Huh ? "Thatcher did more for Ireland than other UK leaders"

[FunkyLeprechaun]

7. I'm slightly bit confused about it

But if you look at the Tories/Labour throughout the eighties and nineties there were leaps and bounds in repairing Anglo-Irish relations compared to the decades prior to that (I grew up in Northern Ireland in the summertime in the eighties and I remember tanks in Belfast and seeing British soldiers on patrol in the streets and I've returned on and off since then, I was just in Belfast last week, and I've seen nothing like that since the 1980s).

I wish Thatcher had approached the Hunger Strikes issue differently- I was very anti-Thatcher because of that. As I grew up and learned more about the Hunger Strikes (my great aunt witnessed the hunger strikes as she worked in the H blocks in the kitchens during that time and wrote a letter to my sister who was researching Irish history about it), the IRA, and 7 years ago I took an Irish history class in Boston and it was really interesting. I'm proud of my heritage (I have an Irish name, I look Irish (red hair, freckles, green eyes) and embrace the uniqueness of being British and Irish at the same time (The Republic of Ireland includes Northern Ireland in its constitution so anyone born in NI is automatically an Irish citizen regardless of their background- so they are Irish and British at the same time).

Thatcher's policies did affect Northern Ireland politics for sure, but I'm not sure whether it was good or bad for civilians (I think she handled the IRA/Hunger Strikes badly but it was certainly during her term that Anglo-Irish relations were beginning to improve and led to the Good Friday Accords).