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History > UK > Northern Ireland

 

The Troubles    1960s-1990s

 

Roy Mason   1924-2015

 

 

 

 

Roy Mason outside No 10 in 1974.

 

Photograph: Roger Jackson/Getty Images

 

Lord Mason of Barnsley obituary

G

Monday 20 April 2015    16.15 BST

Last modified on Friday 6 May 2016    00.54 BST

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/20/lord-mason-of-barnsley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roy Mason, Baron Mason of Barnsley    1924-2015

 

Labour MP and minister

determined to take on the IRA by force

during his time

as Northern Ireland secretary

in the 1970s

 

The Labour politician Roy Mason (...)

was a small and dapper

but pugnacious man,

proud of his mining heritage,

whose characteristic pout of the lips

before delivering a bon mot

could set most latterday

National Union of Mineworkers gatherings

and any Irish nationalists

quivering with rage.

 

Mason’s effect on Ulster unionists

was quite different.

 

His aggressive style

and the pro-security

services policies he pursued

as secretary of state

for Northern Ireland

from 1976 to 1979

were welcomed by unionists

as a protection

against creeping integration

into the whole of Ireland.

 

He was, the unionist

Lord (John) Laird said:

“Like a hard wee rubber ball,

he kept bouncing.”

 

And he seemed

to be playing ball for unionists,

although not reliably

enough for them to support him

when the chance

of a Conservative government

beckoned.

 

Laird remembered one unionist MP

summing Mason up by saying:

“He isn’t an Englishman.

He’s a Yorkshireman.”

 

Lord Mason of Barnsley,

as he became in 1987,

would have loved the epitaph.

 

When James Callaghan took office

as Labour prime minister in April 1976,

following the unexpected

resignation of Harold Wilson,

he appointed Mason, who had been

defence secretary since 1974,

as the fourth Northern Ireland secretary.

 

The first to hold the post,

William Whitelaw,

had been appointed in 1972

by the Tory prime minister

Edward Heath

when he imposed direct rule

from Westminster.

 

In 1974,

Whitelaw and Heath

had established

the Sunningdale Executive,

the first experiment

in power-sharing,

between Protestants

in the Ulster Unionist party

led by Brian Faulkner,

and Catholics

in the Social Democratic

and Labour party

led by Gerry Fitt.

 

Wilson

became prime minister

as the loyalist workers’ strike

led by the Rev Ian Paisley

was threatening Sunningdale.

 

It was the refusal of Wilson,

on the advice of Mason

as defence secretary,

to use the army

against the strikers

that destroyed Sunningdale.

 

(...)

 

Essentially,

Mason concentrated on security,

aiming to return control of policing

from the army

to the Royal Ulster Constabulary

and break the Provisional IRA

by force.

 

Mason, as defence secretary,

had introduced

the SAS into Armagh

and allowed its increased use

against IRA units.

 

He also pursued a hardline policy

of removing political status

from prisoners convicted

of terrorist crimes.

 

That led to the dirty protests

inside the H-Blocks

in the Maze prison.

 

Mason earned a reputation

summed up

by a Provisional IRA slogan

during the Queen’s 1977 Jubilee

visit to Northern Ireland:

“Stonemason will not break us.”

 

By the time he left office,

many felt that Mason

had come close

to breaking the IRA.

 

However, a decade later

it was clear that his policies had,

instead, weakened

the constitutional Catholics

in the SDLP.

 

The dirty protest was the curtain-raiser

for the IRA hunger strike

under the Thatcher government,

which seriously undermined the SDLP,

partly because of the sympathy

for IRA political violence

rather than SDLP constitutional tactics

that Mason’s policies helped create

among Catholics.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/20/lord-mason-of-barnsley

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/20/
lord-mason-of-barnsley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Reuters > Factbox: Fraught Anglo-Irish conflict goes back centuries

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/17/us-ireland-
queen-britain-relations-idUSTRE74G2UI20110517

 

 

 

 

 

Reuters > Timeline: Long road to Northern Irish settlement

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/17/us-ireland-
queen-north-idUSTRE74G2UJ20110517

 

 

 

 

 

Reuters > Timeline: Worst bomb attacks on mainland Britain        1974-2001

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/16/us-britain-
security-bombings-idUSTRE74F30T20110516

 

 

 

 

 

BBC > Timeline: Northern Ireland's road to peace        1987-2007

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4072261.stm

 

 

 

 

 

BBC > Ireland timeline        1914-2011

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/country_profiles/1038669.stm

 

 

 

 

 

The Guardian > Northern Ireland timeline        1919-2009

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/mar/08/northern-ireland-timeline 

 

 

 

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