Thatcher, as Minister of State for Employment between 1979 and 1981, a time of industrial unrest. His Secretary of State was Jim Prior. Northern Ireland Gowrie followed his senior minister to Northern Ireland, where he was Minister of State and Deputy Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) from 1981 to 1983, during the period of IRA hunger strikes; he was noted as "expressing quiet admiration for what he saw as the dying men’s misguided courage". He described himself as an "Irishman with a Scots name and a German wife, working, somewhat to his surprise, for a very English government". He was involved in the legalisation of homosexual acts in Northern Ireland in 1982, remarking to Ian Paisley, who led delegations opposed to the move, "We're not proposing to make it compulsory". Paisley labelled him "the little green Lord", apparently only partially a sartorial comment. He also played a part in discussions about restoring devolved government and proposed a model using a formal arrangement between the two main communities of Northern Ireland, somewhat like that which was eventually introduced under the Good Friday Agreement. He is said to have "made little secret of his support for Irish unity" and he proposed joint British and Irish citizenship for Northern Irish people, the option of which was also enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement. He also commented that "Orange and Green both had an appetite for public spending undreamed of by Grantham or Finchley". The Arts and the Duchy of Lancaster In 1983, Thatcher appointed Gowrie as the Arts Minister, and during his time in that office, he updated and funded a scheme which allowed donations of art to public galleries and museums to be offset against death duties. His philosophy around arts funding reflected his broader political philosophy – he said both "I approach arts funding as an economist" and that his former job of arts minister should not exist as "The problem with having a minister is that he is in competition with highly political areas like health or social security ... I think every year there should be a type of Church Commissioner thing where the money is just handed out." He was credited with the scheme to nationalise many of the galleries and museums of the Liverpool areas, as National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, when they were threatened with closure. He said that rumours that