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30th May 1974: Downing Street
Harold Wilson and Merlyn Rees sat in Wilson's private office on the second floor. The mood was bleak and the pressure on both men was visible. Two days earlier the Ulster Workers Council had forced the ruling executive at Stormont to resign and Westminster to re-impose direct rule.
The powerlessness of both Tory and Labour Governments to bring some kind of peace to the embattled province had been cruelly highlighted and certainly for the two men in that room the options open to them were slender and lacked any hope.
The only choice open to them was immeasurable in its magnitude and would lead to international condemnation but both men had had enough. As Wilson picked up the phone, Rees wept.