Robinson plotted North’s independence

Northern Ireland’s former first minister Peter Robinson was plotting to declare an independent state amid a feared bloodbath in the aftermath of the Anglo-Irish agreement, British officials believed.

In one of a flurry of high-level intergovernmental meetings in 1986, then-British cabinet secretary Robert Armstrong — Britain’s top-ranking official — told Irish counterparts that Mr Robinson was “saying things about independence”.

“We may be tending to treat this as unthinkable and to say ‘they can’t really want it’, but the issue may become more real,” he warned.