These stipulated that:


• The Irish government would have a role in the government of Northern Ireland.


• That role would not interfere with the constitutional position of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom.


Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sign the Anglo-Irish Agreement, with Tánaiste Dick Spring (left).


James Molyneaux of the UUP, and the other Unionist parties, rejected the proposals because they did not accept that the Irish government should have any role in the political development of Northern Ireland. FitzGerald, however, welcomed Thatcher’s announcement as the basis for new talks.


In February 1985 the SDLP’s John Hume announced that he had accepted an invitation from Sinn Féin to hold talks. Hume hoped to convince the IRA to end its campaign of violence and thus make it easier to negotiate a peace agreement with the British government. Hume was strongly criticised by unionists, and by many commentators in the South, who accused him of associating with terrorists. In October the UUP and DUP, who took no part in the talks, demanded that Thatcher end negotiations with the Irish government, and warned that further talks would escalate loyalist violence. Paisley also accused the Irish government and the SDLP of supporting the IRA as a way of strengthening their negotiating position.


Despite unionist pressure, talks continued. As they were about to conclude in November, loyalists took to the streets in a show of force, with a march through Belfast of 5,000 members of the United Ulster Loyalist Front (UULF). They also began to form ‘Ulster Clubs’ throughout the North to organise loyalist resistance to any agreement that might be made between the British and Irish governments.


The Anglo-Irish Agreement, 15 November 1985


The Anglo-Irish talks eventually resulted in the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement on 15 November 1985 at Hillsborough in Co. Down. Among the terms agreed were the following:


• An Intergovernmental Conference was set up to facilitate regular meetings between officials from both the Northern and Southern governments, the Northern Ireland Secretary and the Irish Foreign Minister.


• The Irish government would have a consultative role on security, cross-border affairs and political matters.


• The British government accepted that reunification might occur in the future, with the consent of the majority of Northern Ireland’s citizens.


Given the Irish dimension to the agreement, Article 1 sought to calm unionist fears by stating that:


The two Governments 1. affirm that any change in the status of Northern Ireland would only come about with the consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland;


2. recognise that the present wish of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland is for no change in the status of Northern Ireland;


3. declare that, if in the future a majority of the people of Northern Ireland clearly wish for and formally consent to the establishment of a united Ireland, they will introduce and support in the respective Parliaments legislation to give effect to that wish.


POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN NORTHERN IRELAND, 1949–1993 355


CHAPTER 11CHAPTER 8 TOPIC 5


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