Adams right about Thatcher and the North

Billy McElligott (Letters, Apr 13) says Gerry Adams was selective in stating that Margaret Thatcher had prolonged the Irish conflict.

Adams was right — the Anglo-Irish Agreement was about exclusion, the Good Friday Agreement was about inclusion — and delivered peace.

Thatcher later said she signed the AIA to elicit security co-operation from Dublin, while Garret FitzGerald signed it to ward off the electoral growth of SF in the North.

Mr McElligott also peddled the myth that the people of the Republic had more in common with Thatcher than they had with Bobby Sands.

I would say the working classes of the Republic, the UK and the North had more in common with Sands than with a woman whose economic philosophy is still destroying lives after she has died.

We should know — it cost us our economic sovereignty.

Kieran McCarthy

Lower Midleton St

Cobh

Co Cork