ABSTRACT
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the British (and American) governments publicly refused to talk with the members of the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army (IRA), which they outlawed as terrorists. At the same time, Israel and the United States refused contact with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), labeled terrorists, and Israel even made it a crime to talk with its members. Also in the same period, the South African (and US) governments banned the African National Congress (ANC), classified it as a terrorist group, and prohibited all contact with it.
