Perception of ‘killing terror by kindness’ risked IRA threat
British papers: 1980s files reveal efforts to tackle west Belfast poverty and paramilitarism
One of many heavy machine guns that were in the hands of the IRA and were recovered by Northern Ireland security forces. File photograph: Paul Faith/PA Photo
Many people in Catholic west Belfast had become alienated from “normal civilised behaviour” in the late 1980s, Northern Ireland’s most senior civil servant said in a memo written in 1987.
The memo, from the head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, Sir Ken Bloomfield, is included in the British government papers released today.