Word: thatchers
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...perhaps the best Christmas present that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Irish Prime Minister Charles Haughey and the often warring, always uneasy Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland could have received. Last week, 53 days after they had begun to fast, seven Irish Republican terrorists imprisoned in the gray concrete H-block cells of Belfast's Maze Prison started to eat again. The end to the long hunger strike came as at least one of the prisoners lay near death, an event that authorities feared would inevitably have sparked a new wave of I.R.A. bombings and shootings throughout Northern...
...hunger strikers' capitulation was widely seen as a psychological victory for Thatcher, who from the very start refused to bow to the prisoners' demands, principally that they be treated as special-category political prisoners rather than as ordinary convicts. When the seven first refused food, on Oct. 27, they spoke of fasting "until death." Their privations and the frequent reports of their worsening health turned them into near martyrs and quickly raised sectarian tensions throughout the troubled North. Catholics demanded at least a compromise, while Protestants insisted that there be "no surrender." Thatcher held firm...
...strike was not halted by any secret deal. At a summit meeting in Dublin earlier this month Thatcher and Haughey had agreed on how to proceed. The striking prisoners were then sent a 32-page British position paper that made it clear that London would never grant them political status. The document, however, did indicate that Britain was prepared to consider prison reforms once the fast had ended. There was a hint that some of the strikers' other demands -such as the right to wear civilian clothes -might in the end be granted...
...turning point came early in the week, when Tomas Cardinal O'Fiaich, the Catholic Primate of All Ireland, sent a telegram to Thatcher pleading with her to intervene. The Iron Lady's refusal to do so, combined with her plea that the strikers "take the course of life rather than the course of death," apparently convinced them that they could not win. On Thursday evening they called off the protest. The next day, 33 other Republican prisoners, who had been fasting for up to 19 days in support of the original seven, gave...
...Jimmy" to "Carter," one name, in a sense, being the polar opposite of the other. The first law of nicknaming, then, is that the term must arise from the heart, from some irrepressible popular urge to bring a public figure closer to the family bosom. Britain's Margaret Thatcher was aided immeasurably in her campaign by being known as Maggie; "Ted" Heath and "Sunny Jim" Callaghan were similarly embraced. So was Rhodesia's Ian Smith, who was known as "Good Old Smitty" to his white supporters, if not to blacks or to Mrs. Smith. Thailand's former...