BRIT MPs demanded to withdraw from Ireland to let “the Irish get on with butchering each other” in response to the killing of two soldiers in Belfast.

Newly declassified records, released under the 30-year rule, show the murders of undercover corporals David Wood and Derek Howes in 1988 provoked outrage at Westminster.

The two soldiers were surrounded by a crowd when they drove into the funeral cortege of an IRA man who had been killed by loyalist terror nut Michael Stone days earlier.

The confidential note, entitled “mood at Westminster”, was written by Irish Embassy official Richard Ryan after he spoke to some 20 MPs of “all shades” days after the murders in March 1988.

The diplomat said many MPs who did not take an active interest in Irish affairs became “puffed with outrage and conviction” about doing something in response to the killings.

He said suggestions ranged from demands for a tougher and revised policy of policing funerals to a demand for internment throughout Ireland and, in “more cases than previously”, to a demand to setting a date for withdrawal from Ireland “in order to let the Irish get on with butchering each other”.

The two plain-clothed British soldiers inadvertently drove into the path of the funeral before mourners pulled them from the car. The soldiers were beaten before being shot dead by members of the IRA.

The murders happened days after the funerals of the three IRA members who were shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar.

Mr Ryan said: “It has to be said that no amount of violence toward the Ulster Defence Regiment, the RUC and Northern Irish or Irish civilians of any religious persuasion could come anywhere near provoking the same reaction in Britain to Saturday’s killings — and the sort of killings they were — of their own English soldiers.”

In a separate memo from Mr Ryan following a meeting with Conservative MP Edward Leigh, he said the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was left “very distressed and very angry” by the soldiers’ murders.

Mr Leigh indicated that MPs held special meetings to call for support for “much tougher and direct action” by the SAS and other special units.

Elsewhere Thatcher accused our Government of doing nothing to help extradite a priest who allegedly worked for the IRA. Suspected IRA quartermaster Fr Patrick Ryan was the subject of a lengthy legal battle in 1988. Fr Ryan was arrested by Belgian police at is home where they found large quantities of cash and bomb-making equipment.

The UK requested to have him extradited from Belgium where he was believed to have been involved in an IRA unit.

The Belgian authorities refused the UK’s request and later extradited him here.

Fr Ryan, a former Pallottine priest from Tipperary, became the centre of a row between Irish and British authorities after we refused to extradite him to the UK.

The rift between the British PM and Taoiseach Charlie Haughey spilled into a meeting between the leaders at the end of the European Council in Rhodes in December 1988.

Minutes of the “frank exchange” which lasted under an hour, reveals Brit leader Maggie’s frustration over the extradition process saying she felt “badly let down” over the matter. Thatcher described Fr Ryan as a “really bad egg”.

She told Haughey, who died in 2006: “I and my soldiers — we are at the receiving end.”

Mr Haughey said: “It is a pity that every time you and I meet we have one of these difficult issues on something that is marginal between us.

“We can never get to the major questions which we should be discussing — like the possibility of progress with the North.”

The Taoiseach told the Brit PM he had never heard of Fr Ryan until he appeared in Belgium.

She replied: “You amaze me. From 1973 to 1984 he was the main channel of contact with the Libyans.”