Thirty Years On

As was established in January, until the Brighton Bomb, 30 years ago today, Margaret Thatcher had been planning a unilateral withdrawal from Northern Ireland, which she regretted that she then had to put onto the back burner.

Oh, well, she needed the troops over here, to use against the miners. Her plan to unleash the troops in and against the pit villages was as real as the mass pit closure programme. As was established in January.

Dennis Skinner writes in his recent memoirs, "We've lived long enough to be proved publicly right in the year-long miners' Strike for Jobs of 1984-5."

Of course, Thatcher did unleash the Army, only dressed up as policemen. Then there were the men in police uniforms, but without numbers. Exactly who they were, and where they came from, has still never been explained.

She was in continuous contact with the IRA, despite repeatedly lying to Parliament by claiming that she was not, just as she repeatedly lied to Parliament about the coal industry. She gave the IRA every reason to place its highest hopes in her.

How else did you think that she mysteriously "escaped" from the Brighton Bomb? It is time to look into that strange just-failure to blow her up, leading to the "heroic" and "miraculous" escape that has been a key part of her legend ever since.