[Lynch Judging by the amount of space it…]
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Lynch Judging by the amount of space it occupied in last week's papers, one would think that Jack Lynch - Southern Ireland's Prime Ministerwas about to invade the North and give battle to the British army.
Ex-Colditz prisoner and current Tory spokesman on Northern Ireland Airey Neave said that Lynch's recent speech "was sweet music in the ears of the IRA" , that it was a blunder and a ghastly CI0L Less forthright Northern Ireland Secretary State was somewhat less forthright-the speech he said was "unhelpful" (although he added that "talk of an amnesty for those convicted on carefully gathered evidence can do nothing but give succour to the law breakers").
But Lynch's speech was actually nothing more than a reiteration of the policy which his party-Fianna Fail-has held for some time: a call on the British to declare their intention of someday withdrawing, and a hope that someday Ireland will also be reunited.
Amnesty Lynch did introduce indirectly one new note-the possibility of an amnesty for IRA prisoners in the South.
Since amnesty is currently the foulest word in the Northern Ireland Office's vocabulary and is. so anathema to them, any mention of it predictably got their backs up and so produced the outcry from Mason.
What particularly irked British politicians though was not what Lynch said, since Collapse But since was willing to were likely anyway.
But Ly: they've heard this same nationalist rhetoric for years from Fianna Fail, but the timing of the speech.
Delicate moment
The Irish Prime Minister delivered his speech on Irish Radio last Sunday week (January 8) seemingly at a delicate moment in the talks Roy Mason was conducting with the Unionists and Catholic bourgeois parties in the North.
These talks, reportedly aimed at securing communal agreement to establish a toothless local authority, were making predictably little progress-the Unionists wanted more or less total control, as the first step towards a restored Stormont; the SDLP wanted a definite proportion of seats in any arrangement in exchange for their support.
neith er party budge the talks to collapse Ich's speech provided the perfect oppor-