The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace

by Tim Pat Coogan

Wilson went on television and radio, late in the evening of 25 May, to make a remarkable speech. He said the strike was a deliberate and calculated attempt to use every undemocratic and unparliamentary means for the purpose of bringing down the whole constitution of Northern Ireland, so as to set up a sectarian and undemocratic state, from which one third of the people would be excluded. The attempt, he said, was being made by ‘thugs and bullies’. He went on to talk about the feelings of the people on the UK mainland who had seen their sons vilified and spat upon and murdered. They have seen the taxes they have poured out almost without regard to cost – over £300 million a year this year with the cost of the army operations on top of that – going into Northern Ireland. They see property destroyed by evil violence and are asked to pick up the bill for rebuilding it. But it was this passage which struck a nerve: Yet people who benefit from this now viciously defy Westminster, purporting to act as though they were an elected government, spend their lives sponging on Westminster and British democracy and then systematically assault democratic methods. Who do these people think they are?8