But if they refuse to destroy them, then we will have no other decision to make but to destroy the IRA ourselves. We will exterminate the IRA!”1 In the second week of December two Sinn Féin leaders, Gerry Adams and Danny Morrison, took part in a phone-in programme broadcast over LBC, a radio station in London. The programme was not carried in the Republic. Because of his inflammatory remarks in Northern Ireland the U.S. State Department revoked a visa it had granted to Ian Paisley. Nineteen eighty-one wound down to a close. As the Christmas decorations went up, posters depicting the hunger strikers still clung to lampposts. Men and women on their way to the nearest IRA recruiting station or Sinn Féin office saluted them. Public support for Irish republicanism had never been so strong. January of 1982 was the coldest in living memory. Ireland had its first significant snowfall in almost two decades. Cars skidded off roads and trees broke beneath the weight of snow cover. Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald was out of the country on holiday.
