Royal blown up by IRA 'backed united Ireland'

Lord Mountbatten, the only British royal assassinated by the IRA, privately supported a united Ireland, according to newly released secret papers. The Queen's cousin offered the Irish ambassador to London help in securing the peaceful unification of Ireland in 1972.

According to papers just placed in the National Archives in Dublin, Mountbatten told Irish ambassador Donal O'Sullivan that he hoped the policies of Edward Heath's government would ultimately achieve Irish unity.

In the papers O'Sullivan is quoted as saying: "Lord Mountbatten said he wished me to know that he and many of his friends have been deeply impressed by the positive Dublin reaction to the Heath initiative. They hope that this can be developed into a 'major advance towards the final solution'. Reunification is the only eventual solution. If there is anything he can do to help he will be most happy to cooperate."

Seven years after their meeting the Provisional IRA blew up the 79-year-old's boat. Mountbatten and two teenage boys, one of them his grandson, were killed in the explosion off Mullaghmore in Co Sligo. Lady Brabourne, 83, died from her injuries the following day.

Meanwhile, state papers just released in Northern Ireland reveal that the British government considered locking Ian Paisley up and charging him with conspiracy. Officials discussed arresting Northern Ireland's current first minister over his alleged role in the 1977 loyalist general strike, which had been called to try to restore unionist majority rule. The minutes of a meeting on May 10 1977 reveal that the Northern Ireland Office under-secretary Brian Cubbon, along with private secretaries at the NIO, believed Paisley was "associated with paramilitaries" and might have to be arrested for conspiracy.

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