Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Brief chronology of the peace process
- Abbreviations
- Key documents
- Introduction
- 1 The terrain of discourse
- 2 The Anglo-Irish Agreement: an interview with Sir David Goodall and Lord Armstrong of Ilminster
- 3 The constitutional issue in Irish politics
- 4 Negotiations and positions: an interview with Sir John Chilcot
- 5 Resolving intercommunal conflict: some enabling factors
- 6 Tactics, strategy and space
- 7 The Joint Declaration and memory
- 8 Movement and transition in 1997: Major to Blair
- 9 The challenge of symmetry in dialogue: an interview with Sir Joseph Pilling
- 10 Why was the Good Friday Agreement so hard to implement?: lessons from ‘Groundhog Day’, 1998–2002
- 11 Text and context: an interview with William Fittall
- 12 The nature of dialogue: an interview with Sir Jonathan Phillips
- 13 Managing the tensions of difference: an interview with Jonathan Powell
- Conclusion
- Index
- References
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2015
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Brief chronology of the peace process
- Abbreviations
- Key documents
- Introduction
- 1 The terrain of discourse
- 2 The Anglo-Irish Agreement: an interview with Sir David Goodall and Lord Armstrong of Ilminster
- 3 The constitutional issue in Irish politics
- 4 Negotiations and positions: an interview with Sir John Chilcot
- 5 Resolving intercommunal conflict: some enabling factors
- 6 Tactics, strategy and space
- 7 The Joint Declaration and memory
- 8 Movement and transition in 1997: Major to Blair
- 9 The challenge of symmetry in dialogue: an interview with Sir Joseph Pilling
- 10 Why was the Good Friday Agreement so hard to implement?: lessons from ‘Groundhog Day’, 1998–2002
- 11 Text and context: an interview with William Fittall
- 12 The nature of dialogue: an interview with Sir Jonathan Phillips
- 13 Managing the tensions of difference: an interview with Jonathan Powell
- Conclusion
- Index
- References
Summary
This book is a collection of experiences and perceptions by senior British officials about their role in the Northern Ireland peace process. It does not take account of the long history of British association with Ireland and Northern Ireland, which has been extensively researched and analysed already. Nor does it contextualise the peace process within the historical tensions and difficulties that have bedevilled the British–Irish relationship since the seventeenth century (Foster 1988; Jackson 2003; Bew 2007). Equally, it does not seek to view the recent phase of British–Irish relations as a continuum of decision-making that led to the separation of Northern Ireland from the Irish Republic in the 1920s, and relate that to the subsequent violence and conflict that persisted up until the end of the twentieth century (Patterson 2006; Fanning 2013; Townshend 2013). Rather this is a work that examines the end of the modern period of conflict in Northern Ireland (which began in the late 1960s and became more popularly known as the Troubles) through inside accounts of British Government officials working at the centre of what became known as the ‘peace process’.
Analysis of efforts to develop peace in Northern Ireland often attributes the inception of the peace process to dialogues between Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams and the Social Democratic and Labour Party's (SDLP) former leader John Hume in the late 1980s. However, attempts to forge peace have a longer timeline and some historical context is called for. The foundations of an attempt to bring about an end to conflict in Northern Ireland can be most obviously seen in the Sunningdale Agreement (SA) of 1973 (the SDLP's Seamus Mallon later famously described the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) of 1998 as ‘Sunningdale for slow learners’), negotiated between the British and Irish governments with the direct involvement of the Northern Ireland parties, and, since then, the Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA) of 1985, negotiated between the British and Irish governments without the direct involvement of the Northern Ireland parties.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The British and Peace in Northern IrelandThe Process and Practice of Reaching Agreement, pp. 1 - 16Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015
References
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