Licence to kill
In an interview last friday British Home Secretary Douglas Hurd
declared that the IRA were ``professional killers'' who kill as their
``occupation'' and for ``pleasure'', ``no political solution will cope
with that, they just have to be extirpated.'' Hurd was interviewed en
route to a conference of European justice ministers where he was
going to argue against the relaxation of border controls in 1992
because of the ``threat of international terrorism''.
In Ireland, Hurd's remarks were interpreted as a dramatic change in
British policy, the search for a ``political solution'' was being
shelved at the expense of a purely military solution. Unionists, who
have been consistently calling for an extension of the shoot-to-kill
tactics, including OUP spokesperson Ken Maginnis who earlier this
month had been advocating extensive deployment of the SAS, expressed
the hope that Hurd's remarks did herald a change of policy. Southern
opposition politicians objected that the remarks were ``unhelpful''
(Peter Barry, Fine Gael) and that only ``constitutional politics''
could ``destroy the IRA'' (Geraldine Kennedy, Progressive Democrats).
Phoblacht March 16th 1989
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)