Official papers from 1985 show how the civil service devised policies to freeze out those who supported terrorism and boycotted government, avoiding face-to-face meetings between Sinn Fein elected representatives and ministers as well as withholding documents unless specifically requested.
On the day of his retirement after 38 years in the NI Civil Service, Sir Ken Bloomfield circulated a blunt assessment of mistakes made in Northern Ireland in a valedictory memo that is made public this morning under the 20 Year Rule: the Anglo-Irish Agreement was “flawed”; the distinction between the “legal” Sinn Fein and the proscribed IRA was “farcical”; as well as his views on the delay implementing Direct Rule between 1969 and 1972.
WITH REPORTS that the 1988 Sinn Fein gagging order was linked to the bombing of the head of the NI Civil Service Sir Kenneth Bloomfield’s house, an NIO press officer feared retaliation from ‘some dickhead in West Belfast’ who might believe he supported the silencing of the republican politicians
BREVITY AND CLARITY – that’s what the head of the NI Civil Service asked of government communications in a ‘Plain English’ memo circulated in May 1988. “It is an important skill to be able to present complex issues in clear and simple ways … Even in simple letters, a good short word is generally to be preferred to a mediocre longer one.”
