Agreement reached at Sunningdale to establish a power sharing executive in Northern Ireland and a cross border Council of Ireland. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement has been described as ‘Sunningdale for slow learners’, in that it uses many of the ideas originating in that 1973 agreement. But DOI:10.7228/manchester/9780719099519.003.0012, Part I Introduction and overview of the Sunningdale Agreement, Part II The lessons of Sunningdale: the key protagonists, 2 The Ulster Workers’ Council strike: the perfect storm, 3 Understanding aspiration, anxiety, assumption and ambiguity: the anatomy of Sunningdale. But the problem was that the SDLP and the Alliance Party had set their faces against a Unionist majority in the Executive (TNA, FCO 87/225 GEN 79(73)). An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MSO for personal use. Consent, constitutional recognition and sovereignty were all bound up. The Irish remedy, on the other hand, was to suggest a special court, to be set up under the Council of Ireland, having jurisdiction over a limited schedule of offences. Ireland except in accordance with the will of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland (TNA, PREM 15/1009). This affect was accentuated by Sinn Féin’s automatic participation, by right of votes cast, in a power-sharing executive without the PRIA decommissioning its arsenal of weapons first. A new Article 2 recognised the right of persons on the island of Ireland to be part of the Irish nation if they so wished (‘It is the entitlement and birth right of every person born on the island of Ireland … to be part of the Irish nation’) (Belfast Agreement: Annex A); unlike the 1937 Constitution’s Article 2, which claimed everyone on the island as part of the Irish nation as of right, there was now a choice: the B/GFA also recognised the ‘birth right of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose’ (Ibid.). By The Newsroom Saturday, 15th February 2020, 2:00 pm From the beginning Faulkner had no objection to the formation of a Council of Ireland consisting of elected representatives from both sides of the border provided the Irish government ‘recognised Northern Ireland’s right to run its own affairs’ (PRONI, CAB/9/J/90/10). The research question asks: What explains the divergent outcomes between the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973 and the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) of 1998.1 Labour claims the Good Friday Agreement as its ‘proudest ... Because it began with the 1973 Sunningdale agreement. (2) This paper provided several firmer proposals. Authority would thus flow from the NIA and not the North–South Council. He felt that it was not possible to share power between, on the one hand, a majority party in favour of a continuance of Northern Ireland and, on the other, representatives of parties who would want to destroy that state. In contrast the Irish insisted that a ‘meaningful’ list of ‘executive’ functions be undertaken by a Council in its own right and not by recommendation to the governments in the North and South. Although the first power-sharing Executive was a separate negotiation from the North-South aspects of the Sunningdale Agreement, the interdependency of the institutions agreed meant that both parts were as integral to one another as they were in the B/GFA. The consent principle – the right of Northern Ireland to remain within the United Kingdom or become part of a united Ireland – was the key constitutional determinant underlying the political conflict in the ‘Troubles’. Dublin’s position was of ‘no negotiation’ and advised the British that ‘it would be as damaging to negotiate with Provisional Sinn Fein as with the PIRA: this was a fundamental point for the Irish government: The Provisional Movement could not be divided into respectable and terrorist wings’ (TNA, DEFE 24/1933). The role of the Chief Executive and his co-ordinating role would be the nearest thing to an executive.9 The impasse was broken with the Unionists accepting the SDLP’s model for a power-sharing executive following the former’s success in securing their constitutional and North–South objectives. The Assembly would draft a new All-Ireland Constitution which would provide for a Provincial Parliament for Ulster (nine counties) with meaningful powers followed by a public commitment by the British government to withdraw from Ireland within 12 months of the adoption of the new All-Ireland Constitution (Ibid.). Everyone in Northern Ireland would assume from the sudden end of the Provisional campaign that we had given some such undertaking. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA), on which the current system of decentralisation in Northern Ireland is based, is similar to that of Sunningdale. 15). LHL, NIPC Strand One, Twelfth Meeting, 4 March 1998. This made power sharing in the B/GFA more palatable than it seemed in 1973 following the recent loss of majority rule when the Stormont Parliament had been prorogued. This remained the collective view of the PAC as passed on to the British dovernment which sanctioned initial contacts with the Provisionals – through the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) whose representative signalled to the Republican movement that HMG wished to discuss ‘structures of disengagement’ (Taylor, 1997: 177–8) and that ‘withdrawal’ was on the agenda for any discussions (Ibid. British and Irish ministers and officials would be unable to discuss matters devolved to the Assembly while Northern Irish ministers would be allowed to attend Conference meetings as observers (Belfast Agreement: Strand Three, Paras 1–10), thus removing the Unionists’ fear of secret deals behind their backs. negotiations and content of the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement, the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA) and the Good Friday Agreement. : 178–9). The UUP delegation at the negotiations insisted that this be inserted (TNA, CJ4/474). LHL, NIPC Joint Declaration by An Taoiseach, Mr Albert Reynolds TD and the British Prime Minister, the Rt Hon John Major MP 15 December 1993 (Government of Ireland: Dublin 1993). In the case of the Northern Ireland police authority, appointments would be made after consultation with the Northern Ireland Executive which would consult with the Council of Ministers of the Council of Ireland (Sunningdale Communiqué: Para. (p.190), Copy this link, or click below to email it to a friend. 5 British government policy post 1974: learning slowly between Sunningdales? Comparing the Sunningdale Agreement and the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. Such a court would deal effectively with terrorists wherever they were caught and would thus get round the present difficulty in the extradition law (TNA, CJ4/474). At the Sunningdale negotiations the position of Brian Faulkner, the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), was clear: given that his recently agreed power-sharing arrangement with the Social and Democratic Labour Party (SDLP) had met with significant hostility from large sections of the majority community, one thing was vital if the latter’s confidence was to be won: the Irish Republic should ‘accept the right of the people of Northern Ireland to order their own affairs’ (TNA, CJ4/474). A person would be tried in the place where he or she was arrested. The compromise, brokered by Heath, was for the Irish government to set up a police authority, appointments to which would be made after consultation with the Council of Ministers on the Council of Ireland. The Sunningdale and Belfast/Good Friday Agreements both witnessed a split in Unionism: this, however, is a superficial commonality, for the sources of division were radically different. Keywords: The subsequent talks between Republican representatives and British officials worried the Irish government, which feared a total British withdrawal from Northern Ireland and the prospect of civil war.
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