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The chapter is highly critical of the Wilson cabinet's failure to defend Northern Ireland's first consociational experiment, the Sunningdale Agreement, although it concedes that this agreement may have had an inevitable encounter with a coroner. It analyses the government's reaction to the 1974 strike by the Ulster Workers Council, which led to the demise of Sunningdale. The chapter also illustrates the limits of the Callaghan government's policies in Northern Ireland, including its flawed experiments in ‘Ulsterization’, ‘normalization’, and ‘criminalization’.

This chapter considers BBC reporting on the work of the security services in Northern Ireland between 1976 and the fall of the Labour Government in 1979. It addresses the tenure of Northern Ireland Secretary of State Roy Mason and considers his aggressive tactic in trying to defeat the IRA. Particular attention is paid to programmes that criticised British security policy, especially the interrogation techniques which were widely condemned as cruel and degrading. The role of television in undermining British policy is considered.

This chapter shows how over the course of 1976 plans were prepared to adjust security policy in line with Rees’s desire for police primacy, leading to the professionalization of the RUC and a marked change in the responsibilities and actions of the security forces. By placing greater emphasis on police work and proceeding through the courts, as well as limiting the way in which the army operated, it was hoped that support for paramilitary groups would be undermined. In September 1976 Rees moved to the Home Office and Roy Mason took his place. Some authors have depicted this changing of the guard as heralding a more confident and aggressive security policy. While his rhetorical efforts were effective in securing confidence from unionists, his contribution to security policy was minimal.

This chapter analyses the politics of memoir-writing by British Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland (SOSNI), and their interpretations and reflections upon their terms in office in Belfast. For many, the period of governing Northern Ireland was not central to their careers; however, for others it was a critical experience, which shaped their entire political lives. The chapter examines the process of appointing the SOSNI, and their reflections upon policy-making, and their relations with the Northern Irish parties, civil servants and the Cabinet in London. The chapter concentrates upon the following incumbents: Merlyn Rees, Roy Mason, James Prior, Mo Mowlam, Peter Mandelson and Peter Hain.

This chapter examines the period between 1976, when the limits of British policy in Northern Ireland were apparent, and 1979, when an increasingly disillusioned Fitt resigned from the party. With less and less likelihood of influencing policy in the North, it was perhaps inevitable that the SDLP would focus its attention on its nationalist objectives. There was a growing gap between the party executive and the disillusionment of grass-roots supporters. The disillusionment and dissatisfaction was attributed to the apparent drift of the British government to a more security-oriented policy. The party executive responded to the disillusionment with the Facing Reality policy document (1977) which called on the British government to ‘govern or go’, and the 1979 election manifesto, Strengthen your Voice, which was a scathing attack on British policy in Northern Ireland. The document was remarkable in that there was barely a mention of the term ‘socialist’ and it lacked any guiding left ideology, signalling the SDLP’s position as Catholic nationalist party.