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The Anglo-Irish Joint Declaration: Towards a Lasting Peace?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Paul Arthur
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Extract

‘Cometh The Hour, Cometh The Man’ . . . in This Case two men, in the unlikely figures of the British Prime Minister, John Major, and the Irish Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds. Neither is a charismatic personality and each presides over a government with more than its fair share of problems. Yet with one leap they have agreed on an issue which removes them from the mundane realities of domestic politics and offers them a place in the sun. Already the Irish Council of the European Movement has awarded Mr Reynolds (alongside the SDLP leader, John Hume ) its ‘Man of the Year’ award. Can a Nobel Peace Prize be far behind? The Prime Minister has not been slow to exploit the huge potential in the peace process. He informed the Commons on the day that the Joint Declaration was signed, 15 December 1993, that when he met the Taoiseach at Downing Street ‘two years ago, we both agreed on the need to work together to try to bring about peace in Northern Ireland and in the Republic . . . we both knew that, after 25 years of killing, we had to make it a personal priority both to seek a permanent end to violence and to establish the basis for a comprehensive and lasting political settlement’.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1994 , pp. 218 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1994

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References

1 House of Commons Debates, 234, 20 col. 1071. The debate can be found between cols. 1071 – 1093. Mr Reynolds has been equally adept at claiming credit for being part of the process from the outset. See, for example, Geraldine Kennedy, ‘One-page Man confounds his critics’, The Irish Times, 31 December 1993.

2 Goodall, David, ‘Terrorists on the spot’, The Tablet, 25 12 1993/1 01 1994, p. 1676.Google Scholar Goodall supplies a neat precis of the declaration: ‘So the central thrust of the declaration lies in the British Government’s assurance that “they have no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland”; in the Irish Government’s stress on the reality of the unionist veto; in the (significantly differentiated) commitments of the two governments to self-determination for the people of Ireland; and in the offer of a place at the negotiating table for Sinn Fein once violence has been brought to an end and definitively renounced. Everything else is top dressing …’.

3 Donoghue, Denis, Warrenpoint, London, Jonathan Cape, 1991, p. 124.Google Scholar

4 Cited in Patterson, Henry, The Politics of Illusion, London, Hutchinson Radius, 1989, p. 12.Google Scholar

5 MacDonagh, Oliver, Stales of Mind. A Study of Anglo-Irish Conflict 1780–1980, London, Allen & Unwin, 1983, pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

6 See Darby, John, Intimidation and the Control of Conflict in Northern Ireland, Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1986;Google Scholar and Wright, Frank, Northern Ireland: A Comparative Analysis, Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1987.Google Scholar

7 Adams, Gerry, The Politics of Irish Freedom, Dingle, Brandon Books, 1986, p. 52.Google Scholar

8 ibid., pp. 160 and 162.

9 New Inland Forum: Report, 5.10, Dublin, Stationery Office, May 1984. The four parties involved in the Forum were Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour from the Republic, and the SDLP from Northern Ireland.

10 On that last point he quoted (tellingly) Wolfe Tone, the leader of the 1798 rebellion and secular saint of Irish republicanism, on the distinction between objectives and means. This five-page letter is remarkably prescient. Much of its content is written into the Joint Declaration.

11 Interestingly, Lasting Pcact echoes the title of the periodical produced by Stalin’s Cominform for distribution to East European and other communist parties.

12 Fitzpatrick, David, Politics and Irish Life 1913–1921. Provincial Experience of War and Reeolutim, Dublin, Gill & Macroillan, 1977, p. 165.Google Scholar

13 Sunday Independent, 27 February 1994.

14 Asmal, Kader, Victims, Survivors and Citizens–Human Rights, Reparations and Reconciliation, Inaugural Lecture, University of Western Cape, 05 1992, p. 11.Google Scholar

15 Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1958, pp. 236–47.Google Scholar See, too, Montville, Joseph V., ‘The Healing Function in Political Conflict Resolution’ in Sandole, D. and van der Merwe, H. (eds), Conflict Resolution. Theory and Practice, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1993.Google Scholar