Letter from Dublin/Tim Kirk

 Plumbing the legacy of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement

Last month, on Nov. 11, a 40th anniversary conference of the Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA) was held at Queens University Belfast.  Sponsored by the John and Pat Hume Foundation and the George J. Mitchell Institute for Peace, the event explored the context and genesis of the agreement, its outworkings, and its legacy.

The accord should be evaluated in the context of its moment and of its predecessor (the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement), and its successors (the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the 2006 Amendment Act at St. Andrews).  While each agreement had its failings, most observers agree that each one built on its forerunner.

From 1922 to 1968, Northern Ireland was a hermetically sealed Orange apartheid state. For generations, Catholic nationalists had been viewed as a “disloyal minority” excluded from political power or equal opportunity. Irish diplomats commented that it was easier for the Irish government to get information about Nairobi or Kathmandu than about Belfast or Derry. 

The urgency to negotiate the Sunningdale Agreement in 1973 was driven by the violence started in 1969 by loyalists in response to Catholic civil rights movement, British atrocities (vividly symbolized by Bloody Sunday), and the mass internment of Catholics.  These draconian measures led to the reanimation of the then-moribund Irish Republican Party (IRA). Of these developments, John Hume said, “When you are reacting to a reaction, you lose judgement,”

AN URGENCY TO “DO SOMETHING”

Television brought the UK’s sectarian repression to a global audience. The Sunningdale Agreement also coincided with the UK and the Republic of Ireland’s simultaneous admission to the European Economic Community.  In 1973, the North of Ireland was the only site of conflict in any member state. While in 1973, the UK and Irish governments felt European pressure to “do something,” in 1985, the pressure on British Prime Minister Margeret Thatcher and the Republic’s leader, Garret Fitzgerald, was coming from the United States, where the horrors of Northern Ireland were better known than in Britain or Ireland because of the state-controlled media censorship north and south of the border.  

John Hume proved tireless in his efforts to garner US support for peace from the four horsemen, led by Tip O’Neill and Ted Kennedy, who influenced Presidents Carter and Reagan to engage in Northern Irish affairs. White House intervention in Ireland was started by Carter in 1977, when he refused to export weapons to the UK that might be used by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) or British army in Northern Ireland.  With open warfare in the streets and the hunger strikes of 1981 still a fresh wound, Thatcher was persuaded to act in 1985 by her friend and ideological ally, Ronald Reagan.  

In addition to the US pressure, Taoiseach Fitzgerald had two domestic concerns that drove him to act on Northern Ireland: the state of the Republic’s economy – it was grim, with near 20 percent unemployment, empty government coffers and sustained emigration – and the threat of violence spilling over from the North. 

For Thatcher, her side’s reputation was being damaged internationally while armed Irish republican resistance was gaining popular support both in the community and at the ballot box in the UK.  Again, something had to be done, or at the very least, something had to be seen as having been attempted. After 18 months of intense negotiations, they produced the Anglo-Irish Agreement.  

NEGOTIATOR “RAGE” RECALLED

During last month’s conference, Dick Spring and other surviving members of the AIA talks provided first-hand accounts of the fraught negotiations. It is almost humorous how often the term “incandescent with rage” is used to describe various negotiators over the years.

On the face of it, the Anglo-Irish agreement looks like another flop:  never fully implemented, and followed by an enormous rise in killings of Catholics by loyalist paramilitaries, it was abandoned three years after it was signed, with Thatcher saying, that ‘the Americans made me do it.’ Even the political goal to undercut the growing support for Sinn Fein by leaving the party out of the negotiation failed. Sinn Fein won 10.1 percent of the vote before the agreement and 10 percent afterward.

The push to reduce violence also failed. In 1987, less than two years after signatures, large numbers of arms were being shipped from Libya to the Irish Republican Army.

It would be easy to point to the AIA agreement as another fiasco, but it did advance the thesis of John Hume that three strands of cooperation had to be established:  first, power sharing inside Northern Ireland (cross community) founded on the notions of parity of esteem and consent. Second, the involvement of the Republic of Ireland in the affairs of Northern Ireland (North-South), and third, cooperation between London and Dublin (east-west) be maintained.

The late Seamus Mallon famously called the 1998 Good Friday Agreement “Sunningdale for slow learners.”  Sunningdale was an attempt to establish power sharing within Northern Ireland and a cross-border Council of Ireland. Unionist boycotts, a general strike, and widespread violence collapsed that agreement in months.

Unionist participants at the conference commented, somewhat churlishly, that Unionists were “not the only slow learners.” They asserted that the fatal flaw of both the Sunningdale and the Anglo-Irish agreements was that Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution, which maintained the territorial claim to Northern Ireland, were not removed.  In 1998, they were removed for the Good Friday Agreement, subject to referendums north and south of the border.

The AIA was condemned by former Taoiseach Charlie Haughey as “a sellout”’ of Republicanism and by the North’s Ian Paisley as a “republican takeover.” It was neither, but the AIA did move the parties toward a framework that viewed both unionist and nationalist traditions and aspirations of equal esteem.  The AIA also convinced Unionist parties that to hold onto power, they needed to be prepared to negotiate and not simply to boycott.

An anniversary event can feel a bit like a victory lap for yesteryear’s movers and shakers telling insider anecdotes and, in fairness, there was some of that. But there were also other urgent voices heard – from trade unionists and women's groups who feel that their voices were ignored during the Sunningdale and the Anglo-Irish talks, listened to a bit more during the Good Friday Agreement negotiations, but in  the end excluded from airings at the decision makers’ table. ‘If you do not have a seat at the table, then “ou are on the menu” was a consistent theme.

To reassure Unionists in 1985, Thatcher said that “when I have a twanging harp, I will look down [from heaven was the implication] on Northern Ireland.”  Many might disagree on Thatcher’s vantage point in 2025, but her words have proved accurate, though the Iron Lady’s wisdom had its limitations: During the AIA negotiations, she suggested forcibly moving all Catholics in Ulster to three counties and all Protestants to the other three counties, an ethnic cleansing plan worthy of Benjamin Netanyahu or Andrew Jackson.

In a world afflicted by wars, genocide, and climate collapse disasters, it is rational to ask how, after all this time, Northern Ireland’s conflicts and the peace process could still be unresolved.  History is never truly settled, especially in Ireland, and in some respects, Northern Ireland is as ungovernable in 2025 as it was in 1985.  Segregation and pockets of stubborn deprivation are still a fact of life in the North.  Integration of schools was 7 percent in 1998 and is now 7.1 percent. Peace walls and sectarian July 12 bonfires get taller every year. The Stormont power-sharing executive has been closed as often as it has functioned since it was first formed. Studying Irish history can feel like walking the Stations of the Cross. But, and it is a meaningful “but,” at least the killing has stopped… and stayed stopped. Compared to other conflicts, the peace process in the North of Ireland is still a success story.  

In the last decade, two foundational assumptions of all the agreements have disappeared.  First, EU membership for both Ireland and the United Kingdom was taken for granted.  From 1973 until 2016, membership as equals resulted in friendships between the Irish and British delegations, removed the big country/small country dynamic, and led both jurisdictions to greater convergence on everything from fishing rights to human rights. Brexit has scrapped that.

Secondly, support from the United States of America was once considered immutable.  This is no longer the case. As Ted Kennedy staffer Nancy Soderbergh (who participated in the conference by video link) related, the knowledge and network in Irish affairs from Kennedy’s office was brought to Bill Clinton’s campaign and to the White House. The Trump White House does not know or care to know anything about Ireland other than Trump’s golf course in Co. Clare. He supported Brexit’s principal co-conspirators, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, and is too busy sending an aircraft carrier to intimidate Venezuela, casually threatening to attack African countries, and bombing Iran at Netanyahu’s direction to give the peace process in Northern Ireland a thought.

On this side of the pond, the UK is in real fiscal, economic and political difficulty.  Just as the US reverted to Trump after the temporary respite of Biden, the UK might elect the far-right Farage as prime minister. His one of the lads, cigarette-smoking, immigrant-hating charm is strangely seductive to many voters. Dangerous idiots can gain power. Should the UK continue to implode, further cuts by “little Englanders” will affect Northern Ireland, particularly in the Health Service. Another moment may arrive soon when Ireland, north and south, feel compelled to “do something.”

TALK OF IRISH UNITY IS IN THE AIR

In November, the Dail passed a Sinn Fein motion to plan and prepare for Irish unity.  The idea is to avoid a poorly planned referendum as happened with Brexit. Ireland's new president, Catherine Connolly, has called a united Ireland “inevitable.” In a break from recent tradition, Labor Party Head Ivana Bacik spoke of the importance of building a Connolly-ite (James Connolly the revolutionary,  not Catherine) united Irish Republic, stating, “I am calling now on the Irish and British governmentsto set a clear timeline for the holding of a unity referendum.”  Retired Fine Gael Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has written about his desire for a united Ireland. For its part, Fianna Fail, while calling itself the “Republican Party,” has been the most timid of the parties on the subject but political calculations may have shifted in the Republic. 

Is a Unity Referendum in the offing? No.  Will it come soon?  Not necessarily.  On the list of kitchen table priorities for citizens north and south of the border, the aspiration of a United Ireland falls behind basic safety, housing, cost of living, employment, healthcare, infrastructure, and education. A united Ireland would likely help on all those issues but maintaining a status quo is easier than effecting real and exciting change.

Fintan O’Toole has observed that the reasons for the partition of Ireland a century ago are no longer valid.  The backward, agrarian, Catholic theocracy that unionists feared is gone. In its place is a thriving, modern, secular, republic.  The six counties' advantage from being part of the Empire has also vanished.  It is the Republic of Ireland that is a member of the world’s largest trading block, that has record budget surpluses, and that is admired the world over. 

As post- Brexit Britain chokes on the vomit of its own racism and dwindling importance, Ireland is building an inclusive, prosperous republic. With the demographic and economic reasons to justify partition removed, the most compelling argument to “leave well enough alone” is the threat of loyalist violence.  A stark statistic revealed in Sam McBride and O’Toole’s new book, “For and Against a United Ireland,” is that there are twice as many loyalist paramilitaries than there are soldiers in the armed forces of the Republic of Ireland. Could a united Ireland govern a disgruntled and heavily armed minority? Think January 6.

At the end of the conference, the assembled academics and political leaders were asked” “Will you see a united Ireland in your lifetime?”  The best answer I heard was: “It depends how long I live.”