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The ex-prime minister also said of the IRA: “Let them use the bomb and the bullet” as the British would “beat them eventually”.<\/p>\n
Mr Johnson was talking on the phone to an Irish official in February 1996, four days after the IRA London Docklands bombing which killed two people and injured more than 100.<\/p>\n
The official writes that Mr Johnson – then deputy editor of the Daily Telegraph – criticised then-Premier John Major’s response to the atrocity.<\/p>\n
He notes in the now declassified archive document: “Implicit in Johnson’s argument was ‘let the nationalists go to hell’.<\/p>\n
He claimed the IRA were in 1994 at the point of defeat [but I said] there is no security or military solution.<\/p>\n
“This was not an argument he was prepared to accept.”<\/p>\n
He says he “pointed out” that a “hard egg” approach suggested by Mr Johnson “can only lead to broken heads”, arguing it would not “minimise the chances of another act of violence”.<\/p>\n