Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald proposed that an unarmed community police should work with the RUC in 1985, to which Margaret Thatcher asked would they be “like the B-Specials”, State papers show.
The two leaders met for 40 minutes in the British delegation rooms in the European Council building in Brussels on March 30th, 1985. A secret note of the meeting, discussing policing and other issues, was released under the 30-year rule.
“Could there not be an unarmed community police force working with the RUC?” FitzGerald is quoted as asking Thatcher.
“Mrs Thatcher said ‘you mean like the B-Specials’.
The taoiseach said: “No, that would be entirely the wrong name to call this unarmed force,” the note records.
FitzGerald told Thatcher there were three “no-go” areas for the RUC: west Belfast, Derry and south Armagh.
He said the “Northern Ireland Police Service” he was proposing would be a special unarmed local police force, “without taking from the RUC”.
Thatcher then asked him: “You mean vigilantes?”
FitzGerald assured her that he meant a fully trained force. “What you need is a man on the beat in a uniform who would be acceptable to local people.”
Thatcher asked if there were people who would join such a force, and Dr FitzGerald said: “We are told that there are.”
When Thatcher asked how could it be established if potential recruits were actually IRA people, FitzGerald said that everyone “on the ground” knew who was and was not in the IRA.
The SDLP and the RUC could between them identify who should be ruled out, he added.
No post office
Earlier in their meeting, FitzGerald told Thatcher about the nationalist Creggan district of Derry, where the post office had been closed down because the RUC could not protect it.
“This had given rise to a situation where local people, to cash their social security payments, were obliged to use the very limited bus service or take taxis, which were arranged by the IRA,” FitzGerald explained.
Thatcher wondered whether pensions could not be sent by post, the note records. “On the other hand, she felt on reflection that the postman might be mugged. She wondered whether bank accounts might not be used.”
FitzGerald said that in such areas bank accounts were not of much use.
Referring to the then Libyan leader, Muammar Gadafy, FitzGerald said “the Provisionals” had recently had contact with him.
“Not for the purpose of campaigns of violence, but rather to get political progress going in the Republic,” he is reported as saying.
FitzGerald told Thatcher the Provisionals were “using the law and order issue, and specifically the drugs problem, as their main focus in their political campaign”.
The atmosphere throughout the meeting was described as “extremely relaxed and friendly” by the author of the note, Michael Lillis, a senior Irish government negotiator during the talks that led to the Anglo-Irish Agreement.
“Mrs Thatcher seems to be quite at ease and, on some points (eg [SDLP leader John] Hume’s aborted talks with the IRA) showed a closer awareness than previously of the detail of politics in Northern Ireland,” wrote Lillis.
Thatcher said she had been “very puzzled” by Hume’s attempt to see the IRA and wondered what had been his motive.
“The taoiseach said the motive had been perfectly clear and that Hume had achieved it, although he himself felt it necessary to disassociate himself from Hume’s initiative.
“Hume had set out to create circumstances which would ensure that his party would not have to have any association with Sinn Féin by proving that Sinn Féin were no more than the creatures of the IRA.”
At this point, Thatcher intervened to say: “That was what I thought.”
Thatcher was accompanied by Sir Robert Armstrong and Charles Powell, while Dermot Nally and Lillis were with FitzGerald.
