FBI and police searched for a suspected IRA hitman during Margaret’s official trip

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At a reception in Chicago, the city’s mayor Jane Byrne and the princess were discussing the recent assassination of her cousin, Lord Mountbatten, when it was reported in the press that Margaret said: “The Irish, they’re pigs.”

Lord Mountbatten and three others died when the IRA remotely detonated a bomb on his fishing boat while on a trip out of Mullaghmore in County Sligo two months earlier.

Reports of Princess Margaret’s alleged remark sparked uproar in Ire- land and among Irish-Americans, who staged angry protests throughout the remainder of her American tour.

Her spokesman, Lord Nigel Napier, vehemently denied that she had made the comment. “There is no truth in the allegation whatsoever,” he told the press two days later.