Hume: Thatcher's attitude to the North was 'simplistic'

State papers released under the 30-year rule have revealed that John Hume gave a scathing analysis of the then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in 1980.

The SDLP leader gave Irish politicians, civil servants and diplomats a series of damning assessments on the new PM’s grasp of the problems facing the North.

Mr Hume’s views were surprisingly matched by a scathing analysis of Mrs Thatcher’s policies in the North by leading backbencher Michael Mates.

The MP, who went on to become a minister in the North in the 1990s, maintained to Irish diplomats that “Mrs Thatcher understands neither the Irish problem nor the Irish people”.

Nobel peace prize winner Mr Hume was initially very downbeat on the prospects of educating the PM on the realities of life in the North.

He would later approach Dublin’s Foreign Affairs officials, suggesting that Taoiseach Charles Haughey spend time “putting her straight on the necessary aspects of Irish history”.

Mr Hume believed the PM had to be convinced of the “evil of majority rule” in the North and warned that, to Mrs Thatcher, the “history of NI in this sense seemed to be a closed book”.

Hugh Logue, an SDLP man close to the leadership, relayed some of Mr Hume’s private thoughts to officials in 1980.

“Mr Hume had been disappointed at her (Mrs Thatcher’s) relatively simplistic approach to the situation and her tendency to consider some form of weighted majority rule for the proposed devolved administration for Northern Ireland,” an official said.

“Mr Logue said that, when the SDLP had been briefed by Mr Hume on the meeting, he had conveyed a very pessimistic impression on the possibility of educating Mrs Thatcher on the realities of the Northern Ireland situation.”

Mr Hume later followed up a meeting he had with the taoiseach with a telephone call to the Department of Foreign Affairs on May 19, 1980.

The SDLP leader claimed Mrs Thatcher simply did not know how the North was being administered on the ground.

“She had (as the taoiseach had earlier indicated) shown uncommon ignorance of certain matters in Northern Ireland example the number of Government departments in Belfast, the operation of local government which she considered to be satisfactory because Derry is harmoniously administered,” he said.

Mr Hume’s apparent criticism of Mrs Thatcher was tempered as the year went on and is recorded in further documents from the Department of Foreign Affairs.

It stated that Mrs Thatcher “seemed to recognise, following comments from Hume, that the years of Unionist domination in the North had been corrupt and had caused instability and suffering in the long run”.

Foreign Affairs also seemed to believe that Mrs Thatcher could be encouraged to support a united Ireland.

“Thatcher is in many ways a radical leader and believes in the politics of conviction. If persuaded she may be prepared to make fundamental changes in policy in a pragmatic way in response to changed circumstances or to the pressures to which she is exposed,” a document revealed.

“That it is not beyond the bounds of possibility for her to change her views on the maintenance of the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and may have begun to do so.”