indicate that 13 years before the first 1994 IRA ceasefire there was an opportunity to end the violence.
The information about the IRA emerges from the minute Mr Atkins sent to Mrs Thatcher on July 6th, when efforts were being made to resolve the hunger strikes. This was two days before the death of the fifth hunger striker, Joe McDonnell.
Mr Atkins, in his 1981 minute, told Mrs Thatcher: “The Provisionals need to settle the prisons problem on terms they can represent as acceptable to them if they are to go on – as we know some of them wish to do – to consider an end of the current terrorist campaign. A leadership which has ‘lost’ on the prisons is in no position to do this.”
The typed phrase “an end of the current terrorist campaign” in the minute is underlined in ink in longhand.
