Marija had seized her husband’s left hand and was clutching it with grim resignation to her lap as the Comet 4 began to roll.
Chapter 76
“I stand before you today,” Margaret Thatcher declaimed, “at Her Majesty’s pleasure to make a statement of record concerning the events of the last seventy-two hours.”
There had been a minute or so of bedlam after she had uttered the word ‘resignation’. On the benches opposite the Government there had been brief ecstatic jubilation quickly soured by the realisation that the Angry Widow was not about to step down. Behind her there had been gratifyingly loud, persistent and anguished cries of “No”, and “Never!” As always when the House of Commons was enraged and frightened the hubbub subsided slowly, reluctantly.
Boys will be boys…
“What I say to the House today is based on the latest information that I have to hand. This morning I have received briefings from the Chiefs of Staff of our gallant armed forces, the Director Generals of the Security Service and the Secret Intelligence Service, the United States Ambassador to the Court of Blenheim Palace, and of course, my Cabinet colleagues. I have resolved to communicate everything that we know to the limit of disclosing information which might be of aid to our enemies.”
Margaret Thatcher had prepared notes that morning and committed them to memory in the thirty minutes before she walked into the chamber of the House of Commons.
“First, before I begin it may be helpful to Members of this House and to the gentlemen of the press to be aware of events scheduled after I leave this place later this afternoon.” The chamber was very nearly silent now. “I shall be travelling to Brize Norton this afternoon to attend Her Majesty the Queen when she greets the President of the United States of America. Approximately an hour after the President lands Her Majesty will welcome home our brave heroes from the Battle of Malta. The men of HMS Talavera and HMS Yarmouth will be weary after their ordeal and their journey home. After they have been received by Her Majesty they will be allowed to rest on their laurels this evening. Tomorrow morning there will be a grand parade in Oxford to celebrate their courage and peerless service to their country, and Her Majesty will award well-earned medals for valour at Trinity College. President Kennedy and his entourage will be our honoured guests at that celebration.”
“Here! Here!”
“At approximately the same time our brave boys are landing at Brize Norton, a United States Air Force aircraft will be transporting the members of the so-called ‘Irish Peace Delegation’ to England. The Foreign Secretary plans to meet that ‘delegation’ when it disembarks at RAF Cheltenham and to conduct preliminary discussions with its members overnight at that air base.”
There was no question of allowing essentially uninvited, unwanted visitors from the Republic of Ireland, to set foot on English soil outside the perimeter of RAF Cheltenham while President Kennedy and his entourage were in the United Kingdom.
Without being aware of it Margaret Thatcher smoothed down her skirt before stepping again to the dispatch box — in this new reconvened Oxford chamber the dispatch box of yore was a simple college lectern — and leaning a little towards her political foes.
“I will begin my briefing to the House with the situation in Ireland,” she warned, her expression turning sour. “Over the weekend a major crackdown by Special Branch, the Security Service and the police has resulted in a large number of arrests. However, I have been warned that a small number of Irish Republican Army fanatics are still at large in our country. Moreover, I am informed that these terrorists may possess modern weapons including anti-aircraft missiles. The fact that the Dublin Government is as apparently exercised by this development as the UAUK is, in my view, a small shaft of light in the otherwise uniformly dark outlook for Anglo-Irish relations. The ‘peace delegation’ from Dublin comes to England at a time of heightened tensions in Ulster and indications that the IRA is on the verge of mounting a renewed terroristic offensive both in Ulster and on the mainland.”
The spirits of Members of Parliament invariably dropped when Ireland or Ulster was mentioned. Two men sitting close to Enoch Powell rose to their feet to attract the Deputy Speaker’s eye.
“I shall not be giving way!” Margaret Thatcher announced with a brutally dismissive wave of her right hand. The ‘Unionist’, or Northern Ireland part of the former Conservative and Unionist Party of the United Kingdom had to a man walked into uncompromising opposition to the UAUK in recent weeks and she did not mourn their defection. “The opinions of those members who worry about ‘Irish matters’ before they worry about any other deserve to be heard; but today we are here to deal with matters of great import not just to the wellbeing of the one-and-a-half million people of the six counties of Ulster, but to the wellbeing of the nearly forty millions who survive in the rest of the United Kingdom!”
This prompted angry and bitter retorts from across the chamber; which she ignored magisterially giving every appearance of never having heard them in the first place.
“In the South Atlantic you will have learned that the Argentine Republic, presumably believing that it could take advantage of our ‘distractions’ elsewhere in the World, has seized by force the Falkland Islands and South Georgia.” Margaret Thatcher made herself slow down, and to take one, two, three slow breaths before she continued. “I will say nothing more about this matter at this time other than that if the Argentine Government thinks, for a single minute, that I will let this monstrous invasion of British sovereign soil stand unchallenged, then they have made a very bad mistake. My Government and I will not forget, nor easily forgive what has happened in the South Atlantic. While our brave boys in the Mediterranean were fighting to preserve the values and the honour of our country the Argentine stabbed us in the back. I say again, this will not be allowed to stand!”
The Prime Minister was a little off put by the prolonged cheering and stamping of feet not just at her back among her own supporters but, to an extent, that which came from the opposite side of the House.
“In the Mediterranean I have the honour to report that Cyprus is now back in British hands. The Task Force Commander reports that organised enemy resistance has ceased…”
There was more stamping of feet and inane cheering.
“But now I must speak of Malta.”
The House of Commons fell quiet.
Chapter 77
Parcels of land around Cleeve Hill, the highest point of the Cotswolds at 1,083 feet, had been taken over by the Army during the 1945 war and never completely returned to cultivation, or to livestock grazing in the years since. However, trees grew and clumped in the valleys between Bishop’s Cleeve, Prestbury and Winchcombe and patches of scrub and overgrown pasture provided cover of a sort for a man who did not want to be seen. None of this had been known to Seamus McCormick as he drove away from the scene of the murders of the two Redcaps on the village green at Bishop’s Cleeve.