John Major privately admitted IRA could not be militarily defeated, newly released 1992 memo reveals

Candid moment came one year after mortar attack on 10 Downing Street

The then prime minister John Major (L) and the then taoiseach Albert Reynolds during a news conference in Downing Street (PA)

John Major privately admitted that he did not believe the IRA could be defeated militarily, a newly published memo from a 1992 meeting in Downing St has revealed.

According to the Irish government’s memo, the then prime minister also warned that if the republicans thought Britain was afflicted with “battle fatigue”, they were wrong.

The comments were made during a meeting in February 1992 between Major, the newly elected taoiseach Albert Reynolds, and other senior Irish ministers.

The discussion in No 10, which came a matter of weeks before the UK general election, was held amid a series of talks between the main political parties in Northern Ireland.

“Do you think we can defeat the IRA?” the taoiseach asked Major directly.

The prime minister responded: “Militarily that would be very difficult: I would not say this in public, of course, but in private I would say possibly no.”

The record reveals the frustration felt by the British and Irish governments over the lack of progress made following previous talks.

Early efforts on the Irish side to have Sinn Fein included in future settlement negotiations also unfolded throughout the conversation between the two leaders.

“My own impression is that the talks are not getting anywhere,” Reynolds said.

The prime minister, referring to the then secretary of state for Northern Ireland, replied: “Peter Brooke thinks they have some life.”

The taoiseach responded: “I would say that here... but not outside,” adding that he believed the IRA was “serious” about making peace after Sinn Fein had published its discussion document Towards a Lasting Peace just days earlier.

Major said: “If we pursue that, we could run into very serious opposition here: you know that more bombs are threatened in Whitehall. If they are serious, they are certainly going the wrong way about it.

“They will not get peace by putting bombs in Whitehall – rather the opposite. Why do they behave as they are now behaving if they want peace?”

Reynolds then said to Major that “they always do that”. (The IRA had launched a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street during a cabinet meeting in 1991, a year before the meeting from which the memo was taken.)

Reynolds continued: “Before a cessation of violence, they always become more active. They always like it to appear that if a ceasefire comes about, then they have not acted from weakness.”

He added: “Is there any way in which we could look at the language, with a view to moving things along?”, seemingly in reference to the Sinn Fein document.

The British prime minister said: “I know Gerry Adams and one or two others are involved in this. They think we are suffering from battle fatigue. They’re wrong. They could be engaged in a very cynical game.”

Further on into the meeting, the taoiseach said he thought “peace may well be in sight”, but warned that the two governments were dealing with a “divided community”.

“We must draw up structures to accommodate these differences, and these structures must command confidence. I am talking about the longer term – there is no instant solution,” he said.

Major replied: “We cannot suddenly move to an end product, but we are walking down a path – and we can’t stop: we can’t stop talking – or walking.

“Twenty-two years is a long time: there are a lot of dead bodies in between.”

He told the parties present: “I have the misfortune not to be an Irishman, but I understand the importance of symbolism. We must be prepared to do unconventional things.”