Nicholas Fenn

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British prime minister Margaret Thatcher with taoiseach Charles Haughey on the steps of 10 Downing Street, London, in May 1980. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images
John Bowman: 1989 a calm year in Anglo-Irish relations

It was not a high-profile year in Anglo-Irish relations. Everything seemed becalmed in 1989. Yet Charles Haughey was constantly being asked questions (...)

Taoiseach Charles Haughey was told the British were not committed to the Anglo-Irish Agreement solely for security reasons. Photograph: Matt Kavanagh
British were in North as ‘one million Irishmen’ wanted them, Haughey told

The British were in Northern Ireland only because “one million Irishmen” wanted them there, a British ambassador told taoiseach Charlie Haughey 30 yea(...)

Margaret Thatcher published her memoirs in 1993, whereas Haughey (pictured with the former British prime minister in May 1980) never wrote his. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images
Declassified files help to correct ‘distorting’ narrative of Thatcher’s memoirs

That the official records from the Department of the Taoiseach and of Foreign Affairs for 1988 are becoming available only now after 30 years leaves t(...)

Ian Paisley and James Molyneaux in Derry: Molyneaux, a diffident and taciturn figure, was ultimately not able or not willing to hold a direct meeting with Haughey. Photograph: Peter Thursfield
Haughey made repeated efforts to meet Molyneaux without success

Taoiseach Charles Haughey made repeated efforts to set up a meeting with the unionist leader James Molyneaux during 1988 without success. The two mai(...)

File photo from September 1994 of former priest Patrick Ryan whose extradition to the UK had been sought by Margaret Thatcher’s government. Photograph: Martin McCullough/PA Wire
Thatcher furious with Haughey over failure to extradite ‘mad priest’ over IRA claims

A furious British prime minister Margaret Thatcher rounded on taoiseach Charles Haughey for delays in extraditing Fr Patrick Ryan – an Irish priest wa(...)

Mairéad Farrell: one of the three members of an IRA active service unit, shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar. Photograph: Pacemaker
Ireland secretly reassured Britain it would not go to European Court over Gibraltar killings

The Irish government secretly reassured the British government in 1988 it would not take a case to the European Court of Human Rights challenging the (...)

Margaret Thatcher visiting the site of the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, a year in which security concerns dominated her dealings with the Irish government. Photograph: Peter Thursfield
1988: A year of constant bickering between Haughey and Thatcher

Throughout 1988 Anglo-Irish relations seemed vulnerable to a surprise ambush. Taoiseach Charles Haughey and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher w(...)

Taoiseach Charles Haughey at Dublin Airport in December 1988 on his return from an EU summit in Rhodes. Further tensions surfaced there with Margaret Thatcher. Photograph: Eddie Kelly
Haughey rejected criticism for not condemning violence in US speeches

A number of speeches delivered in the United States by taoiseach Charles Haughey in April 1988 in which he did not condemn violence provoked an angry (...)

Taoiseach Charles Haughey and President Mary Robinson greeted by Lieutenant General James Parker, Chief of Staff, on arrival outside the GPO in 1991. Photograph: Jack McManus
‘Male chauvinist’ Ireland: 5 things we learned from latest British state papers

The release of British Government files from the UK National Archives in Kew are often as of much interest to Irish historians as they are to British (...)

Newly elected UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher on a visit to Girdwood barracks in Belfast, 1979
Margaret Thatcher doubted Irish resolve to combat terrorism

Former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher complained at the height of the Troubles that the IRA saw the Republic as a safe haven and that the Garda w(...)

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