The late Brian Faulkner, then Northern Ireland prime minister, was pressing Britain strongly in the autumn before Bloody Sunday to make a security solution a priority and mount a major military offensive against the IRA in Belfast and Derry.
But the prime minister, Mr Edward Heath, according to documents disclosed at the inquiry in Derry yesterday, said his government regarded it as essential that tougher security measures should be accompanied by real evidence of determination to proceed with political advance.
The minutes of a meeting between the two prime ministers at Downing Street on October 7th, 1971, record that both men agreed that the situation in the North was grave, and Mr Faulkner warned that "without an immediate breakthrough in dealing with the terrorists, the administration of government would shortly become impossible".
However, Mr Heath said it was essential that any immediate increase in the military effort should be accompanied by parallel political moves.
They had hoped that Mr Faulkner would be prepared to consider broadening his government "to include republicans who had undertaken for the period of the emergency to forswear any active political campaigning for a united Ireland".
Mr Faulkner, however, "said he could not contemplate leading or serving in a government of Northern Ireland which included republicans, whether or not they eschewed the use of violence in bringing about a unified Ireland. Nor would he serve in a ministry composed according to proportional principles".
In neither case could a workable government be formed since its component parts would be too disparate, he declared. If the British government had it in mind to propose the inclusion of the republicans in the government "he would have to tell his colleagues forthwith and they would act accordingly".