Republicans should remember Thatcher’s contribution to Peace.

This piece first appeared on www.openunionism.com

Sammy McNally is an itinerant Fenian scribbler… and a fictional prod character bestowed upon us by James Young. He has previously written for other blogs such as BangorDub, Three Thousand Versts and Slugger O’Toole. He describes his politics as “Republican lite”.

It is highly likely that Margaret Thatcher’s name will crop up at the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis, but highly unlikely that any pleasant words will be uttered by any delegates and even less likely that Gerry et al will mention that part of her legacy – support for low corporation tax – that has made its way into SF economic policy.

What will be discussed, of course, will be the hunger strikes, and as someone who supported the hunger strikers I think it fair to say that even from Thatcher’s point of view (which was more or less the same as the majority of Unionist opinion) –. that the hunger strikers had to be defeated and isolated as ‘terrorists’ rather than reconciled  – her policy failed, and the fall out arguably turned SF into a credible political force which in turn perhaps inevitably and eventually led them into government in Northern Ireland.

But Thatcher, the bête noire of Irish republicans, also signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which arguably made peace possible years later. On reflection Nationalists, and indeed Unionists and Irish Republicans, should give her credit for that (although perhaps not publicly). Just as with David Trimble years later with the Good Friday Agreement, Thatcher did the necessary ‘heavy lifting’.

She was a formidable and principled political opponent to Irish republicanism who sought to defend her ‘own’ country against a determined ‘insurgency’ and she played a significant role, both intentionally an unintentionally, in bringing about what seems to have turned out as ‘peace’. She should be viewed in that considered perspective, rather than through the lens of emotional self-indulgence which is bring so over-used by her opponents and detractors.

When we move off Ireland to Britain and the economy, the levels of hypocrisy from trendy, lefty bandwagon-ing ‘socialists’ sitting pretty in post-Thatcher Britain is running on overdrive as they seek to vilify her at the same time as hypocritical Tories (who stabbed her in the back) seek to deify her. It seems there is little chance of Thatcher’s legacy being considered simply on its merits.

So far, a quality debate. Not.