The election of the Thatcher government in May brought a new Northern Ireland Secretary in the shape of Humphrey Atkins, who is remembered as a less forthright and less forceful minister than Mason. The Thatcher government had only been in office a few months when two events on a single day, 27 August, created a major security crisis. These were the assassination of the Queen’s cousin, Lord Mountbatten, and the deaths of eighteen soldiers at Warrenpoint in County Down.
