The drive for peace was started on a rocky road
looks at cross-channel relations after the Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed as neither government backed down despite continued terrorist attacks
In the wake of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, the loyalist and unionist opposition — led largely by Ian Paisley — was every bit as strong as the opposition that brought down the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973. But British prime minister Margaret Thatcher took a much more defiant stand than her predecessor.
Harold Wilson soon abandoned the controversial Irish Council dimension of the Sunningdale Agreement, but Thatcher pressed ahead with the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which was designed to bring about power-sharing between unionist and nationalist communities in Northern Ireland. If they could not agree on power-sharing, however, the Anglo-Irish Agreement provided for Intergovernmental Conferences through which the British Government would consult Dublin in running the province.
Following the first Intergovernmental Conference on December 11, 1985, Foreign Minister Peter Barry and Northern Secretary Tom King issued a joint statement.
“The RUC and the Armed Forces must not only discharge their duties even-handedly and with equal respect for the unionist and nationalist identities and traditions, but be seen by both communities to be doing so,” they said.
The Intergovernmental Conference on March 11, 1986, engaged in extensive discussions about cross-border co-operation in the economic and social fields. They considered 60 different items under 11 different heading, such as economics, transport, agriculture and fisheries, marketing infrastructure and Services, health and social security, education, environment, taxation, joint studies, arts, sports, and cultural affairs.
Giving the Republic a say in just about every aspect of Northern life further inflamed unionist opposition. While the nationalist community had not been very impressed with the agreement initially, the unionists became so vocal in their opposition that nationalists gradually began to look more favourably on the whole thing.
Ms Thatcher made it clear that Dublin and London would have no role once a devolved administration was set up.
“The people of Northern Ireland can get rid of the Inter-Governmental Conference by agreeing to a devolved government,” she emphasised.
“If they do not want an inter-governmental conference, the remedy lies in their own hands. It is to sit down with the SDLP, all of them, and the Alliance, and work out a system of devolved government.”
Irish officials were particularly impressed with the attitude of Fr Denis Faul, who had played the major role in ending the H Block hunger strikes.
“The nationalists did not support the Agreement very much at the beginning,” Fr Faul explained in an RTÉ radio interview, “but as they saw the unionists taking it so badly, they had to believe that there was something in it.
“It is a very good thing, because I think it is the beginnings of an alternative to all the violence.
“Now I saw the Anglo-Irish Agreement, not as perfection itself but as a very definite and good step in that direction and I think that the Catholic people have accepted it as that.”
The Garda Síochána and the RUC improved their co-operation, but peace was still some distance away. Factions of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) engaged in a deadly feud in which they killed in sensational circumstances during the first three months of 1987.
As Charles Haughey had opposed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, there was uneasiness about his returned to power in March 1987. The attitude of the new government towards the agreement “was one of the questions of the hour”, according to British ambassador Nicholas Fenn.
But he soon realised there was no need to worry. The fears were “very quickly resolved by the in-coming administration accepting the Agreement as an international obligation of the Irish government”, said Mr Fenn.
Haughey was anxious to implement the agreement without ever saying that he actually agreed with it.
“We recognise fully the need to improve the situation of the nationalist community in the North of Ireland and we approve and support any effective measures taken on their behalf,” said Mr Haughey.
The ninth Intergovernmental Conference, held on April 22, was the first since Fianna Fáil’s return to power.
Michael J Lillis, who had attended all nine meetings on behalf of the Department of Foreign Affairs, was delighted with the outcome.
“It created a positive public impact,” he reported.
Mr King and Nicholas Scott, minister of state for Northern Ireland, appeared “greatly encouraged by the interest and commitment shown” by the new tánaiste, Brian Lenihan, and justice minister Gerard Collins in relation to subversive violence, according to Mr Lillis.
Nevertheless, the killing continued. On April 27, the Provisional IRA murdered the Lord Justice of Appeal, Maurice Gibson, and his wife after they crossed at Killeen, Co Armagh. They had been escorted to the border from Dun Laoghaire by a garda patrol.
The SAS struck back a little over a week later by ambushing a PIRA unit planning to attack the RUC station at Loughgall, Co Armagh.
The British soldiers, who had been lying in wait, killed eight PIRA and an innocent motorist who happened to drive by in the midst of the ambush. Mr King wrote to Mr Lenihan “that ballistic tests have confirmed that the weapons recovered were responsible for every single murder and attempted murder in Fermanagh and Tyrone this year”.
Although there were questions about whether the British Army could have taken the would-be attackers prisoner, there was little sympathy for them, according to Seamus Mallon, deputy leader of the SDLP. That PIRA group “had it coming to them”, according to Fr Faul.
When Haughey met Thatcher on the periphery of the European Summit in Brussels on June 30, 1987, she welcomed the cross-border security co-operation.
The number of Garda/Army patrols on the border had been more than doubled, resulting in increased finds of arms and ammunition destined for the North.
But Thatcher was distinctly uneasy about the continuing level of loyalist opposition to the Anglo-Irish Agreement.
“I did not expect the extent of this disaffection at the time I signed the Agreement,” she complained.
Haughey complimented her for standing up to the loyalists, unlike her predecessor Harold Wilson, who had buckled in the face of unionist opposition following the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973.
“You did not, like Prime Minister Wilson, for example, back down,” Haughey told her.
