Files released by the Irish National Archives include details of a meeting British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had with the then Taoiseach of Ireland, Charles Haughey in June 1988.
“I do not know what to do about the border,” Thatcher told him during an “unusually tense” meeting between the pair at a European Council meeting in Hannover, Germany.
The documents released by the Republic of Ireland's National Archives on Friday, December 28, suggest she was considering closing the border with the Republic of Ireland.
During “The Troubles” — which lasted from the late 1960s until the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 — the Irish Republican Army (IRA) carried out bomb and gun attacks against the British Army, police and civilian targets in Northern Ireland in a bid to force UK forces to leave the island of Ireland, which they wanted to unite despite the opposition of the loyalist, pro-British Protestant majority in Ulster.
”If we don't defeat the IRA, I don't know what I'm going to do. We can't have the border open as it is now. In recent times my feelings have run far higher than ever before in my life. I am not a natural hater, they are using the border to carry on an effective campaign,” Mrs. Thatcher told Mr. Haughey.
Thatcher Said it was Impossible to ‘Seal' Irish Border
“I can't seal the border. There is no way we can patrol the 500 miles…Everywhere there is an…
