I visited the home page of The Ulster Herald, a Northern Irish newspaper, and scrolled through the front page looking for a prototypically Irish headline to catch my eye. I didn’t have far to look. Midway down the page, I found this gem:

“Maginnis ‘Confirmed’ Thatcher Ordered Drumnakilly Shootings.”

Even after the death of Margaret Thatcher, the most-bedeviled woman on the whole of the Irish island, her nefarious reputation continues to cause ripples in the news even today. According to the article, Thatcher and the British law enforcement team of Downing Street ordered the executions of three IRA members twenty-five years ago, in response to an IRA bus bombing in 1988.

While it never was officially known who was behind the deaths of these three men, politician Ken Maginnis reported in a documentary that the order came from Thatcher and the British government.

The presence of this article on the front page of The Ulster Herald surprised me, though I realize that it probably shouldn’t have. Twenty-five years seems like a long time to be bringing up a cold case, but in the scheme of Northern Irish history, when 1690 feels like yesterday, twenty-five years is nothing. What’s more, the actual events of the deaths are of secondary importance. While it is tragic that eight British soldiers were killed in the bombing, and that three IRA members were killed several weeks afterwards, the actual names of the men are glossed over, and their lives are treated as symbols.

All that mattered here was that the British government was exercising unnecessary control and policing all aspects of Northern Irish life, even down to the ending of it. Downing Street could easily explain away these killings as protection of the state, just as Washington can explain away targeted drone strikes as violence against clear enemies of the US and its interests. Specific, retaliatory violence is nothing new in our world, and it is a sad truth that while the Drumnakilly shootings were not the first instance of it, they will also not be the last.

While I came to Northern Ireland with less than wholehearted adoration for the Iron Lady, the absolute vitriol the Irish and Northern Irish Republicans have for her is shocking. I can’t think of a single person off the top of my head who Americans hate with as much power as the Irish hate Thatcher. Even Osama bin Ladin doesn’t seem to quite cut it. Twenty-five years is a long time, but it is far from long enough to allow the powerful hatred of an entire section of the Northern Irish population to cool.

Certainly not if revelations like this continue to emerge.