Before the 1979 election, with Airey Neave as Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary assisted in the Commons by Ian Gow (later Mrs Thatcher’s brilliant PPS) , the Conservative party had a policy for the Province that was designed to strengthen the Union by establishing a new system of local government instead of trying to recreate the devolved power-sharing government that had broken down in 1974. Alistair Lexden, who was Neave’s political adviser, recalled this now almost forgotten policy—abandoned after Neave’s murder—in a letter published in The Spectator on January 30.
Sir: Charles Moore draws attention to the bond between Airey Neave and Ian Gow (Notes, 23 Jan.). If Neave had lived to become Northern Ireland Secretary, as Mrs Thatcher intended, Gow would have been his Minister of State. ‘Ian will be with us’, he told me more than once as we worked on his plans. The objective was to establish a new system of local government in the province and jettison devolution, to which we were all were totally opposed. If Stormont had become history, Mrs Thatcher would have been in a much stronger position to crush demands for devolution eleswhere. The Neave/Gow policy would have restored unionism to the central place that it once occupied in the Conservative party.
Alistair Lexden
Political Adviser to Airey Neave 1977-79
House of Lords