At the end of a tumultuous year of protests against her
Anglo-Irish Agreement, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, visited
Belfast just before Christmas. In this report for Good Evening Ulster Norman
Stockton interviews her, pointing out that she was unable to conduct a
walkabout due to fears that she is now a target for Loyalist paramilitaries as
well as Republican ones.
Thatcher defends the Agreement as an attempt to
"find a way of living together for a better future" instead of
focusing on historical hatreds. She says that she prefers to think of the
positives which have come out of the Agreement and believes that it will
succeed in the long run. She also stresses repeatedly that the problems in
Northern Ireland can only be solved by the people themselves coming together to
determine their future.
Opposition to the
Agreement would continue into 1987 and beyond, but in many ways the highwater
mark of the protests was Ian Paisley's protest in front of Mrs Thatcher at the
European Parliament earlier in December 1986. Throughout the following year
there was a tail-off in protest activity and Unionist politicians eventually
began to engage again with government ministers.